“It’s always an absolute pleasure to collaborate with the T&F team! They consistently bring a plethora of creative 360 design concepts to the table – carefully balancing hitting our brief, while also expanding with unexpected out of the box thinking. This time was no different – they delivered premium/beautiful Key Art and Motion GFX for “Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes” that elevated the show, the “Secrets of…” franchise as a whole, and underlying A&E brand. We’re grateful to partner with them and are already looking forward to the next project!”
– Michelle Weaver, Creative Director, A&E Brand Creative
In January of 2022, A&E launched the Secrets of… documentary franchise – exposing truths, advocating for justice, and offering a critical perspective on various powerful organizations and individuals. Thornberg & Forester were tapped to design and produce the on-air promo package and toolkit for the franchise’s premiere series, Secrets of Playboy, Shortly thereafter, A&E returned to Thornberg & Forester to design and produce the on-air package and toolkit for the series, Secrets of the Chippendales Murders.
The success of these titles and of the franchise has led to A&E’s tenth Secrets of… documentary series, Secrets of Celebrity Sex Tapes. Continuing our ongoing partnership, A&E engaged Thornberg & Forester to design and produce the “SoCST” on-air and social promo package, and to design and craft the key art assets for the launch of the series.
We truly love receiving strategy/creative briefs from our friends at A&E. They always provide a clear point of view while still leaving us room to explore. The A&E team provided plenty of useful ideas and reference imagery, and we were able to pleasantly surprise them with our own twists and ideas – elevating the entire SoCST package through our collaboration.
The series examines the cultural impact of celebrity sex tapes – from the initial stigma to the big business era of OnlyFans. We hear the unheard stories and learn how these tapes impacted the people involved. Series marketing needed to walk a fine line tonally – showcasing edgy, scandalous content in an engaging way while also steering clear of exploiting or objectifying the men and women involved.
Thornberg & Forester is driven by informed strategic thinking, thorough creative ideation, and impeccable craft. While the term “sex tape” has persisted into the era of digital video files (and no actual tape), both the Thornberg and A&E creative teams agreed that the classic VHS cassette was the strongest visual icon for us to leverage. We began our design process by exploring a multitude of tape-centric visual styles – ranging from photoreal to elegantly stylized. We also explored a variety of color treatments and typographic styles, making sure to align with the vibe of previous Secrets of… series packages. Thinking ahead to how our designs would be adapted for key art, we initially focused on promo package assets, producing the six treatments below, as well as a few additional ideas and explorations.
We knew the VHS cassette would be our primary visual metaphor, but beyond nailing down exactly how the tapes would look, we also needed to come up with something interesting for the tapes to do. When communicating the concept of “celebrity,” a star is a powerful visual – evoking everything from the Hollywood Walk of Fame to the idea of stardom in general. We quickly gravitated towards a series of dynamic star-based executions, often using the negative space formed by the tapes to create a star shape.
And we didn’t just focus on star-centric treatments. VHS cassettes feature natural places to house messaging, and we were intrigued by the idea of using labels to showcase imagery and text. We also loved the idea of using a wall of tapes as modules, allowing them to come together to form a single image, and to move in undulating, wave-like patterns. And of course, the simple image of VHS tapes falling in slow motion felt immediately at home in the “Secrets of…” design landscape – playing up the idea of celebrities’ worlds “crashing down” as they live through the fallout from a sex tape scandal.
As we continued to refine our promo package design, we then began taking the strongest creative ideas from our initial rounds and using them as a base for our key art designs. While our process is thorough, we’re also able to adapt to meet a tight deadline. To move as efficiently as possible, we began with loose sketches. This allowed us to quickly iterate a wide variety of options, any of which could then be translated into the more polished language of our promo designs. A lot of interesting new ideas came out of this sketch exploration, including the “kissing silhouettes” iteration above.
Ultimately, using the top of the VHS tape as our hero key art device was the most effective. We particularly loved how the cassette could fit so naturally into both horizontal and vertical formats. In addition, the tape label provided the perfect clear space for the show logo, and the transparent spool windows allowed us to integrate photography in a way that felt subtly voyeuristic.
Moving quickly and efficiently, we focused our early efforts on the highest priority deliverables – the hero launch spot and master key art design. For final delivery we developed both HD and vertical AfterEffects toolkits, horizontal and vertical key art builds conforming to A&E delivery guidelines, and additional on-air assets including the L-Bar countdown shown below. As always, our goal was to create a unified visual language and give the series a distinct voice of its own, while also ensuring that the branding feels at home alongside other properties in the Secrets of… franchise.
We’d like to extend a special thank you to our friends at A&E. Thank you for your continued trust and ongoing partnership…we’re very proud of the work we’ve built, and continue to build, together.
And of course, thank you to the amazing team at T&F and for caring so much about every little detail.