A&E - The Pursuit
Earlier this year, A&E debuted The Pursuit, a network-wide event all about uncovering the truth and chasing after justice. The seasonal stunt featured shows that shed light on some of the most prominent cases of the last 30 years.
The Pursuit needed branding that would help this tentpole programming stand out. Because of our prior work in the genre, the team at A&E came to us. Our team came in to design an overall look that would get viewers excited for the stunt by going in a unique direction in the true crime space.
Elevation was responsible for the logo, title cards, lower thirds, social media graphics, and toolkit. This was our first time working with A&E, and we wanted to make sure everything was set up for this big campaign to succeed.
Style framed for a crime
Our first task was to establish a tone and overall direction for the piece. We started with mood boards, where our Creative Director, David, and our Writer, James, worked in tandem to create several concepts for A&E to choose from.
Having this type of collaboration at the outset is key, as it allows the copy and the visuals to support each other.
A&E was drawn to the concept of “uncovering the truth,” along with visuals featuring paper unfolding and tearing. We decided to opt for a bright, colorful, and saturated color palette, bucking the trend of muted true crime branding.
We then created style frames that incorporated their feedback, marrying David’s visuals with James’ words.
Uncovering the look
With the overall direction set, our team got to work. But like a detective just starting a case, there was still a lot to uncover.
As we started to put the unfolding titles in motion, we also pursued a highly-stylized collage look. This required taking the subject out of a particular piece of footage, treating it, giving it a paper texture, and depth.
Although we worked on many different iterations of this, the design-intensive nature of this particular direction meant it wouldn’t work well as a repeatable template. Each new program that A&E wanted to promote would need a new bespoke collage, which just ended up not being a practical solution.
As much as we all loved the look of this, the collages ended up in our cold case design files.
Kicking off a killer event
As part of our first collaboration with A&E, we wanted to set this campaign off on the right foot. We worked with their team through many different iterations to make sure that we nailed the look.
Once the look was finalized, our team created the final graphics for broadcast and social, as well as an After Effects toolkit for A&E to implement internally.
To set the campaign up for success, our team integrated the graphic elements into the trailers for The Pursuit.
These trailers not only helped A&E kick off The Pursuit, but it acted as a stylistic example that A&E’s internal teams could use to jump start their workflows.
Our thanks to the team at A&E for this killer collaboration.
Credits
Client: A&E
Creative Director: Michelle Zamudio
Creative Director: Evan Glaser
Director, Production Operations: Jennifer Pierce
Production Manager, Marketing Operations: Corey Cronin
Senior Production Manager: Lois Saint-Jaques
Production Company: Elevation
Executive Creative Director: Stephen Cocks
Creative Director: David Hendrix
Senior Designer, Animator: Sean Kiley
Writer: James Grosch
Senior Producer: Alina Klopach