Nickelodeon Undergoes On-Air Makeover

NEW YORK: Nickelodeon, which is enjoying a creative and ratings surge, has unveiled an all-new brand refresh of its on-air and online look and feel, meant to reflect the playfulness and imagination in the lives of children.

Nickelodeon’s new look, which was created with Argentina’s Superestudio, focuses on the power of imagination through a variety of kids interacting with the real world and the channel’s popular characters in surprising and surreal mixes of live-action and graphics. The rebrand includes nearly 300 deliverables, including bumpers, IDs, promo toolkits and graphic developments that will first launch across the network’s U.S. linear platform, then online, via social media and off-channel, followed by updated elements rolling out on Nickelodeon’s international feeds.

The visual narrative of Nickelodeon’s new look combines real children with 2D and 3D graphics to create imaginative reinterpretations of the channel’s properties and characters as they become real-world playgrounds for kids to bring to life, rearrange and redesign. The network’s classic orange logo is now set against an updated color palette of bright and cheerful tones that include such colors as purple, light blue, lime and cream.

“We really wanted to highlight how much surprise and fun is a part of kids’ everyday lives, so we took as our inspiration the surreal nature of GIFs, memes and emoticons and created an entire new visual vocabulary,” says Michael Waldron, the senior VP and creative director of art and design for Nickelodeon Group and Nick@Nite. “Using a mix of real kids and on-air talent, the refresh looks through the lens of how kids see things—the unpredictable, extraordinary and joyful nature of a child’s imagination. Superestudio was the right company for this refresh because they use a great mix of different techniques, and they brought a fresh viewpoint that had just the right amount of quirk and whimsy.”

“Kids are constantly exploring the world and being amazed by new knowledge and discoveries,” noted Ezequiel Rormoser, the executive and general creative director of Superestudio. “The depth to which Nickelodeon knows it audience allowed us to reach the three creative goals we set for this project—be real, be unexpected and be playful—and to create an entirely new iconography that is clearly kid-first and kid-centric.”

“We had a wonderful collaboration with the Nickelodeon team, and we’re really proud of creating something together that’s new, exciting and purely Nick,” added Rormoser. “This project with Nickelodeon bears all the hallmarks of a Superestudio project, from live-action to animation and all of our creative capabilities in between, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to have worked on such a major brand initiative with a network we love and respect.”