Gallery: IFC's Bold New Branding Proves Tumblr Matters as Much as TV
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The Independent Film Channel started as a showcase for auteurs, but its new corporate identity was driven by the reality that *Portlandia*, the channel's flagship program, draws bigger audiences as an embed in blog posts than on its first run broadcasts.
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Marketing executives at [IFC](http://www.ifc.com/) commissioned New York design firm [Gretel](http://gretelny.com/) to help unify the brand's look and feel across different media platforms.
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The logo remains largely unchanged from its prior incarnation and Gretel focused on establishing the fonts, colors, and visual elements that would unify, identify, and buffer the programming. The result is an identity system that mashes up retro punk rock exuberance and the modern tendency towards twee.
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Spoiler alert: this redesign codifies IFC's tagline, "Always on, Slightly Off," and defines "slightly" to mean exactly 120 degrees off the baseline.
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Crucially, the branding is meant to show up when filtered through other platforms, such as Hulu and Apple TV.
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All non-photographic imagery is rendered in black, white, and blue to establish a consistent color palette across a variety of media.
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Two fonts drive the visuals; Clan Narrow Ulta, a heavy sans serif and Prestige Elite Bold, a monospace typewriter font make the identity system feel like an upscale homage to *[Maximum Rock & Roll](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximumrocknroll)*.
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A system of badges follow the rules of designing a hipster logo to a perfectly kerned *T* while helping unify a diverse collection of content that includes offbeat original programs and basic cable classics.
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Gretel's research made it clear, if Spike is for fratboys, IFC is for fanboys, and like it or not, what started as a haven for fans of French New Wave has become the home of *Garfunkel & Oates*.
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Gretel experimented with dozens of drastically different alternatives, but during the research process found that the stakeholders—everyone from executives to on-air personalities—liked the existing logo. It wasn't a broken brand, just one that needed fleshing out.
