MTV Graphics vs Scanimate
MTVグラフィックス / スキャニメイト
Both sit in Broadcast Design, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
MTV Graphics
An identity that refused fixed corporate colors: keep only the shape of the M and repaint its surface endlessly. Manhattan Design's logo system brought 'change itself as consistency' to broadcasting.
Scanimate
An analog video synthesizer that distorted images on a CRT electrically and in real time. It is the true source of the glowing, flying, undulating logos of 1970s and 80s television, and it carried the motion industry before digital.
| MTV Graphics | Scanimate | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1981– | 1969–1980s |
| Family | Broadcast Design | Broadcast Design |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Fixed shape, variable surface / Graffiti and collage / Seconds-long ID films / Quotations from music culture | Glowing outlines / Electronic undulation / Rainbow glow / Scanline texture |
| Best used for | A brand for a young audience whose surface gets repainted constantly · Giving each music or event program a different face on one shape | Rebuilding the air of 1970s and 80s television as a deliberate effect · Giving a logo the unstable glow and stretch that digital tools lack |
| Type | Fix only the outline of the mark and redraw the type inside every time | Heavy single letters lit from inside their own outline |
| Composition | Let the shape overflow the frame so it reads as a crop | One element on black, stretched from far to near |
| Material | Fill the outline with graffiti, photography and texture | Scanlines and rainbow bleed, with color fringing left on the edges |
| Caution | Using variability as an excuse to change the outline as well, so nothing stays fixed and the mark never accumulates as a sign. | Layering glow and scanlines on top while the undulation itself still moves with the smooth interpolation of today's tools. |