 |
Tuesday, 22 January 2008 | Levent OZLER
The Biography Channel Teams with Leroy and Clarkson
the Biography Channel Rebrand as Bio
 Bio.mov ( 13MB ) - Viewed 689 times
The Biography Channel teamed with New York-based design and production firm, Leroy and Clarkson to produce new domestic and international branding packages, part of the network's repositioning as "Bio."
"The network wanted a fresh, new look with great legs to reflect the start of a new era for Bio," says Leroy and Clarkson principal and creative director Daniel Fries. "We wanted to create something they could fall in love with, something that would shape that new era."
"We asked for an out-of-the-box concept," says Anne Craig, Creative Director AETN International, "a brand design that would travel the world, be fun fresh and extremely flexible and inspire creativity in the people who'd use the package. With one caveat -- it also had to be rigid enough to maintain brand integrity. Leroy and Clarkson not only nailed it from the get-go, they got us excited again about our own product."
At the heart of the rebrand is a bold new logo comprised of the word 'bio' followed by a dot or period. "It's modular, easy to use and distinctive in its simplicity so that it functions well globally," notes Fries, "it's a design package with a very accessible but sophisticated graphic language."
The Clarendon EF letterforms, which make up 'bio.' serve as a toolkit for the rebranding packages. "The logo is the toolkit. Each package utilizes the typography abstractly to create rich and dynamic packages" says Senior Art Director Ryan Moore. "The simplicity of our approach yielded a surprisingly diverse and modular brand package. Each element was derived from the logo therefore inherently tied to the brand, an idea the client found very exciting."
The company also created new color palettes for the network with a bold color set for the international rebrand and white, charcoal and red for the domestic launch. Each program genre package -- crime, celebrity, paranormal, music -- has its own color set. "While color is an important part of the brand, the letterforms are what really identify and drive the brand," notes Fries. "Color can then play a more modular role, possibly expanding to suit future programming.
The company crafted Bio's new look in Adobe After Effects and delivering the final package in a myriad of formats ¬ HD, NTSC, PAL, and PAL anamorphic- for the international effort. "We knew we'd have multiple deliverables, which challenged us to create a design that didn't change dramatically from format to format," Fries reports.
|
|
|
