Pentagram rebrands Warner Bros. with a “sleek and clean” update to its shield logo

Pentagram partner Emily Oberman and her New York team have rebranded Warner Bros. featuring a thinner shield logo and redrawn lettering.

Speaking to Fast Company, Emily described the new look as “sleek and clean” with redrawn letters to appear more “balanced.” The shield shape was elongated using the golden ratio principle and a new, livelier shade of blue has been applied. The aim was to create a more contemporary shape that could tell a multitude of different stories, when colour palettes and textures are added to echo individual programmes or divisions. Referring to the refresh as a “brand reinvention”, Emily also refers to the new logo as “a sponge for any story they wanted to tell.”

The redesign was commissioned to solve a number of existing issues. Without a network of its own to promote its own shows and with streaming services life Netflix and Hulu increasingly making their own content, it was important to make it immediately clear which shows were made by Warner Bros. What’s more the previous logo was not being used consistently across the company’s wide-ranging divisions, something which Dee Dee Myers, the company’s executive vice president of worldwide corporate communications and public affairs, called “logo soup”, Fast Company reports.

Two versions of the logo have been created: a flat, monochrome 2D version and a 3D version with shadows and a gradient effect. The two versions were developed by Pentagram to better suit different environments, with the 3D version working well in the cinema. It is hoped that the modernisation of the logo will make it more adaptable to the diverse ways that people now consume Warner Bros. programming, from streaming services to mobile.

Alongside the new logo, Pentagram also introduced a new typeface, called Warner Bros. Sans, which, Emily comments, “allows the brand to still be present if the shield isn’t there.” Evolving from the “WB” of the branding, the typeface has been inspired by 1920s Art deco, a style predominant when Warner Bros. was first founded. You can watch a film about the creation of the type below.