MTV is turning Itself into a residing GIF

for decades, MTV electrified the frontal lobes of bored youngsters, with most effective VH1 to compete with. however now it is 2015. MTV is not only competing with different television channels; it’s competing with Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, and extra flash-in-the-pan social networks too a lot of to count.

So how does MTV stay recent to an target market raised in the GIF-age? It turns into a living GIF itself. earlier this month, MTV world—which spans greater than a hundred and sixty countries, 32 languages, and 785 million households—rebranded itself. What as soon as used to be “i need My MTV” has turn out to be “i’m My MTV.”

it’s a fitting tagline. MTV’s new bumpers are stuffed with grinding Sims, vector cats in shades, rainbow unicorns, and extra. the whole rebrand seems find it irresistible tapped in an instant into the millennial identity, which is, at the finish of the day, MTV’s core consumer.

The rebrand is the brainchild of a small team of creatives at MTV world together with Sean Saylor, MTV world’s creative vp. primarily based out of Miami, Saylor calls the aesthetic “online, on-air” and the intention is to offer MTV’s many satellites and companions a type of dynamic visible language with which to model themselves—one that is every bit as vivid and alive as the net. If most firms’ branding manuals are handled like bibles, MTV’s is like an emoji app: a continuously updated digital sticker book full of fun visible components that may be mixed and matched any manner a local market would possibly need, but remain constant across the whole MTV model.

“One factor we wished to make sure about this rebrand used to be that it didn’t stick to at least one specific, static aesthetic,” Saylor tells me. “We needed it to constantly be evolving and iterating, just like the internet.”

The rebrand is ready evolving with MTV’s demographic. The last MTV world rebrand was once in 2008, and it largely devoted itself to uniting each MTV affiliate around a standard feel and look. Butthat effort primarily iced up each and every person station’s branding in time: you could not exchange one channel with out altering all of them. “We felt it used to be simply too structured in the best way it worked, which led to it to impulsively lose its authenticity,” Saylor says. “For this one, we wished to ensure that all the elements can be constantly saved contemporary.”

The MTV world rebrand is available in three components. the primary is a collection of bumpers—brief transitional segments as much as 15 seconds in length between programs and commercials used to model the station—by way of outstanding internet artists like Katie Torn and Johnny Woods. (MTV is going out of its strategy to court web skill. that you may learn more about that right here.

And when all else fails, MTV world has given its community operators the power to create meme-beneficial bumpers simply by using dragging and losing. using an app, MTV’s producers can combine elements like backgrounds, emojis, animated characters called invaders, and music to create fresh—however still consistently branded—bumpers. for instance, a producer in Brazil may pull in a Vine from Rio de Janeiro, then slap it on a smartphone held with the aid of a holographic cat, whereas a producer in Japan would possibly grab an Instagram from Tokyo and mission it on the reveal of an arcade console with a naked inexperienced man grinding in front of it. And because the elements can also be elevated over time, MTV hopes it’s going to be capable to preserve up with the web.

“no matter the place on this planet you are, we would like MTV to feel like a televised GIF,” Saylor says. “the best way audiences devour media these days, it’s disposable. They see something on fb or Tumblr, then transfer on to the following thing. to keep up, MTV has to feel as direct and unpredictable and completely new as a recent GIF for your feed, every single time.”

of course, it is one factor to channel the classy and spirit of the online, and moderately another to compete with it. Can MTV global really compete with a digital frontier that now not only comes up with new GIFs day by day, but runs them throughout the unconscious of hallucinating AIs?

you can learn extra about MTV world’s new rebrand here.