CBS looks to surround Couric with shiny new image

Dan Rather was blue. Katie Couric is orangey-gold.

Rather was straight lines. Couric is gentle curves.

That's what CBS hopes you'll feel, though perhaps not quite so consciously, when you see the new graphics on the ``CBS Evening News With Katie Couric" tonight . To match its new anchor, the newscast has undergone a makeover: A new set, a cinematic theme song by ``Titanic" composer James Horner , and, most notably, a new set of perpetual-motion, computer-generated graphics, recasting everything from the opening logo to the closing credits.

For National Ministry of Design , the Boston firm that created the new look, CBS producers had a long list of demands. The images had to translate to cellphone screens and the sides of buses, to fit a standard-size TV set and a more rectangular high-definition screen. They had to look modern, but not so much that they turned off an older audience. And they had to be sort of fun.

``We really wanted it to feel like we were inviting viewers to spend a lively and interesting 30 minutes with us, rather than compelling them to do it," says Rome Hartman , executive producer of the CBS Evening News.

Now, go translate that into some colors and shapes.

The result was a breakneck summer of work in the firm's modern office, a tucked-away space near Boston University, where designers work near sound and video editors, and Ben Affleck used a soundstage for prep work on his directorial debut, ``Gone, Baby, Gone ." After landing the job at the end of June, designers prepared various versions of every element in the newscast. They spoke to CBS executives several times a day, held long debates over such matters as the color of the line that will appear on the bottom of the screen, below correspondents' names. (It's going to be orange).

In a business where every image is fraught with symbolism, the attention to detail makes sense, says Robert Thompson , a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University . The stakes are high for CBS, whose broadcast is mired in third place, whose relationship with Rather crumbled publicly, and whose courtship of Couric was closely watched.

Tonight's broadcast, Thompson says, promises to be ``some of the most scrutinized frame-by-frame video images since the Zapruder film."

National Ministry of Design is accustomed to the pressure. Its designers -- some of them veterans of Boston's WBZ-TV -- have also created title sequences for the NFL Network , the ABC hit ``Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" and the UPN reality series ``Britney and Kevin: Chaotic ."

They also created the graphics for the Dan Rather-helmed CBS broadcast in 2000, a collection of blue tones and mostly straight, vertical lines. Back then, CBS ``wanted it to feel like you walked into the lobby of a Fortune 500 company," says designer Dave Allen .

This time, designer Jean McCarville says, the firm began by asking CBS executives to reel off adjectives, ideas about the message they wanted to project. The network offered ``classy," ``elegant," and ``timeless," she said. It wanted to suggest that Couric would be accessible and warm, and have more interaction with reporters and viewers.

And executives said, half-jokingly, that they wanted things to look expensive, recalls Ned Biddle , National Ministry's executive producer for the project.

So designers studied ads for expensive things -- architecture, cars, jewelry. They noticed a common theme, McCarville says, ``a certain shininess" as light glints off diamonds and chrome. They made light virtually glint off the CBS logo's letters and curves.

To represent Couric, Allen says, they added warm golds and oranges to a palette that had been exclusively blue. And they changed the eye, CBS's iconic symbol, from blue to gold in the new title frame.

``It should become synonymous with Katie," McCarville says. ``It's important at this point to attach her to CBS."

Designers also lifted the curves from the CBS eye and began to wrap nearly everything in them, from the teaser videos at the top of the show to the images that will appear over Couric's shoulder as she introduces a story.

``We're not trying to be blatantly feminine about it, but we definitely thought of the curves," McCarville says.

But Hartman says he never intended those curves to shout ``first sole female anchor."

``I'm interested in the sweep and in the angles but I hadn't thought of it as either being feminine or masculine," he says. ``We wanted to make sure that whatever we did fit her, but that's not a gender thing. That's a personality and feel thing."

It goes to show that images can be interpreted differently -- and that CBS has reason to be skittish. Last week, the network got a poorly timed black eye when news broke that Watch! magazine, a CBS publication, had airbrushed a publicity photo of Couric to make her look some 20 pounds thinner.

CBS producers decried the move. ``Nobody that has anything to do with CBS News would have ever done that," Hartman says. ``It was stupid."

But calling attention to Couric's gender has proved to be treacherous ground, says Syracuse's Thompson.

``I would think they would want to make this look like good old rough journalism, which Katie is perfectly capable of doing," Thompson says. ``They don't want to make this look like it's somehow a soft and cuddly evening news."

How viewers will interpret the images -- or whether they'll notice at all -- is an open question. Brian Lucid and Lisa Rosowsky , professors of graphic design at Massachusetts College of Art , both noted the horizontal pinstripes in the new title logo (a sign of tradition, they said) and the gradations of color (a nod to modern technology). Both said the shifting colors, which turn into gold and red in the bottom right-hand corner, made them think of a morning show.

``They've thrown a lot in this, and there are mixed messages," Rosowsky says. ``They're looking for feminine, but they're trying not to dispense with masculine." The eye, she said, seemed strangely downplayed, ``almost as minor as you can get."

But Lucid said he wasn't surprised. ``I assume that what they're trying to do is bring the Katie Couric brand forward," he said. ``Because she's what they're selling."

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com