BY Armin

Zeeing Starz

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.

The logo and identity were designed by Darwin (impossible to find a link to them), in partnership with Design and Image Communications. While it must have been tempting, for both client and designer, to go with another star spangled logo I like that they instead opted for an allusion of a star — with a shine coming through the “a” and “r”, let’s call it “The Shining” for now. I also enjoy the customization of the wordmark, with its ultra tight letter spacing and well resolved counterspaces, even if the “z” has a speed racing look to it that the other characters don’t have; it also makes it proprietary and distinctive. It’s a simple logo with a sturdy concept — which comes alive in the on-air idents developed by TV powerhouse Troika. The animations use The Shining to great effect, making it the focal point of the logo, with all sorts of light and supernovas filtering through it. Below are a few stills, but you can see the animations at Troika’s web site.

I really like this new identity and on-air package, I like that it is not trying too hard to be clever or hip, and it has a certain authority to it that places it in a more competitive category with HBO or Showtime. The advertising campaign is being developed by kirshenbaum bond + partners, but I haven’t seen any executions. It’s refreshing too, to see a congruent result coming from four separate creative teams — pending on the advertising look, of course. So, today, my Saturday routine involves diaper-changing, laundry-folding, playground-trolling, if I’m lucky, one or two hours of TV, an early bedtime of 10:30, certainly no nightclubbing, which is fine by my actually… but I do miss a good feature presentation. Happy to see Starz is still around.

\n\nWhen 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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