Al Jazeera marks anniversary with rebrand

1 January 2010

The Skinny
The popular Arabian news channel, Al Jazeera Network, needed to refresh its brand image on its 13th anniversary. JL Design was called in as the rebranding consultant and proposed three main concepts: Organic, Simple, Mature.
The news opener was a key focus of the rebranding project, and it must be able to communicate the rebranding concepts well. The idea was to create an image that was unique and different from typical news channel visuals that tend to be cold and rigid.
The concept was developed by JL Design and supported by the client. The idea was applied across all of the channel's platforms to keep its consistency.
The Production
The biggest challenge was to implement the organic concept into the Al Jazeera News opener. The agency needed to establish a 'soft' visual style that was suitable for hard news.
The client requested to include the globe in the News opener. So JL Design created a design that began with multiple swirling lines to show the flow of information and a shell-like earth underneath. As the lines began forming solid rings, the shell-like earth was turning into a solid globe. Both the transformation of the earth and lines stressed the concept of organic, and the ever-changing nature of news.
In the ending shot, JL Design added undulating threads on the surface of the rings to represent the constant transmission of information. This treatment was in line with the organic concept.

The colours used were simplified from over 20 varieties to three basic ones: gold, sea blue and pearl white, each with a particular cultural bond to the Islam world. This colour palette also became the overall tone for Al Jazeera channel.
Gold was the main color in the News opener, as with Breaking News opener and Live News opener. Sea blue was the dominant color in other categories of news, such as Economy, Sports, Weather and Press News.
The Post
Houdini and Nuke were the main tools utilized in News opener. First, JL Design developed the concept and visual guideline, followed by heavy effect testings.
One of the challenges was to make lines with an organic feel. The team used Houdini Vopsop to create digital assets. This allowed the designer to manipulate the amplitude and the speed of wave with ease.
The earth was a key element in the project, and JL Design wanted to make it impressively detailed. It brought the team two challenging tasks: first, the need to create a unique lustre on a smooth surface; and second, it had to look real in close-up shots.
The solution was modeling procedurally and applying 'foreach' in Houdini. Thus, the team avoided spending time and effort adjusting the separate plates on the earth individually, instead, 'foreach' created all the bevels of every plate accordingly.
JL Design did many early tests for the texture of earth's plates and found that neither HDRI for environment map nor displacement shader worked well. So the team decided to deal with the plates using semi-transparent reflection shader, creating an animated sea on the surface of the earth with noise displacement, then placing a self-illuminating particle underneath the plates. The result was a glow from repeated reflection that looked truly distinctive. Credits
Title: Al Jazeera Channel Rebranding –
News Opener
Client: Al Jazeera Satellite Network
Design Company: JL Design
Director: JL
Creative Director: JL
Producer: Kay Jan
Project Coordinator: Shirley Yang
Head of Production: Chih Chung Tso
Designer / Animator: Carol Wu,
Utsuo Chen
3D Artist: Chih Chung Tso, Waiting Chen, Gilbert Chu