Branding company Bruce Dunlop & Associates (BD&A) has won a multimillion pound contract to design the on-air look of Rupert Murdoch's new Sky satellite platform in Italy, writes Will Strauss.
BD&A will be responsible for design and promo work across all Sky Italy's channels, including News, Movies, Sports and Box Office, incorporating a logo designed by Venture 3. The company will work on logo development, channel idents, on-air strategy and promotions plus studio set design in readiness for the platform's summer launch. It will also design the look of the electronic programme guide.
Although the original contract was awarded to the company before Christmas last year, nothing was finalised until last week when the merger of Stream and Telepiu - which forms the new Sky set-up - was given the greenlight by Italian authorities. Work has already begun on what the company is calling a massive project and more than half of the company's design staff and a third of the company's promo staff have been detailed to the job. BD&A employs approximately 65 staff worldwide.
Discussing the deal exclusively with Broadcast, founder Bruce Dunlop said he believed that the on-air design for Sky could change the way all Italian TV looks and feels. "When we were preparing for the design work we looked at other Italian brands like Ferrari and Prada and these looked fantastic," said Dunlop. "But Italian TV branding is a bit dodgy. It looks like it's just fallen together. We will give Sky a very coherent brand across all its channels and if it works anything like the UK, then Sky has the chance to set the pace in Italy in the same way that Sky has here."
Sky, the only digital satellite platform in Italy, will launch this summer.
BD&A is also responsible for channel branding on the Hallmark Channel, the Paramount comedy channel, TV3 in New Zealand and a host of other global channels and stations.
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