Channel 4’s example of optical illusions encouraged further research into the company itself, as well as logos and other idents that they might have used.
First air date of Channel 4 was the 2nd November 1982 and their original logo showed the 4 being split into individual rectangles and squares.
There have been other iterations of this logo but the main design remained the same. The next one adopted the plain black and white style which stayed throughout the 27 years that Channel 4 has been around for. One iteration had the 4 within a circle and during that time period, the idents had 4 circles in total in different layouts like the four on a dice.
Found on Channel 4’s own site is a statement on why the television channel was set up in the first place:
“Channel 4 was set up with a unique model as a ‘publisher-broadcaster’, meaning that we do not have any in-house production, but instead commission content from production companies throughout the UK… We are a self-sufficient business that reinvests all profits back into programmes, at zero cost to the taxpayer.”
Channel 4 from https://www.channel4.com/corporate/about-4/who-we-are/what-is-channel-4 accessed on 10th December 2019
Despite the logo, at the core, being the same since the channel’s inception, the first ident that included the aforementioned optical illusion was in 2004. They then created 19 more to use over the next 3 years.
From my research, I can conclude that the logo was not created for the sole purpose of using this optical illusion ident style, as I initially thought.
Immersive and Sensory Design 