Ever since a Warhol-esque astronaut first planted a flag sporting Frank Olinsky and Manhattan Design's infamous logo onto the lunar landscape in 1981, Music Television has effectively emblazoned its "anything and everything goes" visual manifesto onto its broadcast IDs.

With a global creative pool that draws from in-house resources, and established and up-and-coming houses as well as design schools and universities, there's no shortage of talent for MTV's 109 channels to choose from - talent that, in many cases, has been influenced and nurtured by MTV's assorted design experiments.

"I remember, as a young teenager, looking at all these weird stop-motion breakers and video collages that they showed randomly in between the programming on MTV Europe," recalls Anders Schroder, design director at Transistor Studios' LA office, whose title sequence and teasers for MTV Europe's Isle of MTV have garnered much buzz amongst viewers and peers. "I remember thinking back then 'I want to do that one day'."

While many of the big names pop up on a recurring basis for different projects, there is an international emphasis on variety and in bringing in fresh blood, especially for the branding of new shows.

Amsterdam-based Post Panic counts MTV Netherlands as a regular client, and has most recently completed a suitably sharp package for a new reality series, Road Rally, in which two European bands traverse across the US with vans full of instruments and camera crews capturing every rock 'n' roll misadventure.

While Post Panic CD Mischa Rozema says MTV's budgets aren't going to make anyone rich, he welcomes the "little adventures". "I describe them as 'vinger-oefening' which translated from Dutch means 'finger practice'."

Ryan Honey, CD/principal at LA design house Buck, concurs that while budgets for their recent MTV jobs (the latest open for TRL and the open and category animations for the 2005 MTV Movie Awards) weren't huge, "We don't do the jobs for the money. We choose them for cachet, and also to get the people here excited."

Cincinnati's Lightborne has been tagged by MTV US for a variety of jobs - ranging from the open for Making The Band 3, to the one-minute short ,i>Graffiti Ghost, in which Lightborne director/designer Chris Gliebe creates a graffiti piece via stop-motion digital stills and video, and the Beautiful Ugly series - three spots for MTV2's recent re-branding that transform the basest bodily functions ("Poo", "Puke" and "Piss") into day-glo works of art. Not exactly the sort of stuff every network is keen to air but MTV didn't bat an eye at the prospect of using an excreting dog (a boxer named Annie) to promote a channel.

"MTV is looking to push the stylistic envelope to keep the network fresh," offers Lightborne director/designer Tuesday McGowan, who says the brand's tendency to take risks "should be held as an example for other clients and agencies to see the payoff and how to expand on the artistic parameters of their project."

Still, while Cristián Jofré, SVP and creative director for MTV Networks International, says envelope-pushing is an integral part of the brand's design and graphics approach, MTV is careful not to present design houses with empty briefs.

"There's a huge difference between giving people freedom to work on things and creating an anarchic environment," he says. "When you know what you're doing, it's much easier to go crazy with it."

Jofré says the brand sees the value in respecting the creative process and each team's approach to it. "Most of the people that commission stuff at MTV are designers, so it's much easier to talk creative to creative. I think as soon as design shops or advertising agencies perceive you as a 'client', the whole relationship changes."

"[MTV is] immersed in great content and ideas all the time so we think that also pushes them into the realm of the untried and unseen," offers Lightborne's McGowan. "They feel like if they aren't creating something new, then who really will?"

RECENT HITS

ROAD RALLY>MTV NETHERLANDS
DESIGN COMPANY: POST PANIC, AMSTERDAM
Grimed-up 3D cars and vans skid across 2D environments, culled from photos and archival snaps of LA and NYC. The end result, married to a Hives track, is a short shock of visual adrenaline.

ISLE OF MTV TITLE SEQUENCE>MTV NETWORKS EUROPE
DESIGN COMPANY: TRANSISTOR STUDIOS
Designer/director Anders Schroder, along with the animation magicians at The Mill London, brought to life a UFO (dubbed "The Thing" by Schroder) built out of a carousel, assorted engine parts and semi-truck bits. "If it was cool we added it - no tedious approval rounds," says Schroder.

2005 MTV MOVIE AWARDS>MTV US
DESIGN COMPANY: BUCK
LA's Buck pulled out all the stops for this show open, with a high-speed chase between a commandeered golf cart and a police car coursing through a gaggle of movie sets ("Paramount on acid," says Buck CD Orion Tait).

BEAUTIFUL UGLY SERIES>MTV 2
DESIGN COMPANY: LIGHTBORNE
"MTV said 'You can do anything you want and it can be from five seconds to two minutes long'," says Lightborne designer/director Chris Gliebe of this trio of bodily function-based promos. "Getting the rainbow vomit right was actually quite difficult."

MTV Networks International> www.mtvne.com
Buck> www.buckla.com
Transistor Studios> www.transistorstudios.com
Post Panic> www.postpanic.nl
Lightborne> www.lightborne.com