Sky History

How do you bring together two amazing global brands and make them even better? Originally designed by DixonBaxi, History and H2 are flagship channels for A+E networks around the world– and the challenge was to now make them a member of the Sky factual channel family. Our design solution was to take all the best parts from history and integrate them seamlessly into the Sky brand. Logos retained the core history properties – the gold H and black and white looks – whilst adopting the latest Sky design architecture.

Fortunately, we had the in-house benefit of having designer Dave Storr who could utilise his unique experience of working at both A+E and Sky who introduced the red timeline as the key to building the brand. We commissioned a new typeface; Sky Ultracondensed to replace the existing Tungsten font, as well as redesigning and reformatting the entire OSP build. Sam Harvey came up with brilliant concepts for rebuilding History’s second channel, H2, and we settled on a design mechanic of sliding plates of information which line up, lock into place, and split to reveal information.

Timelines and signoffs were tight, and we worked very closely with A+E’s creative team to share work and ideas.  The result of all the hard work is that History channel audiences in the UK are already up 35% this year and we’re hoping the new look will help bring an even higher audience share.