It Begins with a Poster: How Designers at START Present the Brand and Our Projects
This article by START’s Art Director discusses the team, the philosophy of cooperation and collaboration, and the unique nature of working with creative people.
How the Art Department at START Works and What It Does
START employs a large incorporated Art Team that covers three areas: Editorial Design, User Experience Design (UX), and Marketing Design. Each has its own team leader. Marketing Design is the largest one, as it handles everything related to the START brand and our movies and TV shows, which later goes to Editorial Design and User Experience Design Departments. In other words, this is a conceptual department that outlines all the basic design principles and design systems for all areas, including our TV channels, START AIR and START World. To talk about the START Art Team, you have to first look at the Marketing Design department.
It features three areas of focus:
Graphic Design deals with all things branding: promoting and supporting our products — from idea to implementation — developing new basic principles, etc.;
Motion Design manages everything related to animation, the whole range of tasks from presenting videos to event branding;
Advertising Department deals with the digital promotion of the products, creating advertising campaigns for all newly-launched products, from promoting TV series to making landing pages for START subscriptions and brand advertising.
Collaboration
At some point, we switched to the agency-style approach, where we assemble a group for each project, consisting of a graphics designer, an advertising designer, a motion designer, a project producer, and so on. These are working groups, involving a specialist from each area of focus. Usually, it’s those who, for whatever reason, find the project interesting or have experience with similar ones. Some people may like comedy, while some love drama. Or it’s just a matter of skills and experience. Groups are put together according to each designer’s aptitude for a particular style, with a lead designer assigned to oversee how the process works. We have 5 motion designers and 8 graphic designers, so usually, everyone gets to work on a project with one another over the course of a year. Somewhere along the line, we became one big organism that morphs into a specific group for each project. This is done so that folks don’t get too focused on their primary field. As an example, this hierarchy allows, say, the graphic designer to understand how the static images they made work with animation. They share their experience with each other, learn and master certain techniques and elements, and become experts in related fields. And being a designer that understands all the process logic is just the coolest thing ever. This helps establish good working relationships and friendships, where everybody gets along and displays initiative. Thanks to such a hierarchy, a motion designer, who doesn’t originally design posters, can suggest an idea for a poster simply because they are a part of that creative group. Our brainstorming sessions tend to produce some amazing ideas that come from unexpected directions. We have had numerous cases where a suggestion for the logo animation has generated a new idea or even boosted the whole project’s style, influencing how the poster looks in the end. That’s not how it’s usually done in the industry, but it inspires us to create. The folks all understand that they are a part of the grander project and that they can influence not only what is in their area of responsibility but so much more. Consequently, their commitment and engagement in the project grow. They become more proactive and want everything — from invitations to screenings right down to some little 200x200 px banner — to be perfect and consistent with the way they see the project.
Assembling a Team and Working on a Project
When a project reaches us first, when only the script is written, we sit down to read it episode by episode. We try to figure out what visuals to use as early as this stage. The production working group is put together, featuring a creative producer and an executive producer who handle the global marketing of the TV show. Then the creative team of designers is assembled to fit them. We get marketing input data from the executive or creative producer — these things are important for visualization. For example, the target audience and age — e.g., families, men, or women — just some basic things we can figure out how to highlight. Take, for example, The Vampires of Midland: there is a large cast, the main character, and it’s a story of vampires who live in the Russian midland. These are the premises upon which we base our future work. So, we assemble a creative team of designers: a motion, two graphic designers (one of them a senior designer), and a digital designer who makes banners, and we start getting creative. I’m putting together a big brief, writing down the way I would visualize the project in terms of mood, whether it’s a comedy project or a drama, which posters and other projects can be used as references. When we launched The Vampires of Midland, some of the references used were from What We Do in the Shadows by FX, because they are so similar in mood. We look at the brief and start thinking about the visuals and what they might look like. This is very important here, as we’re trying to look at the bigger picture, the presentation of the entire TV show across all media. This presentation can become the foundation for anything: banners, outdoor ads, themed events, and partnered promotions. It is a 360-marketing solution that will go well with all things, we do it all in-house. We’re brainstorming, and the folks are