Optus Sport

Optus Sport Rebrand

Rebrand and Broadcast Package Redesign | Created at DD8

Role: Motion Design (design, animation, inshow package)

Creative Director: Jean-Christophe Danoy

Art Director: Leigh Newman

Designers: Kelsey Shannahan, Matt White

With the launch of a new season of Premier League and Cricket, Optus Sport approached DD8 to rebrand the channel and unify the look. They wanted a fresh new take on the design and communication, a clear branded visual system that is completely theirs in character, from typography to the motion design. With such a big challenge, it was all hands on deck for the DD8 team at that time.

DESIGN PROCESS

The core purpose and strategy of the new design, streamline the visual language. Sports broadcast graphics is well known for it's visual cliches as a derivative of American sports graphics; the metal,

the shine and the heavy 3D trends. We opted for a completely different approach, a return back to universal design principles.

We assessed the fan demographic, what environments broadcasts will be shown and what information actually matter to fans. Fans are really all about clearing the way for the action, to have the graphics unobtrusive and working with the game. It's about knowing clearly when a game is on, knowing what the scores are, which sports superstar is playing, what is happening in the game.

With this knowledge, unprecedented simplification was the very foundation of the redesign. Solid colour palettes, large legible fonts, uncomplicated animations. This principle as extended to multiple graphic elements. Photography was largely monochromatic to the teams colours. Iconography were used to communicate events quickly, such as penalty and substitutions. Even the historically complicated and varied logos of the Premier League games were redesigned into simple yet recognisable vector graphics, scalable and legible within the broadcast package.

With everything working together, the result was vastly improved visual communication and unmistakable brand recognition. A fresh brand identity, clearly different from existing broadcast packages, one that is bold and assertive, yet elegant and effective.

EXECUTION

One of the main challenges was to redesign current Premier League and Cricket World Cup logos into simplified and recognisable iconography. They were all very much traditional, varied with multiple points

of identification and sometimes an unclear colour palette. Teams were divided up for each designer and we worked together to ensure that all icons were visually in line as a family.

I also specifically worked on opening sequences for the satellite shows and certain inshow elements, such as promo endboard and in game lower third elements, in all it's combinations. This involved locking down animation, finessing the typography for readability and accounting for word length variability. This is all subsequently systemised in the After Effects project to be as simple and usable as possible, for the purposes of handing over to Optus Sports designers to utilise.

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