Objectives

The all-new Crave combines the former CraveTV with The Movie Network. Our objective was to reinvent Crave as a ubiquitous, Canadian brand that can compete with major international streaming services. We set out to switch the perception of Crave from a value-based service to a premium industry leader by rebranding and re-launching an improved product. Keeping our users in mind, we aimed to create an intuitive digital experience by enhancing usability and rethinking the way our product works. We improved user interactions by restructuring our information architecture and upgrading the user interface. With this updated experience we attracted many new subscribers while also retaining our current base, with a focus on exponentially increasing our direct to consumer subscribers by 2020. With the brand refresh, we wanted to build awareness and spark interest in the all-new Crave. The rebrand is a direct reflection of the elevated, premium, personalized experience we created with the product. Crave is now a flexible brand that can accommodate a breadth of applications across many mediums.

Logo design

For the new Crave logo we created a custom wordmark that is bold, iconic and positions the brand as Canada's premium online streaming experience and cable channel. Crave houses the best series from; HBO, Showtime and Starz, as well as Hollywood's biggest hit movies. We focused on creating a bold wordmark that reflects our premium content and improved experience. The juxtaposition between the sharp edges and round corners create a refined yet approachable feel. The unicase letters derive from the shapes found in the letter C. The repetition of these core shapes creates a unified and balanced logo.

The concept behind the brand derives from the idea of depth and expansion. Depth speaks to the breadth of our content while expansion conveys that we are always evolving as a product and service.

Line Break

The main trait of our visual language is the line, representative of a storyline. By multiplying the line; it speaks to Crave expanding its offerings beyond shows; to movies, and new features. By breaking the lines, it represents the moment the audience is hit with a momentous scene. Depth and expansion are also achieved by breaking the lines. The breaks create the illusion of volume through the positive and negative space while keeping a flat aesthetic. The lines serve as a flexible toolkit that can be used as a grid for compositions, containers for housing content and transitional elements in motion.

Our monochromatic blue colour scheme is a fundamental attribute to our visual language as it speaks to the idea of being captivated and is a nod to our core concept of depth. The blue duotones allow the content to be represented through the lens of our brand. Hints of coral are used to bring contrast and excitement while the clean, minimalistic typography adds to the premium feel of the brand.

Weekly Newsletters

Crave- BRanDING

With the successful launch of a reinvigorated brand, improved customer experience and product offering, we were able to position Crave as Canada’s premium online streaming service. For the first time ever, current HBO series are available online to stream direct to consumer to all Canadians through their Crave subscription. With the incorporation of premium content like Game of Thrones, we saw a spike in subscriptions and broke records for concurrent streaming during the final season. Crave is Canada’s only home-grown, major streaming platform that competes with other major international streaming services. Since launch in November 2018, we’ve seen a massive increase in subscribers, reaching 2.3 million in Q4 of 2018, growing steadily ever since. We were also able to successfully migrate users from the previous TMNGO and CraveTV apps, to one consolidated, ubiquitous product. This not only improved the experience of our users but also helped us streamline our in-house production workload. Since launch we’ve also now partnered with STARZ out of the US to offer yet another option for users to enhance their Crave experience.

HONORS & AWARDS

• Award of Excellence, RGD's 2019 In-House Design Awards: Crave launch. October 2019

• Gold-W3 Award, Crave, Website - Visual Design-Aesthetics: Crave Website. October 2019

• Silver-W3 Award, Crave, Website - Television Category: Crave Website. October 2019

• Gold - Promax Award, North America, Logo Design: Crave Logo Redesign. June 2019

• Gold- Promax Award, North America, Cable/Online Platformds/satellite: Brand Image Promo or Campaign: Crave Relaunch. June 2019

• Silver - Promax Award, Global Exellence, Logo Design: Crave Logo Redesign. June 2019

• Silver - Promax Award, North America, Art Direction & Design, Multimedia Channel Image: Crave - The All-New Crave. June 2019

• Bell Media Excellence Award- Bell Media’s highest distinction for the work done on Crave.

CREDIT 

Creative Director, Product design and Brand: Ronald Ruiz

Creative Director, Design and Motion:
Mike Stanley

Branding: Ronald Ruiz, Nensi Gjoca

Logo Design: Ronald Ruiz

Designers: Nensi Gjoca, Mateen Dar, Aaron Thadathil, Niko Papadimitriou, Patience Lair, Ameesha Earnshaw

Motion Graphics: Nicco Miranda, Ameesha Earnshaw, Maryam Mahdawiyan, Travis Laidlaw, Jason Allies

Sr. Digital Product Owner: Lisa Collings
Digital Product Owner: Alessandra Willsher

Associate Director, Distribution Services: Tanuka Roy

UI Designer: Mateen Dar, Aaron Thadathil, Ritesh Sethia, Ronald Robataille, Marie-Anne Dube

UX Designer: Ioana Contu

Lead Developer: Kevin Davis, Dave Maddock, Jodi Goddard

Developer: Kevin Davis, Dave Maddock, Jodi Goddard, Srilakshmi Shenoy, Philippe Prevost, Yiyi Liu, Philippe Marcelin, Charles-Antoine Chartrand, Stephen Hobson, Ubaldo Oloyola, Anis Laouni, Devendra Patel, Michael Polyakov, Divya Gupta, Tony Lin, Sergiy Vasylyev, Conor Masterson, Santhosh Gutta