doing a big presentation for the areas of focus. This could include sketches, references, or just some rough drafts and even suggestions like “Let’s do an animation.” Circling back to the same Vampires, when we were working with S01, we shot some short videos of the main characters and used them to make outdoor ads. We split things up by concepts and let the folks present their vision of it. For me, it’s very important to give them an opportunity to learn how the presentation process works so that they could better “sell” their project. It’s vital that they believe in what they’re doing. We review it all, figure out what visual aspects might perform well, make some adjustments, and then take this presentation to our showrunners or general producers, aka the people who launch the project. We present them with the concepts, the promotional producers are in charge of marketing and promotion, while we ourselves deal with the visuals. We explain how it’s going to look and show them sketches and whatnot. If all is well, we will arrange a photo shoot. The Executive Producer and the Project Designer pick the photographer, stylist, and props, coordinate how everything is going to look, and then oversee the entire process: renting the room, reviewing the color scheme, the lighting plan. Shooting usually takes a couple of days, and we make the whole lot of necessary materials, including backstage interviews to share on social media and so on. The designers personally work with the actors, interacting and trying to capture the right emotion for the poster. After the photo shoot is complete, we make the final posters and send them to be approved by the management. If the producers approve everything, we get the final versions and head for the more interesting parts: getting the actors to approve too. A lot of unexpected things might happen. If they don’t like how their face looks in a particular photograph, we take the head from another picture. All within reason, of course. We make sure that these things do not affect the final design and look great. And after the final OK from the actors, the visual ad campaign is developed, taking the posters as the foundation. The Digital Advertising folks develop it into a 360-marketing for the whole campaign: banners, outdoor ads, and many more. They do a lot of things. Sometimes, our ad campaigns span up to 300 different media. We do it all in-house, even the layouts. Using the poster, motion designers create moving graphics for the videos. The ads then go where they belong: TV, social media, and more. Social media promotions are also done by building upon the posters, including partner placements. As part of The Vampires of Midland 2 release, we had a joint promotion with the fast food restaurant chain Dodo Pizza, including a branded menu, gifts, and so on. This year, Ozon e-commerce platform sold Vampire-styled cakes, with designs made by us. This means that the people who made the poster also made sketches for the cakes, as this is another option for the visual promotion of a movie or TV show. Our hands touch everything, even if we didn’t make it ourselves. As brand keepers, we have to make sure that things are consistent with the brand strategy.
That’s the process for each new series or a new season. The Art Department usually has three such launches going at the same time: one big flagship series, and two smaller ones. Three separate groups of designers run them, although the groups may overlap in some places. Three is the minimum, sometimes we have more. Right now, for example, we have “To Live a Life,” “Cat,” and “Prestige” in development. So these are three big TV shows that our folks are now developing the visual presentation for. Then it all trickles down to the rest of the company. The editors take the posters and post them on the platform, then they do various manipulations with them: say, rearranging them in different ways to suit the users. UX Designers, who deal with the way the user interface looks and functions, also get the posters and use them in promotional tools: pop-up ads, splash screens for TV, Smart TV app elements, and other various methods of encouraging users to watch the show or movie, including methods native to devices themselves. A poster may seem simple, but it does a lot of the heavy lifting and helps generate other materials. It is where all things start.
There was a funny incident. We’ve released the poster for the S02 of Russian Affairs. A year later, we discovered that we were 100% copied by some Turkish TV series. We even thought about trying to sue for copyright infringement, but we were so flattered that we decided to do nothing. If they look up to us and copy some things then that’s great — it means we did everything right. Same thing for our local market. Four years ago, when we first started making posters, it was obvious that nobody really cared about them as much as we did. There just wasn’t as much attention given to them as it is now. We were among the first to use fashion photographers for our shoots. I thought to myself, “Why can’t we have professional photo shoots to make our posters, just as these glossy magazines do?”
This changed the approach to making posters a lot and greatly improved their quality. And that’s what everyone is doing these days. Our team certainly contributed some things to the industry, and that’s great. Now the industry is very mature, and many online streaming services also produce high-quality movies and TV shows. That is also a great thing because it encourages us to do even better. Folks from other streaming services often compliment us for launching great ad campaigns. It’s nice that colleagues are following and feel comfortable saying that they like some of the things we made.
