Kiss

Mainframe were recently invited by Box Plus Network to create a series of idents for their music channel Kiss TV. With Kiss being at the forefront of Music TV in the U.K. the brief for the idents was to created something innovative, visually stunning and different to anything else on UK TV screens.

We pushed the boundaries in terms of look and feel with these idents. Spending large amounts of time doing research and development, particularly in new forms of procedural animation, gave us tools we needed to create something truly original. The Box Plus team were particularly supportive of this experimental way of working and hopefully the results are worth the effort everyone put into the project.

There are four main strands that pay homage to the synergy between fashion and music, each intertwined with a distinctive party mood: bling, club, pop and urban that also reflect the range of the channel’s music policy. The brand is taken into an abstract, intergalactic world, on a journey of high energy, form and colour. 

‘Bling’ brings the luxe of hip hop and glam pop with reflective, glittering, metallic textures and fluid, melding animations. ‘Club’ embodies the energy of house and techno, glowing lights and lasers, and repetitive beating movements. 

‘Pop’ provides imagery derived from pop funk and pop rap, colourful, vibrant hues, and frenetic, bold animations. Finally, ‘urban’ ident draws inspiration from garage and grime, with dark, moody tones lit up with molten lava and animated at an explosive pace. 

Within the animations, two objects touch - representing a ‘kiss’ - to create a chain reaction culminating in a distinctive logo resolve. The faceted and folding mechanic is used as a constant to create a familiar thread across the four distinct looks - showcasing four facets of the one channel.

Specially composed tracks by Nottingham Bass DJ/producer Shookz - one of the Midlands’ most diverse and exciting musical talents - adds multi-dimensional layers to the four idents.  Inspiration for these tracks has come from youth production workshops in Mansfield, Shookz’s remix work, and his immersion in a range of sub-genres of electronic dance music.