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The E.W. Scripps Company kicked off the new year by relaunching its news brand Newsy as Scripps News. With that, came a fresh look for the news network from creative agency Elevation.
Since Newsy’s debut in 2008, it has undergone several transformations. The network originally launched as a syndication platform before it was acquired by The E.W. Scripps Company in 2014. It then transitioned in 2017 to a more full-featured streaming network. In 2021, Newsy became a free 24/7 over-the-air network, featuring Elevation’s complete brand overhaul. Now it’s debuting again as a more integrated part of the brand as Scripps News.
E.W. Scripps and Elevation jumped off the design strategy devised for Newsy in 2021 to lay the design foundation for Scripps News.
“One thing that didn’t change with the rebrand was Scripps News’ approach to sharing information,” said Brett Rakestraw, Elevation’s director of strategy, in a statement. “Their motto, ‘Be informed — not influenced,’ served as a solid foundation for us to explore some interesting design directions. We knew that Scripps News wanted their brand, just like their coverage, to find a place in the middle that invited all viewers rather than alienating some.”
“While ‘only changing colors and logos’ might sound simple, the main challenge was establishing the new overall look before executing it across hundreds of deliverables,” said Alina Klopach, Elevation’s producer.
Scripps News’ new color palette for Scripps News shifts away from Newsy’s purple to blue, which aligns more closely with the overall Scripps brand.
“Purple was an underused color in the news landscape,” said Elevation Art Director Dianne Frisbee. “It had symbolic meaning relevant to Newsy’s position in the marketplace as a balance between the calm stability of blue and the fierce energy of red. So we didn’t want to completely abandon that. We accomplished this by pushing the primary color to a darker blue, while maintaining elements of purple that continue to reinforce the symbolic meaning behind the Scripps News brand.”
The new Scripps News logo also took several cues from Newsy, consolidating several concepts that represented the brand’s core mission. Scripps News wanted to keep those ideals intact with the transition to the new branding, so they supplied an updated logo with nods to the directional arrows from the 2021 Newsy logo design.
Once the new look was established, Elevation’s global team of artists and animators created the network graphics package.
“We were pedal to the metal for months to make updates and tweaks beyond colors and logos to improve upon our original Newsy designs,” said Klopach. “This was a quality control feat. To ensure that the network package delivered a seamless look, every single element had its own approvals process.”
Overall, Elevation updated and delivered more than 350 assets, including logo stings, transitions, interstitials, title cards, broadcast toolkits, social media toolkits, and more. Scripps News launched with its new name and new look on January 1, 2023.