Gretel 'unbranded' VICELAND with hard cuts and linear slides

Create a voice and design that could punctuate, counterpoint, inform and, whenever possible, step back — for a network whose content is developed, produced and promoted under one roof, so it needed no imposed super-structure to unify it.

Unbrand the network: an exposed, functional frame with no effects — motion built on two moves, hard cuts and linear slides, so content outshines brand.

Gretel built the brand from populist vernacular — 'exhibition catalog and street flyer; Craigslist and couture' — with ASCII, text-edit, HTML 1 aesthetics, no effects or techniques. Shows map to three registers (smart and curious, light and fun, deep and dangerous), the brand doubles as a service pointing viewers to events and artists, and the whole motion system compounds from hard cuts and linear slides into blinks, reveals, ripples and waves.

The system launched with VICELAND in 2016, giving every show a common frame while letting 'the personalities, content and tone of each show' come to the foreground and translate smoothly to any platform.

For the launch of VICELAND — what Stash called the most notorious and innovative youth media brand in the world — VICE creative director Spike Jonze and chief creative officer Eddy Moretti gave design studio Gretel an unusual brief: a transparent and empathetic brand that could punctuate, counterpoint, inform, and whenever possible step back, letting the full impact of the images pass through undiluted.

Because VICELAND's content is developed, produced and promoted almost entirely under one roof, the branding didn't need to impose a visual or tonal super-structure; the challenge was to craft a brand that expresses its own voice through the content. Gretel's answer was a 'null design': blunt, raw, an exposed structure free of decoration, artifice and veneer — 'equal parts exhibition catalog and street flyer; Craigslist and couture'.

The system is deliberately low-tech. Its motion is 'ASCII, text-edit, HTML 1' with no effects, built on just two core moves — hard cuts and linear slides — which compound into blinks, reveals, ripples, stretches and waves. The irony, Gretel noted, is that this analog minimalism adapts easily to any contemporary platform with the most fundamental tools.

Content falls into three registers — smart and curious, light and fun, deep and dangerous — and the brand borrows from populist design to function as a service, pointing viewers to cultural events, emerging artists and local goods. All in the interest of pointing the viewer out into the world.

Restricting the whole motion language to two moves made the brand executable by any editor in any show.

The vernacular, unstyled look matched a network whose credibility depended on never looking slick.

Typing each show into one of three registers gave the system range without chaos.

When your content already carries a strong sensibility, the strongest brand system is the one that deliberately gets out of its way.

The brand launched with the network in 2016; Stash recorded the system as 'Unmotion', a brand that moves as little as possible.