Overview

MediaKit is an internal-facing brand used by Sinclair Broadcast Group various sales and sales support staff. The resource website has undergone UX redesign.
Based on the improvements made, the branding needed to reflect the complexity of the brand. I lead the design effort for the MediaKit brand.

My role

  • Branding
  • Art direction

Length of project

2 week

Tools used

  • Illustrator
  • Sketch
  • Pen and paper

Team

Just me

Project Requirements

Create identity reflective of the new direction of the brand, while marrying other associated brands to create a sense of unification amongst them.

Current Logo

Additional brands

Audience

Since this rebranding project was related to the website redesign project I was working on, its audience was based on the User Personas created for the website redesign, as well as various executives. Also, as user research has previously shown, in some cases the website was used as an external resource as well. So, in essence it had two audiences – external and internal.

1

Marketing Coordinator

Marie has been working in advertising sales for 20 years. She is old school. She likes to print out her presentations to take notes on, or to leave behind for the client to reference. She is a UW graduate. She is single and resides in one of the suburbs of Seattle .
2

Digital Sales Manager

David has been working in digital ad sales for 10 years. He is an energetic leader, who oversees the team consisting of 24 sales people. David is a guru when it comes to product knowledge and never stops building the pipeline. David is a UC graduate, married and has 1 child.
3

Digital Sales Assistant

Dana has been in marketing for the last 8 years. In her current role she takes pride in helping an idea materialize into a tangible ad campaign, and is knowledgeable when it comes to advertising infrastructure. She is a UI graduate, married, has 2 kids and a dog named Donut.

Process

I’ve started the process by analyzing what the brand represents and defining its attributes. Since the rebranding stemmed from the UX redesign of the website to address defined usability issues, the following attributes have been defined:

  • Reliable
  • Innovative
  • Creative
  • Dynamic

Then I moved to hand sketches and type exploration, while looking to designspiration.com, Pinterest, Google for inspiration, while still trying to give the mark an original look.

Once I’ve determined the direction, I worked in Sketch and Illustrator looking at various type combinations and marks. I’ve entertained the idea of just the word mark originally, but then reconsidered.

I thought of MediaKit as a kit, a box, a collection of things, since this website is a resource. 

In addition to that I wanted a mark that could be used as a Favicon, as well as a watermark for images, documents and decks, based on the project requirements.

When thinking about the brand attributes and translating that into visuals, the following made sense to me:

  • Reliable – Thick chunky font with enough contrast for accessibility
  • Innovative – Using M form to imply complexity of the brand
  • Creative – The use of colors to “marry” the brands
  • Dynamic – The use of gradient

Results

After an internal design review and based on the feedback received, this was the final option.

What's I've learnt

Exploring brand voice, developing brand attributes and then referring to them while working on branding is super important. Investing time into this will inform the design direction and will ensure successful execution.