Fan Chronicles is an intimate Crunchyroll docuseries celebrating anime’s impact through the lens of three unique fans’ stories.
For this series, I developed a visual identity system to connect the Crunchyroll brand and the documentary shorts.
ROLE. MOTION & DESIGN; STUDIO. PORTAL A; CLIENT. crunchyroll
EXPLORATION APPROACH
My design process began with research.
I asked friends to describe their love of anime, and the impact of anime on their lives; I continued the search by looking through similar discussions on Reddit and other online forums. From there, I created a list of tone words based on common language and themes among the anecdotes and the client’s project brief.
WORD list
I then gathered initial visual references related to anime – official posters, manga art, and anime-related events – into a mood board. I also added visuals that reflected common themes from my tone words and screenshots from a previous Crunchyroll documentary short.
From there, I explored several directions, playing with the ideas of storytelling, escapism, transformation, and authenticity.
FINAL DESIGN
In the concept that we ultimately landed with, Authenticity, I focused on one major goal – telling fan stories and allowing the footage to speak without distraction.
I used the fairly agnostic Pragmatica Black to pair with Crunchyroll’s character-filled logo (take a look at that ‘r’!), and approached scale with an light hand. I designed the motion language to prioritize fluid movement and soft transitions, so the animation wouldn’t overtake the messaging.
