Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel, founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav. It provides documentary television programming focused primarily on popular science, technology, and history. In the U.S., the programming for the main Discovery network is primarily focused on reality television themes, such as speculative investigation, automobiles, and occupations; it also features documentaries specifically aimed at families and younger audiences. A popular annual feature is Shark Week.
The Discovery Channel's very first logo was a television screen picturing a map of the World. For two decades on the air, the logo incorporated the Discovery wordmark in an Aurora Bold Condensed font with a circle shape in front of it. The circle usually took the form of a rising sun, or an animated version of the Vitruvian Man.
In 1995, the word "The" was dropped from the channel's name. A globe became a permanent part of the logo and a strap was added to the bottom of the logo. During this time, the company started expanding and launched several new networks. Many of the sister networks used designs similar to the one used by Discovery, often incorporation the globe and using the same typeface. Networks that had logos based on Discovery's were Animal Planet, Travel Channel, Discovery Science, Discovery Wings and Discovery Home & Leisure. The logo was changed slightly in 2000 when the word "Channel" was moved into the strap.
On April 15, 2008, before the season premiere of Deadliest Catch, Discovery Channel started using a new logo, new graphics and the new tagline "The World is Just Awesome". The new logo has been designed by Viewpoint Creative in Boston and replaced Aurora Bold Condensed with Gotham. The globe has been merged with the "D" in "Discovery". This D-globe part can be detached and used separately, for example it is used as the channel's bug. The new logo was rolled out to the rest of the world during the first half of 2009.
