On Air: The Visual Messages and Global Language of MTV

by Gestalten (Editor), Sophie Lovell (Editor), Cristian Jofre (Editor)

Since its inception, MTV has generated an explosion of creative output and defined visual culture over the past 2 decades on a global scale. On Air documents the best in recent MTV motion design, trailers and clips from campaigns around the world including interviews with the creative masterminds at MTV, giving insight into how they have evolved from “music television” into a global multimedia empire. This definitive collection showcases the broad range of visual art created for MTV, and is accompanied by a 90-minute DVD containing a vast selection of the unparalleled motion graphics from MTV stations around the globe.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Jay French · Rating 3 out of 5]

A local discount religious bookstore had a closing sale, and I found this large format book about MTV art and station promotional videos for $1. After having read it, I’m still trying to figure out the connection to religion, but I’m just not finding it. The book includes a DVD containing some of the videos described divided by region of the world that the films were developed for. MTV is a global network of 50 to 100 channels that are different by country or region. And each region has a lot of control over what they put on the air. Overall, MTV wants their channels to be different, and they illustrate how they are different than other cable channels by airing unique short-form video art, as well as interesting station identity videos (shortened to idents here) and program introductions. And they source these films from their small internal teams throughout the world as well as from independent studios. This book gives a page or two of text and pictures to more than 100 different videos. The text gives the details about the video as well as a description of the initial specification from MTV, how the video was made, and the impact on the independent studio. As you read through, you find out about how MTV operates their global network. The MTV channels in each country start out with a lot of “free air” which they use for building an image within the country they are operating in. As time goes on, they fill that free space with programming and ads, leaving less time for those station identity pieces. For this book, a large majority of the videos were from outside of the US.

You also learn that MTV pays these independent video producers very little money, but give them a lot of artistic freedom. That is almost universally mentioned in the write-ups for each video. It seems that most don’t know if or when their videos were actually broadcast, or where, since any piece commissioned by MTV can be used anywhere throughout the world. Another almost universal mention by the independent studios is that having an MTV video in their “book” helps draw in other customers. MTV has cachet. One wonders if this book is making MTV more money on the videos that they paid very little for, or if it was published to help spread the world about these video producers.

The videos themselves are a mix of bizarre, more bizarre, and design experiments. Lots of freakish dolls, odd-acting kids, and breaking instruments. And lots of color. My favorite bit was an ad called Gunther, which I found (with music) on Youtube at: https://youtu.be/-Gh4RW4AKms

The book itself is quite long. The print is tiny, and the editing leaves a lot to be desired. It is difficult to make a book about videos, and this does just a so-so job. Many of the pictures taken from the videos seem bland – the action adds a lot to the enjoyment. Also note the videos on the DVD do not all contain the music that was in the background or even in the foreground. MTV must not have the rights to reproduce these videos with some of the music they used. Overall, the book is probably aimed at people buying video projects from independent producers as a way to introduce some of the companies involved and some of the art concepts that have been used. And it may also be interesting for the MTV completist, who wants to know everything about the network. I found it interesting, but not to a high degree.

[Anggaallensyah · Rating 4 out of 5]

big chunk of MTV's idents collection.