Brief

Create a number of idents that clearly represent Al Jazeera and what it stands for, ensuring that natural elements are incorporated in doing so while leading on creative strategy, direction, concept development, design and animation.

Approach

We looked carefully at Al Jazeera’s role in the world, its history and its importance in today’s cluttered and complex media landscape, as well as its future vision, and from there we chose five brand values that we felt encapsulated Al Jazeera: Resilient. Raw. Revolutionary. Fearless. Diverse. The natural world would then serve as a metaphor for today’s civilization and the role Al Jazeera has to play in it.

Impact

Five impactful idents that represent Al Jazeera as resilient, raw, revolutionary, fearless and diverse, each with a subtle nod to the curvature of the teardrop logo.

Brand

Al Jazeera English

Production Company

The Mill

Director

The Milll Design Studio

Capabilities

Design / VFX / Colour

“We had an artist leading each ident and tried to give everyone as much free reign with the creative decisions. We had some rules to follow - as set out by the client - regarding how surreal everything should feel and also had some key hit points in the edits that our artists all had to match. The entire process worked very well.”
Will MacNeil, CG Design Director

REVOLUTIONARY

Taking as inspiration, the coral that grows in the warm waters of the Arabian gulf, this vibrant ident celebrates the role of ‘Al-Jazeera’ as a catalyst for change, showing the potential impact even a small action can have on an existing ecosystem. In essence, it is a visualization of the “Al-Jazeera’ effect”.

DIVERSE

Delicate and colourful microscopic particles, each as unique as a snowflake, spin and tumble, catching the desert light. These abstract treasures are in fact the tiniest fragments of shells, crystals and specks of volcanic rock – the very grains of sand that cover vast planes. Seemingly infinite in number, each tiny grain is a miraculous one-of-a-kind, existing together within a much larger ecosystem. These grains are a metaphor for humanity itself.

RAW

Smoke represents misinformation and bias, as it clears, we are presented with the uncomfortable raw heat of lava. Conveying there is no masking the truth and one deserves to understand the reality of every situation.

FEARLESS

Al Jazeera is represented as a source of light. Honesty and transparency illuminate even the darkest of spaces and no story is going too far in the quest for the truth.

RESILENT

The crashing power of waves were the perfect representation for resilience. A constant force and determination to move forward.

“These idents are beautiful manifestations of the driving forces behind Al Jazeera's brand refresh and manage to package deep meaning in an aesthetically pleasing way. If you can be subtle yet powerful, you nailed it - and the visual side of this project set the bar really high... and I think that provided the extra layer of inspiration our composers needed to do these idents justice.”
Marco Vitali, Sonic Lens Agency

Credits

VFX PRODUCTION
VFX The Mill
Executive Producer Ian Walker
VFX CREATIVE
Creative Director Will MacNeil
Art Director Anthony Fieldsend, Ivo Sousa, Will MacNeil, Ross Urien, Nikita Shestakov
2D Lead Artist Gary Driver, Jonathan Freeman, Brad Wood, Sole Martin, David Wishart, Adam Maynard
2D Artist Alfie Vaughan, Giacomo Verri, Peter Atack, Matthew Unwin, Rich Watson, Nhat Quang
3D Artist Roman Vrbovsky, Ollie Hallas
Matte Painting Can Y. Sanalan
Design Ross Urien
Motion Graphics Anthony Fieldsend, Ivo Sousa, Will MacNeil, Nikita Shestakov, Ewan Davidson
COLOUR
Colour The Mill
Colourists Alex Gregory, Thomas Mangham
SOUND DESIGN
Agency Sonic Lens Agency
Composers Michael Ballou, Asuka Ito, Marco Vitali
Sound designer Nicholas O'Toole