The 365 - Network Launch
The365 is one of the newest FAST (free, advertisement-supported television) networks from our friends at FreeTV. With the goal of launching as an exciting new destination for African American audiences, The365 features a lineup of authentic, bold, and fresh movies and series.
The network needed a look to match its ambition.
FreeTV tasked us creating the on-air look from the ground up for the brand new network. In addition to helping establish the overall feel of the brand, we were responsible for creating a full network graphics package, including end pages, stings, transitions, lower thirds, and social media tools.
This was all delivered in our most ambitious and flexible toolkit ever - as we also did the exact same thing for another network launching at the same time.
365 Creative Challenges… (OK, mainly two)
FreeTV came to us with the logo, color palette, and some mood boards created by their brilliant Art Director, Kelly Turner. These were crucial for giving us a great jumping off point. The team at FreeTV gave us a lot of freedom to use these materials as inspiration to create the overall look and feel of this new network.
This project presented two major creative challenges.
One: we were creating this simultaneously with Outlaw, another FreeTV network that was launching at the same time. The365 and Outlaw have very distinct looks, so there was not a lot of overlap stylistically.
Two: Each network’s toolkit needed to share functionality, so we needed to create it in a way that would work for the teams at both networks — who each had drastically different approaches. As we’ll show later on in the case study, this challenge forced us to think deeply to create the best toolkit possible.
Shades of genre
One of the main ways we transformed FreeTV’s vision into reality is through color. Our Art Director, Dianne Frisbee, took the color palette and divided it into The365’s main content genres: Comedy, Romance, Action, and Generic.
With each having a main color, a tint, and an accent, this allowed each pillar of content to feel distinct, while related.
Pattern recognition
Patterns were a major part of the original mood boards that FreeTV put together - giving a distinct visual pop inspired by African art. However, they evolved quite a bit over the course of the project.
We moved to simpler, more geometric patterns — designed to be mixed and matched within every part of the network package, from lower thirds to full-screens.
The result is versatile and vibrant.
Motion dynamics
When it came time to put these key elements into motion, we had to make sure everything looked good with vastly different amounts of text.
We designed the animations to be dynamic, for example having lower thirds that extend based on the length of its text.
We wanted to make sure that every graphic felt textured, vibrant, and full of life.
Toolkitted Out
We created our most detailed toolkits ever for The365 and Outlaw.
As we mentioned above, this arose from the challenge of launching two networks at the same time. FreeTV had teams that worked with different approaches: One team like to have different After Effects projects for every single different iteration, and one team preferred to have one project with every iteration broken out into layers. No one approach is better, but they are very different.
We came up with a creative solution that made both teams happy: A toolkit where everything is extremely simple to customize. Colors, backgrounds, patterns - every single element we created for the network’s look - are all available as options in dropdown menus.
This makes everything extremely versatile and easy to customize. The team at The365 now has a creative Swiss army knife that can quickly create a myriad number of distinct, on-brand looks.
Our thanks to the team at FreeTV for the opportunity to help launch this awesome network.
Credits
Client: FreeTV
Creative Director: Bryan Slonaker
Art Director: Kelly Turner
Motion Designer: Roberto Zavala
Production Company: Elevation
Executive Creative Director: Stephen Cocks
Art Director: Dianne Frisbee
Creative Director: David Hendrix
Senior Designer, Animator: Sean Kiley
Senior Producer: Alina Klopach
Junior Designer: Katie Roberts