Project brief: Breaking through the visual clutter of today’s TV landscape in order to reach and expand our audience was the objective of the MTV redesign.

Approach: To accomplish this, we kicked things off with a two-day off-site, where key players from across departments dissected and critiqued the channel. Energized and focused, we next dedicated an in-house team to exploration and development. Executionally, we stripped away any unnecessary decoration, used a restrained approach to type, made a bold use of scale and white space, and established a consistent holistic look, tone and voice, while also finding opportunities to infuse voice and personality to messaging. Central to the redesign was our logo. Refreshed to be simple, clean, bold and forward thinking, it afforded us a window to create capital M moments, where music, show talent and audience imagery are intrinsically tied to MTV.

Effectiveness: Today the channel feels more purposeful and curated, more genuine and inviting—a place that feels like someone’s always home. Also born out of our redesign was an efficient system of templates that streamlined budgets and resources. MTV ended 2010 with the biggest ratings gains in a decade, up 16 percent from the previous year.

Loved the use of humor. Clean, spare design. Was fresh and arresting (for MTV).