More4 brand identity design

After winning a competitive pitch, Channel 4 commissioned us to create a new brand identity and on-air look for More4. The package aligns with a re-focused range of content on the channel.

The re-brand is centred round a bold, flexible logo that morphs through a series of flips, folds and reveals. The colour palette reflects the vibrant nature of interiors, food culture, fashion and other contemporary lifestyle programming.

Live-action idents see the brand break out into the real world in the form of mechanical ‘flippers’. The installations inhabit environments from a domestic staircase to an abandoned fishing boat in Dungeness. To achieve this we teamed-up with installation design pioneers, Jason Bruges Studio, to help design and build a flexible system consisting of over 400 individual flipper units.

More4 brand identity design

More4 brand identity design

More4 brand identity design

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Comments

This is clever. I would have loved some more information about the design process and how the (many) colors were chosen. Because of the many colors they feel somewhat arbitrary to me and I wonder whether fewer colors would have resulted in a stronger brand.

“More” could reference the fact that the new logo uses more colors then the previous one.

Photography and animation is flawless.

I agree with Michael, it reads as 4more to me. The design is nice, but I think it could be better—it’s not a real surprise, and doesn’t grab my attention, or impress me so much.

I think the ‘mor’ characters on the 4 would look better if they were white or a lighter colour, they have little strength as a dark colour on such concentrated colours.

I also don’t get why the ‘e’ was left out too, if there’s no real reason behind it, then I just don’t get why they’d do that. Every decision in design should have a legitimate reason (sometimes any will do), and in this case, I see a lot of design decisions that don’t seem to have many reasons behind them, instead the faux-reason behind them is ‘Because it looks nice’ or ‘To make it look up-to-date’ or something similar. Could do with more work.

Apart from that, there are fresh details and aspects I like about this, and I can’t criticise the design too much, since it’s already in use. Interesting nevertheless :)

This is a wonderful identity, looks great and works perfectly as a flexible motion-based piece.

For Louis and Michael: If you watch the unveiling of the identity on the motion idents you will notice that they have carefully crafted it so you read the ‘more’ type before focusing on the ‘4’.

Christian: on the designers website this quote appears about the colours:

“The colour palette reflects the vibrant nature of interiors, food culture, fashion and other contemporary lifestyle programming.”

Louis: I think you’re looking too hard for negative elements of the logo if the ‘HD’ is a problem. HD is a very well-known term and is already programmed into people watching the channel (ie. they have physically switched to the HD station!). Your argument becomes irrelevant. I’m sure if you conducted a study you would find most people could decipher it.

I find this design interesting because of the colors and the way the flaps flipped. I do agree with the fellow bloggers about the logo reading as “4more” instead of “more 4”. I really like how you decided to install this piece in different locations/sceneries and by choosing those colors it made the piece stand out more. Before reading the description/information above I didn’t quite understand what or why this installation was made, I assumed it was just a designer that decided to install his/her piece, but after reading the information I still wasn’t sure what Channel 4 was, what are they about? So I decided to search then and I put two & two together and realized the colors were representing the different categories the Channel 4 – More 4 has.

I was wondering what the are flaps were made out of. Incredible piece, it has to be my favorite installation piece by far. Wish I got to see it first-hand.

Daryl, thanks for pointing that out.

I think I didn’t express myself properly about the ‘HD’, of course I know what HD is, heck I’ve got it, and I know that the majority of people watching the channel will know.

My point was, merging the letterform of the H to the D looks confusing, my thinking is, “Is it an H or a D, which one is it?”.

I know which one is which, I’m saying that, for the average person, its confusing in the first few seconds of looking at it, as the H and D aren’t separate. I’m suggesting they’d look greater with a proper gap between them/proper kerning.

Doesn’t matter, it’s just something I’m picky about.

And as for negativity, someone’s gotta do it, I feel that Identity Designed is not only a place for inspiration, but a site to critique, compliment and praise works. I’d rather not sugar-coat my thoughts, and just be blunt and honest about what I feel works and what doesn’t.

This is one of the ugliest logos I’ve ever seen. It reminds me of 1993 when “everyone” became a designer because they now had a computer and Aldus Pagemaker and some early Adobe products. The colors also hark back to an earlier age — a la Pink Floyd.

Please. I am getting so sick of designers uniting trends from two earlier time periods and calling it new.

This is one my favourite channel 4 idents, it really pulls you in. This work is more like a piece of contemporary modern art that wouldn’t be out of place in the Tate Modern. It’s great to see work like this being used commercially.

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