T2: Brand Identity, Strategy and Website Portal Design

Background

T2 is the supplement to The Telegraph that is focussed on current events, entertainment, celebrity gossip. Its user and subscriber has a penchant for vicarious living, which the newer, online brand intends to capture through the identity and website design.

 

The Telegraph is an Indian daily newspaper founded by and continuously published by the ABP Group in Kolkata since 7 July 1982. It is the 5th largest English daily newspaper in India based on circulation.

 

Brief

The goal for T2 online is to be the one-stop shop for infotainment in India for the millennial audience. T2 unlike its parent newspaper, The Telegraph, is meant to be light-hearted, jovial and overall a fun platform for users to enjoy after a hard day’s of work.

 

We were asked to create a brand identity and online presence for T2 to reach a broader market than the print version of T2 which is specifically targeted to the Eastern and North-eastern segment in India. The target group has been expanded to include urban Indians, especially millenials across the country.

 

A key aspect of the website and the brand is that of the “buddy guide”. T2 is to be seen as a buddy — someone who filters superfluous content and brings forth the most happening important information for you right now. The user is hooked onto content through surprising and unusual stories. 

 

Overall, the identity needed to highlight the different sections clearly as there is a gender bias towards certain sections such as lifestyle and entertainment (female) and sports and technology (male).

 

Solution

To emphasise the aspect of the buddy guide we decided to create a mark that has a personality. The T2 icon is winking at the user to indicate its quirky, irreverent and light-hearted content.

 

The idea is to treat each section separately — for instance — Fashion more glitzy and Tech more "masculine". A Dynamic Identity: In an effort to highlight the various sections, we took the language of the logo further by replacing the wink with a symbol representing each of the sections. For instance, “Tech” has the power symbol and “Video” the play symbol.

 

The use of the emoticon for the logo was a conscious choice to make the channel more approachable to a vast number of new audiences across the country, who hitherto were unaware of this brand. Additionally, in the digital online platform, the concept of supplement is moot — hence T2 is to stand on its own merit, independent from The Telegraph. The prospect of a release of an app also meant that the logo needed to be designed as a simple but effective icon to stand out on the phone and app stores.

UX Design by Kiba Design