Logo For The Low : Summer Deal 

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The Movie Channel, network identifications 1988 & 1981

Not all of the branding work Fred/Alan did was visible or famous, but we weren’t any less proud of it. The 1988 assignment to redesign The Movie Channel was one of those.

Fred started his career in May 1980 at The Movie Channel, then owned by Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company (aka WASEC, the precursor to MTV Networks and Viacom), more on that below. We both left in April 1983 to start Fred/Alan, and later that year Showtime acquired The Movie Channel (whew!). A few years later, new management imported from HBO decided to put muscle behind The Movie Channel. In the meantime, Showtime had become a major Fred/Alan client and our reputation in developing brands and trademarks got us the assignment.

The Eyes Have It As he would a couple years later with HA!, Noel Frankel, our creative director, would adapt his prodigious design skills to our “changing logo” perspective and created a logo that would zero in on the soul of all people, their eyes. It was a hard sell at first –what? no cool, zapping colors like you did at MTV?– but eventually the team came aboard. Noel had succeeded in creating one of our most compelling –if not most popular– logos.

Our friends at Charlex had by then done several years of great productions for us at Nickelodeon, Myers’s Rum, and HA!, and we worked well with their emotional approach to video. Almost unique among “motion graphics” and visual effects companies, co-founder Alex Weil understood it wasn’t all about floating type. He instantly groked the eyes and worked creative magic with our team.

The Movie Channel 1981

The 1988 TMC project contrasted mightily with the first one we did for the channel back in the day. While we had already had a instinctual “yes!” about how to brand MTV, for a variety of reasons The Movie Channel initially escaped us. Though this project was started long before our MTV work, it wasn’t finished until the very last day of the year. And we didn’t know if we wanted them to be promos (with voiceover, like a short commercial) or just a tasty, fresh, appropriate visual. They turned out to be camels where they felt like “a horse created by committee.” But we were our own committee. 

We came up with “marketing propositions” (aka promises) the same as we did for MTV and eventually Nickelodeon, but the essence of the first all-movie cable channel just escaped us. We worked with one of our favorite producers, Jerry Lieberman in New York, for a friendly, fun hand drawn animation style, and great illustrators like Frank Olinsky and Susan Rivor, but... well, you can’t hit it out of the park every time.

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The Movie Channel 1988 Agency: Fred/Alan, Inc. New York  Executive creative directors: Alan Goodman & Fred Seibert  Logo design & creative director: Noel Frankel  Producer & sound design: Tom Pomposello  Production company: Charlex, New York

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Logo design by GHOST Graphics