Bringing alive the identity of the world’s largest video streaming brand
When the world’s largest video streaming platform – YouTube – rebranded, we knew the project would be complex. Addikt was commissioned by YouTube’s global branding agency, Saffron Brand Consultants, to bring the identity alive with motion.
Background
Over 163 million viewers access YouTube daily for entertainment, education and live casting. YouTube is the brand that originally introduced the world to video streaming, changing industries (like news, marketing & advertising) and consumer behaviour patterns forever.
Our task was to devise a Motion Theory that enhanced the identity yet kept content centre-and-focus. We challenged ourselves to find a way to make users intuitively “feel” the brand’s presence in how the UI behaves or how even the footage transitions, instead of depending only on branding assets like logo, colours and type.
Bringing alive the identity of the world’s largest video streaming brand
When the world’s largest video streaming platform – YouTube – rebranded, we knew the project would be complex. Addikt was commissioned by YouTube’s global branding agency, Saffron Brand Consultants, to bring the identity alive with motion.
Background
Over 163 million viewers access YouTube daily for entertainment, education and live casting. YouTube is the brand that originally introduced the world to video streaming, changing industries (like news, marketing & advertising) and consumer behaviour patterns forever.
Our task was to devise a Motion Theory that enhanced the identity yet kept content centre-and-focus. We challenged ourselves to find a way to make users intuitively “feel” the brand’s presence in how the UI behaves or how even the footage transitions, instead of depending only on branding assets like logo, colours and type.
Bringing alive the identity of the world’s largest video streaming brand
When the world’s largest video streaming platform – YouTube – rebranded, we knew the project would be complex. Addikt was commissioned by YouTube’s global branding agency, Saffron Brand Consultants, to bring the identity alive with motion.
Background
Over 163 million viewers access YouTube daily for entertainment, education and live casting. YouTube is the brand that originally introduced the world to video streaming, changing industries (like news, marketing & advertising) and consumer behaviour patterns forever.
Our task was to devise a Motion Theory that enhanced the identity yet kept content centre-and-focus. We challenged ourselves to find a way to make users intuitively “feel” the brand’s presence in how the UI behaves or how even the footage transitions, instead of depending only on branding assets like logo, colours and type.
Approach
1. Flexibility: Travelling across screens and between platforms
2. Structure: Content Containers
3. Behaviour: Like that of Light
Using these 3 key principles to guide our Motion Theory, we extended YouTube’s identity as not only a platform that serves content but owns content.
Results
The Motion Theory gives audiences a uniform experience on all these touch points: mobile app, website, smart TV and YouTube Music.
Visual language across screens is coherent, giving a strong branding experience.
On each platform, the motion uses brand storytelling and UI to present a branded, enjoyable experience.
The Content Containers act as Brand Reminders, opening & closing and sliding to reveal stories, making the experience “own-able” for YouTube.
The Motion brings alive the Grid System designed by Saffron, the key element that expresses YouTube’s visual rebranding.
Approach
1. Flexibility: Travelling across screens and between platforms
2. Structure: Content Containers
3. Behaviour: Like that of Light
Using these 3 key principles to guide our Motion Theory, we extended YouTube’s identity as not only a platform that serves content but owns content.
Results
The Motion Theory gives audiences a uniform experience on all these touch points: mobile app, website, smart TV and YouTube Music.
Visual language across screens is coherent, giving a strong branding experience.
On each platform, the motion uses brand storytelling and UI to present a branded, enjoyable experience.
The Content Containers act as Brand Reminders, opening & closing and sliding to reveal stories, making the experience “own-able” for YouTube.
The Motion brings alive the Grid System designed by Saffron, the key element that expresses YouTube’s visual rebranding.
Features
Flexibility: Built to travel across screens and platforms
YouTube is more than just an app – it is accessed as a website, on smart TVs, as a Music channel, and as a subscription service. With YouTube’s strategy evolving into targeting specific audiences with separate verticals for music, premium, kids and more, Motion Theory helps ensure that the brand experience is consistent. Motion reinforces the branding till the motion itself becomes synonymous with the brand.
Grid System
People interact with YouTube not just to consume content but to find their voice, find communities, explore interests – in essence, to navigate their digital world. Like a grid defines a city, the grid system for YouTube, designed by Saffron, establishes how people navigate YouTube. It is the basis of the visual expression and the patterns. Among other things, our job was to bring this grid system to life.
Content Containers as Brand Reminders
YouTube has been home to content creators since a time when it wasn’t even a term. People use the world’s 2nd largest social media platform and its logo to promote their personal brands all the time. In that sense, people feel YouTube “belongs to them”, and that makes it difficult to “brand” their experience or remind them of the broadcaster. After building a powerful user base of billions, YouTube needed a way to claim back some of its users’ mind-space.
The Content Container System was meant to be this “brand reminder” system. It opens up, closes and slides uniquely to reveal stories. It makes the content own-able, to remind the audience who the broadcaster is without slapping the branding on it. The Content Container System thus becomes an identifier for content.
Motion Theory: simulating the motion of light on screen
Everyday through YouTube we discover new content.
Metaphorically, YouTube is like the light that guides you to new places.
Therefore, we designed a motion theory based on the characteristics of light. Its physics – wavelength, amplitude and distance – determine the behaviour of the grids, patterns and content reveals.
addikt © 2024 Ideas designed to move
