History Today

Brand Identity System | Graphic Design

About

This hypothetical brand identity for History Today focuses on connecting the past to the present to the future, with the core concept revolving around the passage and connection of time and events. As history is crucial in understanding current political and social events, the target demographics are Gen Z, the most socially and politically aware generation.

Motion Montage

Logo

The logo was inspired by designs of windows. It uses the “H” in History Today and the positive and negative space to create a window that allows viewers to peer into a specific moment in time. This is continued in the logo animation, where the logo moves across a series of H’s like in a timeline, reflecting how History Today lets its viewers see specific moments in time.

Colors and Brand Patterning

The colors of the brand were inspired by the colors of a sunrise. As every new sunrise represents another day in history, the three primary colors are used to signify different moments in time: red representing the past, yellow representing the present, and blue representing the future. These three colors tie together the different aspects of the brand to the core concept of the identity, connecting the past to present to future.

The idea of a timeline and events in time are reflected in the brand patterning, which uses different sized blocks pieced together like showing different series of events within a timeline.

Poster Applications: Identity Posters

Posters are split into two categories: identity and content posters. Identity posters advertised the brand itself using the taglines of the brand. “It all starts here” refers to history, as all events, past, present, and future all begin from knowing history and “yesterday, today, tomorrow” continues the theme of connecting all events in time.

Poster Applications: Content Posters

While identity posters advertise the brand itself, content posters focus on promoting the brand content such as their magazine issues, podcasts, book reviews.

Website

The homepage of the website aims to first advertise the current magazine issue, then intrigue viewers with featured articles to encourage more exploration of the site.

The online archive is organized by various categories such as time period, theme, issue, location, etc. This allows viewers to easily navigate the large library, explore, and find what they’re looking for.

App

The mobile app follows a simplified version of the desktop site layout, mostly focusing on magazine issues for viewers to easily read on their phones.