With Animal Planet, the Science Channel, and TLC all looking like distant cousins of its parent company, and namesake channel, it was only an eager matter of time before the Discovery Channel would upgrade its tired identity. While not publicly available yet, the logo was unveiled at Discovery's upfront presentation the last Monday of March in Chicago, as The New York Times reports, where they also showed a TV ad boasting its new tagline and theme, "The world is just awesome."
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Dear readers, please excuse this brief bout of self-promotion, I hope you don't find it too intrusive — but it's irresistible when we have such a great, influential supporting crowd. (Yes, I'm buttering you up). We have a new project from UnderConsideration that is not design related and takes us a little bit out of our comfort zone: Dyslexflix. For a more broad explanation you can read its about page. And, yes, you can critique our parody logo.
When I was young and vibrant, the way a 20-year-old is, I had a nice routine for my Saturdays: A basketball game or practice in the morning, some design homework in the afternoon, early dinner, followed by a Saturday movie premiere from Starz and then, to top it all off, night-clubbing until 4:00 a.m.. Certainly things have changed. But I do remember (on the times when I wasn't too imbibed) those Saturdays fondly. So it's with a slight zeal of nostalgia that I turn my attention to Starz, with its flagship (at least for me) Saturday premieres that were somewhere between Pay-per-view and HBO — not quite first on TV, but not six months after a movie had been released in theaters. This was ten years ago, when Starz had an exclamation point at the end of it (Starz!) and it had only one channel &mdashl for a comprehensive look at the past identities and exclamation point particulars Wikipedia has a nice round-up. Certainly, things have changed for the Starz as well. It is now a six-channel network with HD and On Demand alternatives — and $25 million allocated for a comprehensive campaign, along with a shiny new logo.
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I realize you have all been gnarling, clawing, hissing, and otherwise growling to discuss the new Animal Planet logo — and that's exactly the kind of inner urge that the channel wants to bring out in their viewers. Or better yet, in their own words: The new programming on Animal Planet will tap into the instincts that drive us all — fear, hunger, pleasure, nurture — with compelling stories that resonate with what it means to be human. And what better way to unveil this new approach than with — dun, dun, duuuun — the fierce Puppy Bowl! This past Sunday, to coincide with one of the biggest TV-watching days, Animal Planet launched a new identity that goes beyond a simple identity change, as it attempts to shed its family-friendly image for a more intense experience. I was hoping to get some additional imagery for this launch to be able to provide a better picture of the new identity — and I really wanted to see if this logo had any legs beyond the logo — yet my efforts went unfulfilled, as some e-mails went unanswered and, to my surprise, there was no rollout of a new identity during Animal Planet's programming. So we will have to settle for the logo.
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Guest Editorial by Sam Becker
My best friend from high school wants to be the next American Gladiator, and I can’t blame him. He called me last month to mention he was applying, and asked if I would critique his video audition. Now Jon is not the most athletic person (as his video serves to illustrate), but it’s clear to me why he wants to take part in the reincarnation of one of television’s most engaging, wholesome, unpretentious and downright zany entertainment-sports franchises of our time. And as we all know, with new leotards come new brands.
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While you were playing with your new gadgets that Santa Claus (or your credit card) brought you this past December 25th, the Science Channel, one of the channels from Discovery Communications LLC, unveiled a new identity that positions it on par with popular sister channel TLC, that has a unique identity, by stripping the parent company's endorsing globe and letting the eight-year-old channel stand on its own. The old logo was, without a doubt, unflattered by its orbiting swoosh eclipsing the otherwise respectable blocky typography that would make for a nice sci-fi novel cover — it said science without hitting you over the head with it. The new logo (designed in-house), on the other hand, is a little less subtle with the clear-as-helium reference to the periodic table. Truth be told, it makes for a great logo, specially on TV, as it will look great and recognizable when rendered small on screen, but I wonder if it's slightly clichéd? My first reaction is yes but, after all, it is a channel about science and they can easily own the notion of periodic table element as logo better than others could. The logo is set in Avant Garde with some surgery done to the n's, giving it an unnecessary (in my opinion) added layer of trendiness… and, until now, I hadn't realized how condensed and out of place Avant Garde's s is, specially in contrast to other round characters like the c, but I digress. The new identity feels fresh and lively — unfortunately, since I am vacationing in Mexico at the moment, I can't check the TV applications, so if anyone would like to vouch for this, I would be very thankful — and an important step for the channel to be perceived independently of its parent company, and its push to create new and original programming.
I just spent the seven most painful minutes in recent memory for the love of the rebrand. At 10:54 pm I decided to tune in to QVC to see the new identity in action. First, I had to locate it in my cable line-up: QVC is sandwiched between ShopNBC (I had no clue!) and Brooklyn Community Access Television (sweet!). A lady and a man with an ear-piece were selling a jewelry box. I watched, knowing that at the turn of the hour I would get a chance to see an interstitial or ident showcasing the emperor's new clothes — which, by the way, you can buy in four easy installments! My patience was rewarded with a white screen coming to life beautifully with a near-cyclic animation of the new, ribbon-like Q that shelters the perfectly classic and simple letters that form the name of the channel, which also animate nicely on screen. Then Joan Rivers' Classics started and, before I poked my eyes out, I swiveled to my computer to write this.
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Three-letter cable channel identifications seem to be all the rage lately. One merely has to channel surf to find plenty of three letter abbreviations for different networks: CNN, TNT, TBS, TLC, TNN, A&E; and the list goes on. Apparently network execs think that their viewers don’t have the mental capacity or intelligence to recall their favorite channels — or perhaps this trend is the result of an instant gratification society in which the proliferation of instant messaging has diminished our ability to read, write and think in complete thoughts and sentences.
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In January, BBC America launched a new, complementary icon to complete a redesigned identity for the channel that has brought us little marvels like The Office and Footballers’ Wives to America. Designed by broadcast-specialized agency, mOcean (pronounced "motion"), the new icon is a big, bold, red-white-and-blue "Bulls-A" (get it? Bulls Eye?) that complements the recognizable three-square BBC logo giving the American channel its own personality and attitude with the continued (visual) support of its British counterpart — and lest we forget that, the new tag line is: "A little Brit different".
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Established in 1933, the British Film Institute was created to "promote greater understanding, appreciation and access to film and television culture." The BFI also serves as a repository for film, film stills and film posters; it runs the National Film Theatre and London Film Festival, as well as the BFI IMAX Cinema; and it also releases films in cinema and on DVDs, publishes books and runs educational programs. In other words, the BFI knows film. And was in need of an identity that established it as a leading organization in the crowded film industry. Stepping away from film clichés London-based johnson banks designed a cinematic identity around the idea of lens flares, creating a sense of movement and layering and, perhaps romantically on my part, a portrayal of those magical moments in film where you are momentarily brightened by a line of dialog, a great chase or a real display of emotion. Johnson banks' solution might seem complex and highly illustrative, specifically compared to the old logo — which I particularly like — but considering that this identity will live mostly on screen and in 4-color posters it is a refreshing departure from traditional identity design and quite appropriate for the client and audience.
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(Total Number of Pages in Entertainment: 2)
