Channel 4 were launching E4 Extra, a new UK digital youth-facing sibling channel to existing channel E4. We needed E4 Extra’s channel branding (including OSP, promos and idents) to be distinctive, but still align itself with the master E4 brand. The content shown on the channel was generally going to be E4 and Channel 4 archive shows and repeats, so we needed something that would feel like it gave these older titles a new lease of life, as well as something that felt fresh enough for new commissions.

The budget was minimal, so a lot of it was created in-house along with a few outside collaborators.

To leverage our existing E4 brand, its irreverent personality and help the audience understand the “extra” idea within the channel we wanted to create something that felt familiar but even more subverted and anarchic.

So we used a base set of existing assets and reworked them with disruptive hand made graffiti to feel like E4's even cheekier sibling was literally graffitiing over the bigger, more established brand – quite literally adding something ‘extra’. The target audience is 18 to 34's, which is getting harder and harder to achieve on linear TV channels, but E4's overly outlandish and slightly subversive messaging has often helped it to cut through to this group.

The brief demanded we connect the E4 masterbrand with this new cheekier, more disruptive younger sibling and so rather than start from a clean slate we thought like a younger disruptive sibling and how they might behave. We used a chunky and loose brush script font that was used within the logo lock-up, updated the E4 OSP, and became the basis for a mark-making device that allowed us to doodle and deface existing idents, opticals and also be used in a liberal way over show footage in promos. The typeface came with a set of alternate characters so that each time we saw something writing out it felt more bespoke, whilst remaining a flexible tool to use various executions. For the idents, we worked closely with an incredible one man band animator with a very unique style. The rest of branding, OSP and social assets were designed in house.

Since rebranding in July, E4 Extra’s first three months have seen strong performance levels with YoY increases across all Dayparts programming since launch. Importantly, the work has specifically resonated with our 16-34 audience, up 2% vs. the same period in 2021, and is up 4% YoY across all individuals.