by Hello tomorrow! it might not be the biggest hit on AppleTV, but look on the bright side, it has some of the most exquisite logo designs to hit the small screen in a long time. The designer behind the logos, posters and signs for the fantastic 1950s sci-fi show is Matt Stevens, and he tells me exactly how it all came together.
As a graphic designer from an agency, one used to need a lot of process, time and attention to create designs that are “just right” working on a TV show “is pretty much our pants,” says Stevens. “The goal was to generate a lot of ideas quickly. And not be precious about it early on. And I think for me as a logo designer, I had to let a lot of you know that love this process and just go with the flow.”
The Apple TV Plus show is set in an alternate 1950s America where technology has evolved to include robotic servants and artificial intelligence drivers, but is still associated with the clean lines and stark simplicity of mid-century design . In Hello Tomorrow! People can live on the moon, but they look good to get there.
“We were really trying to go with something that felt mid-century, but it wasn’t too on the nose,” Stevens explains. He tells me the logo design for Hello Tomorrow! they needed to walk a fine line between being directly mid-century inspired to match the show’s overall aesthetic, but not having to “feel like they can land specifically on that era.”
It’s a balancing act that many fantastic designs must meet. the juggling act of taking direct inspiration from a time period or design style but also offering something a little new and unique. Hello tomorrow! it’s not specifically a period piece but a fantasy of heightened consumerism where the old world collides with the new.
“With the Brightside logo,” says Stevens, “it needed to feel a bit anachronistic, have some modern trends, but also be able to feel like it’s going to live in a mid-century world.”
Brightside Lunar Colony is the travel and brokerage company at the center of the show, its salespeople selling the dream of a new life on the moon to the population of Vistaville, a small town built of stone and wood that is seemingly always under threat from the advances of new technology. Against this background, the Brightside logo needed to feel fresh, but still part of the world.
“I’m especially proud of the Brightside logo,” shares Stevens. He explains how he not only fits the brief of a fantastic mid-century design, but approached the creation of this logo as a traditional designer, “where I would think of all the ways a logo needs to work and then break out to use it as an element.”
If you watch Hello Tomorrow! you’ll notice that the logo has been turned into lapel pin badges for sales staff, cufflinks and other subtle uses. “I was thinking about the primary and secondary logo designs,” reveals the designer, saying, “I’m very proud of it.”
When you’re creating a logo for a fictional universe that’s also period-based, it can be easy to slip into common mistakes. This may come from a lack of research, as Stevens says, “people can get attached to what they think of that era and so a lot of clichéd things get done; we didn’t want to look like a ’50s themed restaurant. […] We didn’t want a lot of asterisks and silly architectural shapes.”
Research was vital to determine what was actually created during the 1950s, using old Sears catalogs and advertisements of the era to create a working base. It was important to Stevens to work from accurate references and not from “the impression you have in your head of what happened at that time, because you could easily fall into the trap of doing things that are kind of clichés of that. time”.
The depth of world building, just from a graphic design perspective, is truly incredible. Even before Hello Tomorrow! picked up by AppleTV Plus a short film was made following the exploits of two jetpack salesmen and for this Stevens created a bloated book of logos, graphics, world signage and posters.
When it came to the final show, Stevens even created meticulous planning notes for many areas of the show’s production and content, including a full rulebook for the show’s fictional sport of Jet Ball, “it’s kind of a twist on mostly American baseball with some element of American football,” says Stevens.
“It’s been fun just to work on something that probably won’t ever appear on the show,” says Stevens, who teases that this creates some Easter eggs for fans. “There are several Jet Ball players on the show who are friends with Ryan Kalil [a former NFL player and owner of Mortal Media],” shares Stevens, who also points out that the number 67 was hidden in many of the series designs, that was Kalil’s NFL number. “I tried to hide a 67 in there somewhere,” he laughs.
Stevens’ day job as a graphic designer and former agency manager (he now works for his own clients) rather than a concept artist gives him a working knowledge of branding, particularly how to build a brand identity, even a fictional one. .
This real-world design approach can be seen in the travel posters created for the show that line the walls of the sales office. Stevens tells me, “Part of what I like about branding is doing a lot of different interpretations of one thing. And so, just thinking about it from his point of view, here’s the logo, here’s the travel posters, that sort of thing. the company would have come up with these kinds of outlandish arrangements was fun.”
Unlike the real world where directors, clients and agency staff can brainstorm ideas and iterate, Stevens says developing a brand for the show was hard work because everything happened at such a fast pace. But he made sure there wasn’t much time for people to hesitate.
“With logo design projects you can have too much time sometimes, which means the client has a lot of time to ask for more options,” he explains. This truncated process made the job a little easier as everyone involved was open to new ideas. When you work in the real world, Stevens believes, people are closer to and more passionate about branding. “In most of my logo projects I work with entrepreneurs and startups, so it can be difficult because people are really emotionally attached to what I’m creating.”
It was no coincidence that Stevens got the gig designing the logos for Hello Tomorrow!, aside from his friendship with Kalil, the artist loves mid-century illustration. “I think my work tends to be reductive […] I find that when I do my own work, I tend to lean towards being more graphic and my background is more in print design. I love its simplicity. I like the picturesque nature of it. I definitely especially love the elegance and simplicity of mid-century design. I think it’s very difficult to beat.”
Check out more of Matt Stevens’ work at Hello Tomorrow! in his own Website (opens in new tab)including his work on the Umbrella Academy logo for the Netflix show.
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