April 14, 2020

CBS News revamps coronavirus graphics

Along with ABC News’ “GMA3” temporary replacement “Pandemic: What You Need to Know,” CBS News has also redesigned its coronavirus graphics.

ABC’s ‘What You Need to Know’ makes graphics updates

Beginning Monday, April 13, 2020, both “CBS This Morning” and “CBS Evening News” dropped the yellow and blue look in favor of a red, blue and white design.

This new design uses muted blue and white background with subtle ring accents along with grid marks, horizontal and diagonal lines and dot and square accents.

Most applications do not include any imagery of the virus itself but rather a world map, some of which have red marks on them, presumably meant to represent “hotspots” on them.

“CBS This Morning” updated its lower thirds to have a clear and white gradient along with red accents, including a line accents and a red box for “The Race to Respond” (this tagline is also now read in the show’s teases, whereas it was yellow before).

Other updated graphics include on set video walls and fullscreens, sidebars and other elements. There are also now semi-transparent white boxes along with bold read header boxes.

There are also options to use the new look as more of a “secondary” design element and using another image in the main portion of the on set video graphics used in “Evening” along with a text headline below.

The photo is framed by angled elements carried over from the previous look.

In the early days of the outbreak, CBS used a red and yellow look with a distinct font spelling out “Coronavirus.”

On March 6, 2020, the network used the entire second hour of “CBS This Morning” to cover the then early outbreak and switched to a gold and blue design, switching to a slightly streamlined font and adding “The Race to Respond” as a tagline.

That look, in turn, eventually evolved into a look that appeared to revert back to the original font to spell out “coronavirus.”

“Race to Respond” stuck around.

The look was tweaked to use a different shade of yellow — and then started showing up on both “This Morning” and “Evening News.” Other elements carried over included the virus and vector backgrounds.