S'NEK: Channel Identity

The re-design of channel identity for S'NEK was one of the largest projects we worked on to date. S'NEK is a youth-oriented digital satellite channel owned and produced by Digiturk - Turkey's largest satellite TV operator.

When originally created, S'NEK image suffered from poor identity package, bad logo, and inconsistent on-air graphics, created in-house on minimal budget.

In a quest for better ratings and overall improvement of the channel, imago was commissioned to completely re-design the look and feel of S'NEK and to give it a new identity.

S'NEK Logo

Corel, Illustrator We started with the channel logo. The old one (author unknown) had several serious problems. It was very detailed (more of an illustration, rather than a logo), did not convey any message, had poor color choices and overall "cheap" feel to it.

Since the channel existed on air for several months, however, we did not want to completely break away from the current image. The new logo had to preserve the continuity in the channel ID and to build upon already established image.

Our main objective was to create a symbol which would be memorable, energetic, modern, and yet simple enough for anyone to remember and draw. Secondary concern was to allow the logo's fly image to morph into different shapes, necessary in the bumps (more below).

The final version features a tri-color (black, white and red) emblem, built from basic geometric forms and a bold logotype. While the symbol is based on round shapes, the type we picked is highly angular, strong and striking. Through the contrast between the two the logo gains internal energy and power.

Click on the thumbnails to view the larger versions of images.

S'NEK teasers

Corel, Illustrator, Photoshop, Flash, Maya, AfterEffects A week before the new identity went on-air, the teasing begun. All Digiturk channels were airing promotional videos and while the web team was redesigning the site, the web address fell under a fake hacker attack. It generated quite a bit of buzz, since people believed it actually happened for real.

The TV teasers were based around the idea of Rubik's Cube, with the colors replaced by scrambled icons of different logo symbol morphs.

In the first teaser we viewers cannot decipher the graphics. The the second one "solves" the puzzle and reveals 6 key qualities of the "new and improved" S'NEK channel.

Since all the text in the videos is in Turkish, here are the translations for all you English speaking visitors.

Teaser 1 Transcript:
The clues are everywhere, the answer is near.
Digiturk, channel 18

Teaser 2 Transcript:
Answers: Shocking, spectacular, powerful, loud, groundbreaking, entertaining.
All-new S'NEK, Digiturk, channel 18

Fun stuff: Can you spot an ASCII cow on the hacked page?

Design, 3D and web by Quba Michalski.
Music/SFX by Quba, Ferit Özgüner and Dağhan Kök.

Click on the thumbnail to view the works (QuickTime7 or higher required) or to browse the gallery of screenshots.

S'NEK Bumps and Logo Morphs

Corel, Illustrator, After Effects As mentioned earlier, one of the qualities of the new S'NEK logo was the ability to morph into a variety of symbols. These are used for various off-air promotions, and in the bumps.

The bumps are set to air before the beginning of every show and to indicate the theme of the next programming block.

Clicking the thumbnail below will allow you to browse the gallery of different morphs of the logo and to see the video with 11 bumps joined together.

Designed and animated by Quba Michalski, SFX by Quba, Ferit Özgüner and Dağhan Kök.

Click on the thumbnail to view the work (QuickTime7 or higher required) or to browse the gallery of screenshots.

S'NEK Promos and Line-Ups

Photoshop, After Effects Creating line-up and promo templates was one of the most difficult aspects of the entire project. Since S'NEK did not have software and hardware supporting complex on-air, template-based live renders, we needed to design the whole thing using After Effects.

At the time, S'NEK did not have any After Effects operators skilled enough to entrust with modifying relatively complex compositions. We had to find a solution for that.

In the end, we developed a drag-and-drop system in which the AE operator just needed to import necessary footage, type in the text in several boxes and adjust a number of sliders and the program took care of the rest. Program... that is a series of complex expression scripts reading the data from the "Edit" composition and applying necessary changes to the "Render" part of the project.

All the crucial animation elements were locked and hidden away from the operator. Once the information was typed in, text layers would adjust their content, background boxes would change the length to support that content, clocks would animate into new times...

It was much like coding the entire animation :)

All the identity elements requiring frequent changes were designed in such way - in here we present you two of them: the line-up (5-day variant) and the program promo.

Please note, that since we don't currently have any S'NEK footage on our hands, we populated the templates with our own works :)

Design, scripting and animation by Quba Michalskii.
Music/SFX by Quba, Ferit Özgüner and Dağhan Kök.

Click on the thumbnail to view the works (QuickTime7 or higher required) or to browse the gallery of screenshots.