The right amount of cheeky

BBC America Rebrand

Client

BBC America

What do you get when you take an iconic legacy brand ready for an update and a desire to infuse a healthy dose of levity? A BBC America brand refresh that is eye-catching, versatile, and just the right amount cheeky, or you might say, Brit-ish.

BBC America Rebrand

BBC America Rebrand

BBC America Rebrand
Design Exploration

The BBC America brand has been around for a few decades and was primed for a brand update. Enter, our team at BigStar. There was a collective desire to translate the duality of the brand into one singular concept: Brit-ish. That concept was challenging, intriguing, and infused some of the signature cheeky British humor the network is known for into the final product. We got to really use our design to visualize that notion and explore the idea graphically.

With the rebrand being centralized around typography and color, our design director Ross Henderson led the charge developing a font package that encapsulates all of the high points we were looking to hit. As a result, our type choices throughout are extremely noteworthy and really stand out.

Ross explains, “when talking about these two fonts it’s definitely about the two tones of voice, the British and the American working in concert; the loud, fun and bold vs the reserved and sophisticated.”

That ‘loud’ or American side of the brand used Bluescreen font and the ‘reserved’ British side was Nexa Slab to call out a more refined and sophisticated tone. Color wise, it was no coincidence for the Brit-ish theme we were playing up that both the American and British flag use the same red, white, and blue package. We took those colors and tweaked them away from primary, and then used them across the board.

The nature of this package required an intensive collaboration with the BBCA team; this project kept us on our toes, but to be honest, it’s one of our favorite places to be. We completed the full refresh delivering everything from the logo, to a robust toolkit and style guide, all the way through to the deliverable of all on-air packaging and promo assets.

Cheers to our partners at BBCA!

-BGSTR

Props where props are due

Credits

  • Executive Creative Director
    Josh Norton
  • Design Director
    Ross Henderson
  • Executive Vice President, Executive Producer
    Carson Hood
  • Head of Production
    Virgil Conklin
  • Lead Animator
    Casey Drogin
  • Animation
    Liu Chialung
  • Animation
    Chris Scales, Ayden Ackerman

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