London Live approached us to pitch for their channel rebrand in late 2016. Since its launch in 2013, London Live had grown into a premium channel with a broad and expanding audience, and felt that the channel’s branding deserved a refresh.
Collaborating with producer Maddie Blundell, Creative Kate Chedgy and Head of Design David Skinner, our concept for the rebrand was developed and went on to become the winning pitch. Once we started on the rebrand, as art director I was responsible for all aspects of the design and animation. This included evolving the brand, all on and off air branding, ident design and art direction.
We had come up with the idea of London as a ‘City of Contrasts’; continually on the move, constantly surprising its inhabitants and visitors. London is an unconventional city, where things aren’t always as they seem, and its unique brand of eccentricity is something very special. We then put this idea into action across the whole brand.
London Live’s team were delighted with everything we delivered. Alex Rawlins, Head of Creative at London Live said,
"I feel so proud to be a part of the creative, we couldn’t have asked for anything better."
ROLE: CO-ART DIRECTOR, CO-GRAPHIC DESIGN, CO-MOTION GRAPHICS.
NEW LIVE ACTION IDENTS
We provided London Live with a series of filmed idents which represented ‘tales of the unexpected’ from around our city, designed to complement the diverse and celebratory programming on the channel. We identified five real London locations which best represented this idea for example, Mudchute Farm, Greenwich Market, Peckham Rooftop Film Club, Gainsborough Wharf and St Pauls. Our DoP was David Rom (Poldark, Mr Selfridge, Humans) who gave the idents a cinematic, warm and engaging feel. The tracks were composed by Deep East Music.
LOGO
As London Live is a relatively young brand, we was decided that it would be wise to not completely change the logo, just to tidy it up. New brands need time to breathe, we were taking the new branding in a very different direction so we saw the logo as a bridge between the old look, and our channel refresh. The logo is an evolution, not a revolution.
ON-AIR LOOK
Our ‘City of Contrasts’ concept was also the springboard to develop the graphic on-air look. I built a 3D landscape from the shapes found in the space in and around the London Live logo. I also used light and shade and perpetual motion to mimic the city’s ever-changing landscape. We nicknamed the chosen new colour palette ‘Teddington Teal’ and ‘Peckham Purple’ and delivered the complete kit of on-air packaging such as stings, graphic idents, on-air logos and bugs, promo packaging, menus, lower third straps…etc.
NEWS
We also used this fresh look to give the channel’s news programming a complete facelift. We redesigned the News programme titles, stings and packaging keeping orange as the News output hero colour.
