Royale, the year-old creative design/production studio led by Creative Directors Jayson Whitmore and Brien Holman, and Exec Producer Jennifer Lucero, got in on the joke with Comedy Central -- creating the entire branding for the network's "Indecision 2008" political coverage, as well as a hilarious segment of THE DAILY SHOW in which host Jon Stewart introduces the Royale created look. ''This year you won't have settle for their over-promising graphics and underperforming anchors,'' Stewart says before counting down the launch, ''This year you can settle for ours."
For THE DAILY SHOW, Royale collaborated with the internal graphics team to create an over-the-top, two-minute-plus-long promo that introduces the show's correspondents and their commitment to journalism. The segment features a ridiculous amount of red, white, blue color, U.S. flag imagery, animated bursting stars, and a typically dramatic news voiceover declaring ''THE DAILY SHOW -- the best f***ing news team ever.'' From there, Royale designed the animation and graphics that help introduce the DAILY SHOW correspondents, the 117 story "news-scrapper," featuring the world's highest Subway franchise, and their own ''news rocket.''
''We've all seen enough news graphics that we felt like we knew how to make fun of it,'' Holman said. ''What's funny however is that I saw one of the cable news channels use elements that were similar to ours, but in a serious way. No matter how over-the-top we took this, it's still in the ballpark of some 'legitimate news networks.'''
In addition to the DAILY SHOW piece, Royale also created the look for Comedy Central's overall "Indecision 2008" branding. This includes an array of menus, bumpers, tune-ins, lower-thirds and a comprehensive toolkit of graphics that can be incorporated throughout their broadcast day, as well as during both THE DAILY SHOW and THE COLBERT REPORT -- all of which will be on display during its live election day coverage.
''The concept for this was Times Square on steroids,'' Whitmore explained. ''Comedy Central wanted a look for their political coverage that tied into the overall network branding, but that was decidedly different. We gave them a huge amount of elements to work with. The comedic takeaway for viewers is that Comedy Central's graphics are absurdly bigger and more expensive than all other networks.''
