Al Jazeera English | Channel Idents
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.”
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.”
Credits
VFX PRODUCTION
VFX CREATIVE
COLOUR
SOUND DESIGN
Speak to The Mill’s Design Studio