All about murders

Brief: Rebrand the up-and-coming podcast Crow and Tell, to All About Murder by creating a new logo, podcast template, environmental graphics, and a design for a poster for a National Geographic/ Disney Plus series based on the podcast called Secrets of the Murder: Crow Chronicles.

Tools: Photoshop and Illustrator.

The brand's old logo, provided by Matt Olin

Design decisions: The main design for the logo, and environmental graphics is a crow tesselation.

I decided on the tessellation because they're abatable and can be used across all deliverables, especially for the environmental graphics. In addition, tesselations are often popular in academics due to their association with the union of art and mathematics, they're also based on religious art. These aspects of tessellations reference both the intelligence of crows as well as their association with spirituality and religion.

The font, color, and shape language were meant to be very cute and calming. This was done to subvert the name and common perceptions of crows as edgy or dark. The colors were also meant to allude to mysticism and the cycles of the moon, which in addition to the crescent moon eyes and three crows is an allusion to The Morrigan an Irish triple Goddess associated with crows as well as Hecate a similar trinity Goddess associated with witchcraft and the moon. Both of which tie into the mythic aspects of Crows. 

Design decisions, poster: For the poster I wanted to lean into the joke of the name. Which was that the project was originally going to be a Serial-style (actual) murder podcast but this idea was pitched as a play on that. 

I did this by giving the poster a conspiratorial/mystery feel through the use of a lot of media tropes around the topic. I also did this to poke fun at National Geographics competitor the History Channel and its association with aliens and conspiracy. It also plays into the secrets aspect of the show title and the idea that crows have their own world that we only ever catch glimpses of.

The placement of crows at the top alludes to a spy or government council often shown in movies and shows. The middle crow is meant to look like someone on guard looking over their shoulder. The foreground crows were meant to resemble a back alley meeting the viewer walked in on. The foreground, middle ground, and background with a clear hierarchy were meant to reflect layers of knowledge or conspiracy. 

The digital-looking colors and collage feel were meant to reference the graphic styles of such shows and movies. Some graphic references include the sign which is collaged from cutouts to resemble the random note trope and the lights on the poles were meant to allude to UFOs and their association with conspiracy. 

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