Flash Creative Direction

Project completed
In house, Streamotion/Foxtel Group.

Role
Design, Design Direction

THE BRAND

The concept behind Flash was to unite diverse sources, perspectives, and opinions in one place, allowing users to quickly catch up on conversations before joining in themselves.

The logo we received references ‘breaking news’ graphics from broadcast media, while incorporating subtle serif indentations in the typeface as a thoughtful nod to newspaper heritage.

SUB BRANDS

The product needed marketable features for launch, so we explored how to brand some of these features as natural extensions of the Flash logo.

I briefed our team to leverage the existing logo’s sense of direction and movement while incorporating elements of the ‘newsroom’ concept. This sub-branding needed to function effectively in marketing materials but also within the product itself to merchandise the platform’s content.

PRODUCT TYPEFACE

Wanting to capture the heritage of news I proposed the use of a serif typeface for headings. I felt whilst the format users were to consume news was different, it felt right to bring some familiarity and credibility whilst feeling modern and vibrant.

Typeface options needed a similar x-height and line height to Gibson (used in previous products) to minimise development impact and retain character count rules.

I recommended Tisa Pro and Museo Slab.

VISUAL DIRECTION

LAYERING WITH DIAGONALS
My brief for branded product assets focused on incorporating movement by building on diagonal elements from the Flash logo while exploring layering techniques to create depth.

I suggested examining extreme crops of the logo to uncover interesting patterns within its structure.

Early exploration produced some striking geometric patterns, which led me to request the addition of light streaks and the incorporation of frosted/blurred panels.

We added in some brand accents to channel tiles and active states.

ICONS
Next, we tackled icons. I had briefed an external illustrator to design some forms that would complement our news category.

The forms needed to be simple and easy to understand. Initially we disregarded styling, but found it difficult to gather meaningful feedback on the iconography alone. After experimenting with some styles, we brought the task in-house and ultimately settled on simple line art with applied gradients to suggest light interaction and dimension.

PRODUCT BRAND GUIDELINES

The product had been in market for less than a year when my team noticed the brand ecosystem becoming increasingly fragmented. Across editorial, social, product, and media channels, each team seemed to be developing their own interpretation of the brand. After investigating further, I discovered that no formal brand guidelines existed, and teams were simply using the launch campaign as a reference point for brand decisions.

The Flash team was particularly challenged, having neither an agency partner to guide them nor any designers within their own team structure.

In response, we developed comprehensive product brand guidelines that established basic principles for logo usage and brand colors, while also demonstrating how these elements translated into the product experience. This empowered the Flash team to better direct their external creative and ensure stronger alignment with the platform’s established visual style.