TV is forever young and, no matter how much those of us who’ve grown older would like it to stay the same, the tastes of youth are decidedly fickle. With its 2009 international refresh, the first-time in the network’s history that it’s brought its worldwide channels together underneath a single conceptual banner, MTV decided to make a clear statement. It’s no longer a music-video channel; rather it’s a container for all things pop culture.

From that idea came a new formula, "Pop x 1,000%", which celebrates the network’s amplification of culture, while providing a base for the eclectic set of 12 idents that accompany the rebrand. Sheffield-based Universal Everything acted as creative directors, eliciting the talent of a wide gamut of designers and studios.

The first set, which broke in July, featured work from Tronic, New York; Realise, London; Russia’s Maxim Zhestkov; and London- and Stuttgart-based Zeitguised. The second set, which launched in September, featured UK designers The Art and Tado; France’s UFO and Mathematic; and Dutch artists We Love Our Work. With such a diverse set of artists, it would seem impossible for the work to conform to an overarching visual concept, but interestingly that’s exactly what MTV wanted to avoid.

"We tried to work around the creative restrictions that a standard rebrand often imposes, like a fixed set of colors or a common creative approach for the idents, but without losing consistency," explains MTV VP of creative Roberto Bagatti. "After all, MTV started youth-oriented motion design and there have been a plethora of imitators since. A constant challenge for us remains to move things forward with an innovative break from the norm, aiming at differentiating us not only from our competitors in music channels but from all other channels and platforms." Q

www.universaleverything.com