Channel 4 is the UK’s most innovative broadcaster, but a cluttered and ever-growing social ecosystem wasn’t helping it get the recognition it deserved. So once Pentagram had developed a new masterbrand designed for stronger attribution, Stink Studios was tasked with bringing it to life across Channel 4’s social channels.
Our challenge was to deliver stronger attribution, without drowning out the content — which, in this attention-scarce environment, is what viewers are there for, after all.
We found the right solution by building from social channels up, rather than from the system down. Collaborating with 4Creative, we set out to flex 4’s spirit to the different formats and varied interaction patterns across social platforms, creating our toolkit from there.
We created a set of transitions and motion behaviours that played off horizontal and vertical scrolls. For example, when seeing it on a platform like TikTok the viewer feels like they have triggered the animation themselves.
Elsewhere, bold use of colour and simplified, elevated details across our flexible, modular system helped to make Channel 4’s content pop. The result is a design system that balances entertainment and branding, delivering on Channel 4’s Altogether Different promise.
We built a comprehensive editor's toolkit to enable in-house and external teams to work quickly across multiple platforms, while retaining alignment with our social guidelines.