Warner Bros.
Agency:
Pentagram
Partner In Charge:
Emily Oberman
Team:
Tim Cohan
Tom Grunwald
Todd Goldstein
Greg Morrison
Alpa Pandya
Austin McGhie
Jeremy Mickel
The brand identity and brand strategy draws on the company’s unique and inspiring heritage and positions it for the future. The project updates the iconic “WB” shield and makes it the foundation of a comprehensive identity system, including a custom typeface inspired by the logo.
The Warner Bros. shield has been used since the earliest days of the company and has been periodically updated over the years. The most recent iteration was highly detailed and hard to use at a small scale and in digital contexts, which have become increasingly important.
The update simplifies the logo while retaining almost 100 years of brand equity. The redesign refines the shield based on the classical proportions of the golden ratio. We also redrew the “WB” letterforms in a way that preserves their quirkiness, but modernizes and refines the gestures.
The logo has been optimized to perform across various platforms and scales, from the small spaces of the digital world to giant installations like the iconic water tower on the Warner Bros. studio lot. It also works well with a wide range of content. We also created a dimensional version of the logo for on-screen content and special cases. As before, the logo can be customized for the opening and closing moments of individual movies and shows. It can also function as a window for content.
The distinctive monogram has been expanded into a custom typeface, Warner Bros. Condensed Bold, used for the wordmarks of the various divisions and other display typography. The typeface has a look and feel that is uniquely Warner Bros., with condensed letterforms that relate to the elongated “WB” in the shield. Like the redrawn logo, the typeface carries a sense of the company’s history, but is contemporary.