Another workstream is all about promoting the START brand. We do everything for the brand: advertising, merchandise, gifts, and events. Anything you can think of in terms of marketing is done by the same people who make the posters. That is, a designer can take part in a dedicated project (TV show launch) and at the same time do tasks to promote the brand. Each person on the team has roughly the same daily workflow, doing project tasks and some day-to-day stuff. Some have more of this, some have more of that and it changes a lot. Some may have a very hectic project launch, and then they just do branding all the time to kick back and relax a little bit. But the work rhythm goes something like this: launch, day-to-day stuff, launch, day-to-day stuff. This is on purpose, so that people have time to rest after a launch, because launches are always exhausting, both physically and mentally: you have to keep a lot of things in mind, and you have to be in tip-top shape to do them.
Rebranding, the Brand Book and Its Future Life
When I came to START, the branding was different, and we realized very quickly that it was time for a change, for many reasons. The company grew a lot, becoming an umbrella brand with different businesses under its wing, which required a different presentation. Thus, we quickly rebranded. And, as it turns out, changing the presentation for a big service with lots of communications is rather difficult. We did that 3 years ago with the help of two agencies: we developed a brand book and a new logo together with Ony, while Signal handled the strategy. Since then, the brand book has changed a lot. Media business, in general, is really peculiar because our marketing changes very quickly, the input data and the world change very quickly, and there are various nuances to consider, so we try to quickly navigate the twists and turns, figuring out which things work right now, and which don’t.
Very often there are some basic things in the brand book, but we must keep in mind that it is not set in stone. To stay relevant and efficient, we should focus on the tasks and conditions that we have now. So, while we stay within the basic limits developed 3 years ago, of course, we have developed twice the amount of things to consider throughout our tenure. However, these things live in people’s heads, they are unwritten. This allows us to stay flexible and change at a moment’s notice. We cannot afford to be conservative and live solely by the rules of the brand book. Therefore, our brand book only outlines the most basic necessities: color, font, and brand positioning. Questions, tasks, and fantasies come afterward.
Any Rule Codes for START-Associated Design Materials?
There are no formal documents. When the team is doing well and working as it should — i.e., everyone is in a single information bubble and everybody knows what they’re doing — these things need no regulation. Everyone perfectly understands what the brand design should be, what its positioning is, what it stands for, and what things are allowed. For example, we have an unspoken ban on purple, because it is the color of one of our competitors: no comments needed, I suppose? No designer will offer me anything with purple in it. All I had to do was say one time, “Hey folks, our competitors have their own brand colors, so we should have no overlaps with them.” And now we don’t overlap. There were no meeting protocols or design documents, because our people feel the brand, and it comes from experience. They gather things that can or cannot happen and we discuss them later. Generally, that’s how it works, no need for establishing it in some kind of document. Everyone already knows everything.
How Do You Manage a Team of Creative Individuals When You’re Just As Creative?
Since I have the same kind of skills and expertise as them, I have a very clear understanding of how the work is done from a technical point of view. I had a much easier time establishing the structure and hierarchy, knowing precisely how long everything takes, and why it’s done this way and not that way. So, you can’t just come up to me and say, “This task takes 5 hours” because I know for a fact that it only takes an hour. But naturally, a creative team is a creative team, and, since I am also a part of it, I understand how to communicate with creative people, what difficulties there may be, and what’s the best time to ask a person for something or help them somehow, say, by providing references. To deal with creative block, I usually recommend watching a movie that has some beautiful shots or unorthodox visual choices. I don’t want to just rate their work as beautiful or ugly, I want to support the folks and encourage them so that they know for sure — their leader is a mentor who can help them out if necessary. There are, however, different situations coming from the outside and some may be unpleasant. Creative people are prone to reflecting on all things or taking what’s going on outside too close to heart, things that we can’t influence. I try to be empathetic to it. Rainy days might not be the best time for creative work, I get it. That’s an exaggeration, of course! But sometimes things happen, and doing a poor job is not always worthy of criticism, it’s just that there are nuances to it. That’s when we switch to routine stuff, postponing the creative things until tomorrow if possible. Then we’ll have some kind of work meeting, and get together to watch a movie and brainstorm on what the designs could look like. I’m always looking for some references to give to the folks, to encourage them by example, or show what other creative people are doing. Otherwise, unfortunately, things tend to become routine, where even creative work becomes a chore. And chore-like work gives you tunnel vision. You start thinking about how to get from point A to point B, instead of going “What if I did that?” And I really wish designers would ask this question more frequently.
