Nickelodeon refreshes branding to put “kids first”

Children’s TV channel Nickelodeon has been given a new visual identity with the aim of putting “real kids” at the centre of the brand.

Argentina-based consultancy Superestudio has completed the rebrand alongside Nickelodeon’s in-house creative team, which features a refreshed logo, colourful graphics and photography, and a series of new bumpers – animated shorts of a channel’s logo, which appear before and after a TV show.

The colour palette for graphics has been refreshed, retaining the orange shade associated with Nickelodeon and adding five new shades of purple, yellow, beige, light green and light blue. A grey and a white shade will also be used as a secondary palette.

New “no frills, modern” sans-serif typeface Galano Grotesque is used for copy across graphics, which aims to be legible as this is “key for kids”, says Superestudio. The typeface stays consistent in size and kerning but uses colour as a point of difference to advertise different TV shows.

Bumpers include video footage of children – who were invited to the channel’s Los Angeles’ studio – interacting with the new graphics, which aims to represent a virtual “playground”, says Superestudio.

For example, a green screen was used to depict children physically moving graphics around, and running through scenes featuring the channel’s advertising pasted against sets, such as rows of school lockers.

The logo has been tweaked by changing the lighting, and making the three-dimensional effects subtler to make it “cleaner and more modern”, says Michael Waldron, senior vice president creative director of art and design at Nickelodeon. Each letterform can also be personalised with animations, to give them “individual personalities”, he says.

Waldron says the aim of the brand refresh was to make the channel appear “more real, more playful and more unexpected”. Ezequiel Rormoser, executive creative director at Superestudio adds that the filming process involved “real kids”, which aims to emphasise that Nickelodeon is a “kids-first” brand.

“What is cool about this branding is that kids can see themselves interacting with what they usually see inside a screen in an unpredictable and fun way,” he says. “This attracts their attention and helps them feel represented at the same time.”

The brand refresh took roughly nine months to complete, and starts rolling out internationally this week across online and broadcast platforms, including social media.