RACHAEL RAY'S MEALS IN MINUTES - SHOW OPEN
RACHAEL RAY'S MEALS IN MINUTES | A+E
Rachael Ray’s Meals In Minutes which airs on FYI (a home and lifestyle brand under the A+E umbrella) is a sequel series of sorts to her popular 30 Minute Meals on Food Network from once ago. The mandate passed down to me from the top brass was to create an in-show graphics toolkit that feels contemporary and fresh, easy for the editing team to utilize on their own, and to think of the design as something that could evolve into a few other packages under the Rachel Ray brand umbrella.
Initially I only had the final logo that an internal team provided me with to build off of, and I tried to whip up a couple fresh new concepts from scratch to compliment it, but ultimately the final approved design and animation expanded upon the groundwork that my friend and colleague Margalit Neusner established for the promotion of the first season of the show. Nonetheless, the result is a fun, punchy, treat satisfying the hunger of my clients for a piece that does Rachael her due justice. Bon appétit!
DESIGN + ANIMATION Ian S. Foster, Margalit Neusner
INITIAL CONCEPTS
When developing the visual style, while the mandate stated that the graphics should feel “‘organic’, ‘salt of the earth’, ‘primary’, ‘flat matte’, there is ‘elegance in simplicity’”, I strongly felt that an illustrative visual angle was more in line with the logo, mostly due to the cartoony/rounded clock hands. Additionally, it imbues a certain playful and "handmade" quality that I thought might better speak to Rachael’s “salt of the earth" appeal, as well as being in contrast to the vibe of her current branding that I referenced from her website. That said, I also created a more subdued option to make sure diverse explorations were in play.
I was also tasked to explore some color palette options that include the orange that is familiar to Rachael’s past branding. As seen in the opening animation above, we ultimately didn’t pursue the directions below, but I feel like they went into interesting directions and it’s worth sharing how they are so different from one another, and yet how some ideas from both coalesced into the final design and motion.
Original 30 Minutes Meals logo and palette
Palette options as seen in the design presentation deck.
Styleframes leaning into an illustrative design direction based on the playfulness of the logo I received
Styleframes that comparatively more conservative and elegant than the previous option