Hard Knocks: In Season with the Miami Dolphins
Social Promo Design/Animation • Looping Video Type Layout • Thumbnail Design
Band of Brothers is one of the most beloved series in all of the HBO library and it is considered among the best scripted productions covering war time in the history of television. When my team was asked to create the branding for it’s 20th anniversary podcast, we knew that the stakes were incredibly high.
The series is perhaps best known for its dedication to accuracy and emotional realism. The entirety of the show was carefully crafted with the input of those soldiers who lived it. Thus, we quickly decided that an element of realism and historical reference was essential across all assets.
Social Promo
Each episode is accompanied by a social promo sized for twitter (16x9) and instagram story (9x16).
These assets promote the episode by bringing to life a clip from one of our guests.
To maintain realism, I researched a variety of technology used by WWII soldiers in the field. I landed on the TM-11-275 radio’s amperes meter to be the perfect visual analogy. After recreating the meter in Photoshop, I linked the gauge to the speaker’s voice and animated their words using After Effects.
Looping Video Type Layout
Each episode is also accompanied by a looping video to play for YouTube listeners.
I created a type layout for these looping videos and handed them off for animation.
Using real coordinates from the various battles and locations in the show, we were able to invite viewers to deepen their curiosity about these events and call attention to the great distances covered by soldiers over the course of the war.
Thumbnail Design
A unique thumbnail was created for each episode of the show featuring the guest’s character or relevant imagery from the episodes discussed.
These multi-purpose images had to function as flags to draw in potential Youtube viewers, they had to fit into the larger HBO Max podcast aesthetic, and they had to connect to a textless equivalent to be shown on the HBO Max streaming site.
Our team chose to omit BTS imagery in favor of in-world candids wherever possible.
Rollout
To maintain cohesion across all assets, the thumbnail images need to function in a variety of situations.
Here you can see some of the considerations that must go into every thumbnail’s production.
YouTube
hbo.com
Textless
As a Streaming Thumb
With Text Overlay
(must work for all sizes: 16x9, 1x1, 2x3, tall crop, 3x4)