The Element Podcast

HPE had a brand refresh in 2019, and of course, all of their products and online presences needed to be refreshed as well. I led the rebranding effort for The Element Podcast, HPE’s talk show about cutting edge tech. The Element Podcast subjects range from explaining the hybrid cloud to discussing post-pandemic solutions for cities. As you might have noticed from my other HPE work, the brand visuals largely use striking, dramatic photography – which would not work well here. Our challenge was to create a logo that could bring cohesion to a wiiiiide variety of topics, while still representing HPE’s new look. We landed on a logotype that uses a glowing neon style in HPE’s main green color. The style is not only a nerdy pun (neon is an element, get it? …sorry.), it also mimics the glow of blinking server lights.

Role: art direction, logo design, illustration. Animation by Ryan Piracha. Copy by Micheal Newell.

Final logo

Sound wave motif

I knew I wanted to incorporate sound waves and equalizer lines into the brand; I think the marriage of tech and science is represented well by these visuals. In earlier iterations, I was very literal with my sound line illustrations, but I pushed the style in an abstracted, dramatic, almost etherial direction. In the audiogram below, you’ll see the line pattern is floating slowly, like it’s chillin’ in zero gravity space, and the glow is what’s reacting to the sound. The reactive glow ties back to the server light representation and makes the lines feel like they are truly electric.

The Element Podcast Animations

Below are two animations my team and I created to promote The Element Podcast episodes centered around pandemic and remote life. I created this illustration and typography style that mimics the neon glow of the logo and sound waves. This style feels unique to The Element Pod, but cohesive enough that it isn’t completely out of place on HPE’s Twitter profile.

I’ve always been interested in visualizing abstract ideas and connecting dissimilar concepts together. As mentioned above, The Element Podcast talks about some abstract and theoretical topics, so I knew creating promo animations would be a fun challenge. For example, my favorite moment in the Smart Cities animation is the bubble morphing sequence – each bubble line represents a drastically different topic than the next, but I was able to connect them together using the same shapes.