Channel 4 Rebrand

The streaming industry has changed how we consume entertainment in the form of video. With companies like Netflix, Apple and Amazon Prime delivering content digitally it was important for Channel 4 to embrace streaming as the future of TV. Up to now, Channel 4’s strategy has been about delivering content primarily through broadcast with All4 acting as a secondary channel. But having a range of channel sub-brands was confusing for audiences so it was decided to reunite Channel 4 under one Masterbrand.

Pentagram was hired to create a new master brand bringing all of Channel 4’s brands, content and streaming together. The job of realising how that brand would be applied to the range of digital products fell at the feet of the in-house UX design team.

There were various aspects of the new brand to be explored. One of first to tackle was the concept of 4, the traveller.

In the new Masterbrand 4 leads you through a universe of content (for more background on the brand check out Pentagram’s case study here). Right from app launch 4 leads the user into Home guiding them to a universe of curated content.

The Vertical Hero

One differentiating concept we came up with for mobile is the idea of a Hero carousel that travels vertically instead of Horizontally. Not only does this lean into a brand principle of being different it also has a strong rationale based on data showing a dropoff in engagement when using horizontal carousels.

A single-column approach

Looking at streaming apps across the board you will see one undeniable commonality. All streaming apps are walls of horizontal carousels. Apart from this increasing cognitive load it also adds the stress of too much choice, something that many people we have interviewed have complained about. For the future of Channel 4 streaming we wanted to think about this differently. Here we posit the idea that a single-column layout could reduce cognitive load. Interestingly this approach has a couple of potential added benefits such as increasing engagement and being more accessible (A11y).

Putting video at the heart of the experience

A common insight from research is that video trailers increase engagement and help decision-making so It makes sense to add trailers to the app wherever we can. In the current design, there are only a few places we could do this but if we increased image size we could easily add video trailers into the browsing experience pretty much anywhere. It’s often important to look at experiences out of the industry you are working in (called out-of-category research). Social media apps were an interesting place to explore as they use video in a single-column feed design. Could this same approach work for a streaming app?

From browsing to watching

As previously mentioned, the new brand has the concept of 4 travelling through a universe of content and between worlds. The visual expression of world travelling is something you’ll see in everything from the OSPs (On Screen Presentations) to the poster campaigns but how could world travelling be expressed in the apps? The key difference for us is that our channel is interactive so we wanted to apply the brand without taking away control, in fact, we wanted to lean into that and so explored how we could use motion to reflect world travelling within the app experience.

The playback experience

Of all the places where the brand could show up, an obvious place was at the various touchpoints in the playback experience. For Channel 4 there are two places the brand could appear. While watching an episode and at the end of playback when an episode has finished.

At any point, playback can be paused giving users access to other episodes and content. Here we could augment the current experience with a fluid interaction. with a simple swipe, users can access episodes and pause playback. This was also an opportunity to reinforce the gradient world analogy showing off the fact that shows are worlds within the 4 universe.

Unsurprisingly people have different watch habits. Some people like to binge entire seasons while others like to switch it up. We already have the feature in the app where the next episode will autoplay as well as users have the ability to switch shows. We thought it was a great opportunity for the brand to show up in the experience. Not only that, it would be a great place to align channels. Here you see a trailer playing from broadcast with it’s own brand treatment living happily inside of the app.

Iconography

Icons play a crucial role in app design and in the Masterbrand we have both icons and 4moji. Icons are there for signposting whereas 4moji’s job is to augment tone of voice. Both are derived from the same icon design principles and so have a shared language. They can of course be used statically but we also wanted them to have personality through animation.

Tab bar icons play a crucial role in navigation but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t have a bit of fun and inject what we call 4ness (the word we use for brand personality) into it. So why not have a bit of fun and add some here. Channel 4 is after all a quirky and altogether different brand to other streaming providers.

Channel 4 is an important brand and a British institution. It’s a brand that’s not afraid to have a point of view and make a stand. It represents the British public in all their diversity and messyness and its in this that the brand needs to shine through, not only in its content but its product experience.

Channel 4 will continue to champion accessibility and will stay core to its values as the alternative choice to the main streaming players, making change through entertainment, being off the wall, quirky and altogether different.