Studio: Trollbäck+Company
My Roll: Omnichannel Strategy, Creative Direction, Design
I remember watching MTV News from a young age, so there was definitely a feeling of nostalgic excitement when I was asked to rebrand this pop-culture icon. Young people have so many more ways to access the world of cool than I did growing up, so a bold simplicity of color, motion and type seemed like the best way to cut through the noise.
The goal was to design a user-friendly graphic system that would flex consistently across social, digital, print and on-air, while allowing MTV News to claim stronger ownership of their content. My design strategy focused on creating a seamless, platform-agnostic brand experience. The graphic system allows content from Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat to feed naturally into the on-air broadcast and vice versa. It also facilitates rapid content generation for any platform using the same user-friendly toolkit.
A focused, youthful color palette, high-contrast typography, and simple, energetic motion are the obvious defining qualities of the new brand, but nowadays, the small design decisions matter more than ever. For instance, after a brief competitive audit, I recommended that the brand use a vertical left-side bar on their YouTube thumbs; a unique visual tactic that helps their content stand out without detracting from the image being featured.