Blair went to see the Queen this morning asking her to officially dissolve Parliament next week.
In announcing the election Blair said Labour had a "driving mission" for a third term as it prepares to launch an advertising assault from its agency TBWA.
The trails for the General Election will feature animated caricatures of leading BBC presenters and will run from today as the month-long election battle gets under way.
The trails draw on the British satirical tradition of using cartoons and caricatures to demystify political issues and highlight how BBC coverage performs this role.
They feature animated line drawings of journalists John Humphrys, Peter Snow, Fiona Bruce, David Dimbleby and Andrew Marr and key regional presenters Noel Thompson from Northern Ireland, Brian Taylor from reporting Scotland and Huw Edwards, who will be presenting a weekly election programme from Wales.
Fiona Eastwood, head of BBC news marketing, said: "Research told us that people weren't connecting with party politics as strongly as they once did, but there was still a massive amount of interest in fundamental political issues.
"The wide range of BBC coverage allows people to find out what they want to know about these issues and to make up their own minds."
She added that when the issues are presented directly in an accessible manner people appreciate that BBC News can help them make their own mind up about the issues in the General Election.
Each of the four trails presents a different issue in a distinctive black-and-white animated style, which agency DFGW developed with Passion Films.
Simon Riley, creative leader on the project at DFGW, said: "We've worked to make the animations distinctive and original. They will be impossible to ignore on the screen and a very different way of showing both news and politics."
Versions of the trails will run on BBC television, radio and online.
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