Diseño en Comunicación Visual

Desde Capacity.tv

We had the honor once again of taking part in shaping the look and feel of one of the most recognizable television brands in the world. This time around, the process got even more interesting and involved than in past years because of some new internal thinking. We’ve broken it down into a detailed case study to try to make sense of everything. Feel free to just scroll and look at the pictures, or come along for a nuanced journey into the process if you’re feeling adventurous. ; )

PITCH PHASE

Before we got involved in the project, months of research happened internally at NBC with the intention of finding and defining the brand voice and positioning. We were briefed on the internal study, which was about what you’d expect with the exception of being surprisingly refreshing. In fact, we found it to be quite inspiring and open-ended, and we thought we would be able to help them figure out how to apply it to the brand in a visual way, rooted in concept… so we decided to pitch.

The pitch was pretty elaborate, involving about 12 separate entities. Some were focused more on the design and some were focused more specifically on the conceptual brand platform (including Larry Frey, former W+K CD, who ended up influencing much of the overall brand direction). We were brought in to pitch primarily on the design portion of the brand, and asked to approach it in such a way that the design could embody the brand rather than just being a stylistic treatment. This matched up perfectly with our instincts, so we were happy to accept the challenge.

Having worked with NBC for the past few years, we decided to only present ideas that would both push them conceptually and allow us the creative leeway to keep things interesting for everyone involved. We wanted to tap into the essence of the brand and leverage the qualities that are ownable only by NBC.

We found ourselves really drawn to the six colors of the peacock logo. No other television brand (or really any brand for that matter) can own that set of colors in both a relevant and historically significant way. Rather than letting the color simply exist as a visual device, we really thought it would give the brand more weight by actually making the colors mean something. We found a quote from American Ashcan School painter Robert Henri that became almost a mission statement for the project: “Color is only beautiful when it means something.”

So, what does it all mean? Well, one thing that stood out from NBC’s internal research was the idea of embracing humanity. Our brainstorming lead us to the realization that the ability to feel and experience emotion is at the core of our humanity. It just so happens that color theory research has led to strong correlations between color and emotions, because of both the visceral human response to color and the cultural associations that have developed over time. We used that line of thinking as a basis to tap into the emotions of the colors themselves, bringing them into a richer view… a more sustainable definition rather than color for color’s sake (…) Leer más