Two former 60 Minutes producers are launching an investigative show under their existing NEWSGIRLS brand, timed to the new 60 Minutes premiere. We are building the show identity, a template kit, a Substack look, and a reporter preview packet in about a week.
| Deliverable | Detail |
|---|---|
| Lockup | 3 concepts for how "Investigates" joins the existing NEWSGIRLS mark. Hierarchy must read as show-under-umbrella. The parent mark itself stays as is. |
| Palette + type | A real color system and a free-license type system, so everything finally reads as one brand. Anton is the logo face and stays. No paid fonts anywhere. |
| Templates | Title card, thumbnail, social announce, pull-quote, coming soon, lower third. All editable. Multiple file types. Drag-and-drop overlays and textures. |
| Substack | Header, colors, welcome and about page design, subscribe CTAs. Work inside Substack's limits. Nicole helps implement. Account already exists. |
| Preview packet | A long one-pager showing the new show branding, with a cover image, to catch reporters' attention when Nicole pitches on 9/8. |
| Held for Phase 2 | Animated intros, outros, and lower-third motion. Custom website. Deep brand guide. Set design. |
NEWSGIRLS is the parent. It started as investigations only, drifted toward faster, brighter social content because that's what the audience wanted, and now the hosts want investigations back as its own lane. The name is locked: Newsgirls Investigates. "Underground" and "Inside" were considered and rejected because they imply on-location work they won't always do.
Everything we design should make the two lanes obviously related and obviously different. Wren likes having "two lanes in our head" so they always know where a story goes.
Both hosts landed at 5. Mabel: Vice is "sometimes just not as aesthetically pleasing as we like things to be." Wren: "It's not actually gritty, but it's grittier." So texture, grain and darkness are welcome, but every frame still has to be pretty. Caroline's word from the call, which Nicole and Mabel both grabbed: fashionable.
In the parent brand pink and blue are equal partners. For Investigates they want to lean blue to read more gender-neutral and less girly. The hosts were explicit that this is not black-and-white with a single pop. Mabel described it as "nighttime flash": deep, saturated, dark color, a blue-boosted sky, light sources bleeding in from a parking lot or a government building. Pink and blue arrive as glow, not as flat fills. Nicole suggested pink and blue gels on the flash so each host is lit in her color. Build the supporting palette out of this: deep blue-blacks, a neon-lit midtone or two, and neutrals biased cool.
The mark is italic Anton, stacked white over pink over blue over black to create the offset. It was built in Canva and only a JPG exists. They are sharing the live Canva file so we can export an SVG and rebuild the layers cleanly. The layered offset is already a signature device, and the natural way to extend it is light: the lockup and key brand elements treated as glowing signage, the offset reading as neon tubes and their bleed. Austin pitched exactly this on the call and both hosts said it would be "very different than what we have right now" in a good way. Spend the boldness there and keep everything around it quiet.
A new cover photo is being shot for Investigates only. The concept is theirs: the two of them in a dark alley or behind a building at night, looking like they're searching for something, "investigating something underground." Still in cool outfits, still in heels. They referenced old-school 60 Minutes undercover work with hidden recordings and prosthetics as the feeling, not the literal content. Photo lands Monday 9/8 morning at the latest. Templates need to work with a placeholder until then. Decide by Friday whether the title card and thumbnail mask the hosts out of the background, because that changes what they need to shoot. Tell them in the Friday delivery.
They are positioning Investigates as the alternative to the new Bari Weiss 60 Minutes, premiering the same day, and both are former 60 Minutes producers. Visually they want distance. Wren: 60 Minutes "never had the strongest visuals." The one permissible steal is a subtle clock reference, as image or as sound, done tastefully and not on the nose. Nicole's rule: don't get sued. Treat this as an optional grace note for the title card or the eventual sting, not a pillar.
Austin tested two headlines. For the main feed, breaking-news caps and the dollar figure win. For Investigates, the hosts chose the editorial, character-led version.
So the title card and pull-quote templates should set restrained editorial type. The social announce can be punchier because it lives in the main feed. Casual language is fine in their mouths, "authoritative, not stuffy" is the on-screen rule. Complexity should feel easy: if a number isn't needed, it isn't shown.
biased · boring · fluffy · girly · clickbait · TikTok-trend · Don Lemon reaction content
| Day | What ships | Who |
|---|---|---|
| Thu 9/3 | Canva file in hand. Rebuild mark as SVG. Start lockup concepts and palette. | WP |
| Fri 9/4 | Share 3 lockup concepts plus palette and type system. Note the photo direction we need. Client picks same day or first thing Saturday. | WP → client |
| Sat 9/5 | Refine chosen lockup. Draft the preview packet. | WP |
| Sun 9/6 | Packet draft to Nicole for a look. | WP |
| Mon 9/7 | Cover photo arrives by morning. Build templates. Labor Day, expect slow replies. | WP |
| Tue 9/8 | Packet final in Nicole's hands by morning, pitches go out. Substack header, colors, pages. | WP → client |
| Wed 9/9 | The single feedback round on everything. Comments due end of day. | Client |
| Thu 9/10 | Revisions. Export templates in the editors' native format. | WP |
| Fri 9/11 | Final handoff. Substack updated and QA'd, unpublished if they prefer. | WP |
| Sat 9/12 | Everything live. | Client |
| Sun 9/13 | Press release drops. 60 Minutes premieres. | Client |