Astro

The first step was to develop a fresh proposition for Astro that properly reflected its new reality, and which would become the foundation for all brand and product communications going forward.

As the dominant force in satellite pay-TV for decades, consumers’ perception lagged the reality of how Astro was ramping up its original programming, streaming services and customer experience.

We developed the proposition and supporting brand manifesto ‘DISCOVER AMAZING’ to reflect the quality and surprising diversity of Astro’s content and to encourage reappraisal among consumers.

The Astro logotype is a fundamental building block and signpost of the brand, working across everything from corporate and brand communications to product and channel architecture and on-screen “bugs” (digital on-screen graphics.

Recognition levels of the existing Astro logo are so high, that radical changes to it were not advisable, but we introduced several technical and typographic enhancements that made it stronger as a symbol in its own right, and a more compact, distinct usable and element to work across Astros’ increasingly diverse product and channel ecosystem.

To support the new logo, we introduced a new visual system built around a fresh, dynamic interpretation of Astro’s distinctive ‘Qi’ wave device.

By introducing more elegant detailing and a variety of gradated colour options, combined with a modular system allowing the ‘wave’ to be used in a variety of treatments, orientations and formats, we created a system that can be used flexible across all corporate and brand platforms. The introduction of this system was a further step in associating Astro more strongly with its content and products and asserting its digital streaming credentials.

Astro has a host of other corporate brands, digital content brands and apps that had evolved over time with limited systemisation.

Aligning with the principle of creating more consistency across this suite of brands and more powerfully driving the connection to the Astro Masterbrand, we developed a more systemised approach across the board for arrangement, typography and colour strategy. The result was a much clearer and more harmonised visual architecture in which even ‘standalone’ digital content brands could be connected to the Astro parent.

For many years, the dozens of channels across categories such as Sports, News, Malay, Chinese and Indian content had employed their own colour and typographic interpretations of the channel logo.

Over time, this created an overly complex visual architecture which became increasingly challenging to maintain and which – crucially – was underplaying Astro’s role in bringing this rich and diverse content together under one platform.

Our detailed design exploration determined that the best way forward was to introduce a standardised visual system anchored by Astro’s distinctive magenta identity and introducing a new font. This system was rolled out first to the Sports channels before being extended across the entire suite of Astro channels.
For many years, the dozens of channels across categories such as Sports, News, Malay, Chinese and Indian content had employed their own colour and typographic interpretations of the channel logo. Over time, this created an overly complex visual architecture which became increasingly challenging to maintain and which – crucially – was underplaying Astro’s role in bringing this rich and diverse content together under one platform.

Our detailed design exploration determined that the best way forward was to introduce a standardised visual system anchored by Astro’s distinctive magenta identity and introducing a new font. This system was rolled out first to the Sports channels before being extended across the entire suite of Astro channels.