The rebranding was intended to strengthen 7TV’s new image as a Do It Yourself channel. One that promotes health, education, and general knowledge about how to better yourself.

The rebranding branched from logo creation, stationary, advertising campaign to redesigning every on-screen element, including the channel’s Idents, that were used as the channel’s visual language.

To emphasize an honest and human approach, all on-screen elements were made and animated by hand.

The challenge was to understand Russian culture in a very short period of time, and create an identity that would both please, be bold and stand out from competing channels, without falling in the stereotypes of mainstream Russian television’s often repetitive clichés, or a foreigner’s ones.

Our client was very attached to pleasing an older crowd, their main viewer audience. That generation has experienced a lot, from soviet era communism, to the modern day, and more individual driven, current Russia. Finding the right communication tone, concept and objects, that would also appeal to younger generations of russians, was very hard.

My team and I were specifically hired to bring a fresh visual language to this project.
The fact that I work with stop motion pleased them a lot, as it is a more nostalgic animation process. Since I tend to mix that technique with a very minimal and color driven aesthetic, which can also be associated with soviet era design, it convinced them to hire me, and let me create a visual Identity almost completely freely.

My only constraint was that their slogan: “and everything fits together perfectly.”

We flew to Moscow for a week and were invited to all the main Russian Museums, to bask in the culture that would later have to inspire us. We also studied a lot of soviet architecture, patterns, packaging, shapes and colors. The trip was very inspiring and from there we could more accurately create a suitable visual language.

After the main concept was approved, and the logo was created, I had to illustrate five topics chosen by the channel that reflected it’s strong shows. Each topic had a specific selection of objects that we had to choose, and then build.The creation of these different moods would be the new identity to promote, so every choice was very important.

Once the topics were approved, and every set and prop finished being built, we simultaneously shot them for the advertising campaign, and hand animated them for the on-screen idents.

The audience was our main concern through the whole process.

We hope that it made some nostalgic russians happy to see that modern television wasn’t all about superficial people and computer generated special effects. With luck it also showed the younger one’s that a different approach can be used to communicate values that are aimed at making your life better.

I firmly believe that even though this was an entertainment type project, we succeeded in promoting sincere human values, useful and educational programs, for middle class and lower income earning people.