Trollbäck+Company Designs Comprehensive Rebrand of Oxygen Media to a Crime Network

Branding and design studio Trollbäck+Company has outfitted Oxygen Media with an all-encompassing rebrand in a dramatic pivot for the established network. Building on Oxygen’s thorough research and comprehensive strategy, Trollbäck+Company played a crucial role in aiming to shift audience perception of the channel, designing a standout look and feel to position Oxygen as a premiere “True Crime” destination in today’s complex television landscape.

 

Fans of the crime genre spoke, and Oxygen listened. The network saw an opportunity to deliver content that would live up to and exceed crime aficionados’ expectations. Oxygen wanted to provide the most holistic true crime experience for such an engaged audience, and charged Trollbäck+Company to help design a unique and modern package that would elevate the network's crime offerings and powerful storytelling across all platforms. 

 

 

“We asked Trollbäck+Company to conceive an impactful way to hit true crime fans,” said Nancy Mazzei, Vice President, Brand & Design, Oxygen Media. “By creating a package born from investigative cues meaningful to this genre, such as the use of our crime scene tape in our logo, and using copy to reveal our stories, we feel they delivered a fan-centric campaign that reflects our research and is sure to resonate with our audience.”

 

Led by Chief Creative Officer Alex Moulton and Creative Director Jorge Peschiera, Trollbäck+Company analyzed Oxygen’s audience research and began flagging potential hurdles on the creative approach to the rebrand. 

 

“We saw an opportunity to do something totally different from what other crime-focused channels are doing; something more nuanced, from an unexpectedly female perspective," says Peschiera. “We also had to design for maximum impact to begin building brand recognition right away, which started with a redesign of the Oxygen logo."

 

Trollbäck+Company looked to contemporary print design for inspiration, as well as investigative materials like police records, court documents, and news headlines. Art Director Erin Kilkenny’s surprising use of Times New Roman - a font originally designed for newsprint - perfectly aligned with these creative goals. The result is an intriguing, multi-platform brand identity driven by fragmentation, contrast, negative space, and surprising rhythms.

 

“We wanted a stylish look that also reflects the qualities of any good detective story,” says Peschiera. “Nothing is ever spelled out, but pieced together from hunches and fragments. Navigating these intricacies is what makes the crime genre endlessly fascinating. Every visual, sound, and narrative element we created strikes at the heart of this concept. In fact, our animators were given almost the same brief we shared with our sound partners, YouTooCanWoo.”

 

The resulting sonic branding, in which elements feel sampled, incomplete, and always shifting between eerie calm and jarring action, reflects Trollbäck+Company’s music-forward tradition to motion and branding. Layers of environmental recordings, overheard conversations, and carefully crafted music beds bring a tactile, emotional resonance to Oxygen’s on-air visuals.

 

“We wanted to make sure that Oxygen was equipped with a comprehensive, cross-platform brand,” says Moulton. “To ensure a consistent voice across all touchpoints, we considered every detail of the identity and how it could evolve. A large component of this process was realised in building effective tools to help the Oxygen team develop future creative work.”

 

In addition to detailed brand guidelines, Trollbäck+Company delivered a modular, user-friendly graphics toolkit that allows Oxygen’s team to generate a variety of visual elements while significantly reducing the amount of labour involved.

 

“We are so thrilled to continue our collaboration with the team at Oxygen,” concludes Moulton. “Oxygen’s leadership understands our creative approach and shares our design values. We were very lucky to have their complete trust, and it allowed us to deliver a wildly innovative brand that stands apart from everything else in the ‘True Crime’ genre.”