Brody Goes Home
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- soda
From Creative Review this month:
In a return to the UK corporate scene, Neville Brody has created a fluid brand identity programme for video-on-demand/digital TV service HomeChoice. For the past five years, Brody's Research Studios has received virtually no UK work despite his standing in the British design community, but he was brought in by HomeChoice creative director, Marco Giusti in April this year to revamp a service originally launched in 2000.
"HomeChoice is a small player in a growing market," says Brody. "You have cable players like Telewest, you have Sky which has an entertainment bias and you have telecoms companies like BT which are about telephony and broadband but have no entertainment. Home Choice converges all those into one space.
"The core concept," he continues, "is that today's home is an exciting place. Being at home is more exciting than going out. You can have the kids upstairs on the internet, dad downstairs watching a movie - on Homechoice all this comes down one pipeline. It was about the digital home, so the branding had to display two things: one, how to define this unique voice to suggest a culture rather than just technology and, two, to reference the home space."
Brody came up with a marque which represents a plan view of the home and which, he says, references snow and skateboard graphic styles. Underneath is written "HomeChoice digital home network" in the Hoefler & Frere-Jones typeface, Knockout. "It's actually an old-style identity, as if Nike used the Swoosh with Nike Sports Equipment written underneath," Brody says. But it's what goes on within the marque and the way in which it can be used which Brody thinks is genuinely innovative. The square-shaped graphic at the centre of the logo can be used in one of ten colours. In addition, when used on screen it can be replaced by animations or live action film. "The extreme thing is in the way we structured the logo: it's customisable by any of the partners that own it, ie the ad agency, direct marketing and so on," he says. "It's a risk, but we're trying to create as open a structure as possible and build in the possibility of evolution - it won't be out of date in two years because you can renew it. It's structured but not rigid. It's very unusual for a British company to sign off such a fluid brand."
It's also very unusual for a brand consultancy to encourage such flexibility when corporate identities are famously rigid and stringently policed. "We created guidelines but there's lots of open space in there: we're going to police the border but we can't stop people going their own way within that," Brody says. "The way to police a brand is to share ownership - that shares responsibility. Everyone wants to make sure it's working so you have a consensus."
Ad agency Mother was brought in from the very beginning and was involved in the process throughout. "Normally there's a very linear, sequential process where the branding consultancy establishes the parameters and the ad agency comes in later, but we worked collaboratively and simultaneously," explains Mother strategy director, Dylan Williams. "Whenever there was a change to the design, Neville showed us and whenever we got anywhere with the advertising, we showed him. I'm not sure we'd have got to the advertising strategy without talking to Neville and he might say the same about the corporate identity - it was a very happy process."
"This is an emergent market that will become hugely significant over the next two or three years," Williams says. "Normally you get a lot of players with only marginal differences between them, creating a cacophony of noise which turns off consumers so that the one with the deepest pockets will win. With the advertising, we wanted to elevate HomeChoice above the noise and own the high ground in the same way that Orange did in the early days of mobile telephony.""This service," he continues, "makes the home a happier place: in its own small way, it enables you to control the media environment of your home. So we tried to make Home Choice synonymous with a happier home but not through having happy, smiley faces. We created an anti-hero character who keeps finding himself in amazing real-life situations where everyone else is consumed by the experience but he always ends up saying 'I'd rather be at home'. We hope people will smile at our honesty." The campaign will consist of three TV spots, four crosstrack posters and press ads in Metro.
The identity underlines a change in fortune for Brody. In the previous five years, the vast majority of work for his company, Research Studios, had come from outside the UK, leading Brody to wonder what he was doing wrong: since January, 90 per cent of their billings have been from British organisations including the ICA and London's Royal Court Theatre.
"We haven't changed," Brody insists, "the change is in corporate culture - perhaps people of our generation are coming into purchasing positions. I do think that people want to work with smaller, more responsive agencies, who, like us, have a very hands-on process. I think that this is, seriously, the beginning of a new era in British corporate culture. HomeChoice are a great example of this - they are a typical twenty-first century British company in that they manufacture and distribute image and allow others to do the same. Companies don't want to work in an expensive, short-term way that needs re-doing every two years - we're doing something deeper."
- soda0
Anyone else think it's pretty poor?
I saw it CR this month and despite the justification, it just, well, isn't very nice??
Not to rip into Brody too much but maybe the reason why he hasn't had much work over here lately is because the market has moved on a bit??
- Engage_London0
what have they done to that mac mini! haha
you're right the type seems just slightly wrong... and the flash anims are awful
- soda0
Have a look in this months CR for the whole range of branding implementation. It seems all over the place, too busy, poor font, poor colour, even mother's ads look... cheap?
It's a strange one for sure
- vespa0
i know what you mean. it's a billion times better than what they had before tho, at least that blue and yellow chevron is gone!
it's the fat font that makes it look cheap. but then again they ARE cheap, and they're going for a market who wants cheap.
i think the "i'd rather be at home" campaign is a great idea. so's the mini-mote! but yea that font doesn't rock my boat.
- jg_20
Knockout is a powerful font, its just the lowercase thing along with the colours...
Check out the whole knockout collection!
- soda0
i can't explain what it is I don't like... somehow the whole application doesn't feel right?
I know what you mean about the font and the concept it just doesn't hold together for me?
Maybe there is too much variety?
Too busy?
- chossy0
Too many colors going on, and it is not very neatly set out, the blue thing in the middle of the mini mac looks like a squint piece of sticky tape. I like the pink though. I also don't like how the hand is cut off I prefer to see cuffs or a wrist.
- jg_20
I've been talking with the boss about it... he feels its not so awful. Maybe it fits with the target. A cheap common target. Normal television.....
Btw, not my taste.
- chossy0
something I might have done would have been to make all the columns the same depth, and put the scroller over the whole of the bottom, and move the position of the legal contact and site map buttons to the center. Might work might not ????
- soda0
I actually don't know who did the site, the branding is by brody's studios and the advertising was by mother, the site isn't too bad compared to the branding. Wait till you see the artwork on the vans shooting around.
- Crouwel0
i don't like the kerning in the word:
"digital tv" in the anim..also the text in the logo screams for more space..
hmm..
- mr_snuggles0
egads!
- zombiewoof0
For a "minimalist " design approach it sure is busy.
Although the interior pages hold together a bit better than the home page. I expected a bit more.
Site: C
Branding: B-
- vespa0
ooh brody's on a roll huh?
he's redesigning the guardian sites too - please no bad kerning mr brody!
- UD_isEverywhere0
poor.