Branded for good
John Ridgway has his designs on making a difference
By Liz Massey

Chances are, you’ve seen John Ridgway’s work hundreds, maybe even thousands, of times on TV and not known it. And that’s just fine with him. Ridgway, who has captured 14 Emmy Awards for creating the branding and design concepts for such highly watched programs as “Entertainment Tonight” and “Cosmos” and for channels such as CBS, NBC, CNBC and Fox, says the most important facet of his work is that viewers remember his client, not him. If you live in Phoenix and have watched public television in the last several months, you’ve definitely seen the results of Ridgway’s creative prowess. He directed the rebranding of EIGHT, ASU’s PBS affiliate more commonly known in the past by its call letters KAET-TV.

The station’s visual identity has undergone a makeover worthy of its 21st Century broadcasting status. The new logo is comprised of the word “eight” spelled out, with the numeral 8 replacing the letter “g.” The word channel has been eliminated and the call letters demoted to a less central status in the logo, as cable and satellite systems have made both references less relevant.

Ridgway noted that EIGHT’s transformation was more than a simple tweak of graphic design elements — it was a major shift in identity, done in order to allow the station to compete for viewers more successfully in a media environment marked by “convergence,” the rapid expansion of the number and type of electronic platforms by which viewers can get visually based information.

“Audiences can get content in a number of ways,” he said. “There’s a huge amount of competition and choice.”

It’s fitting that Ridgway, who received his bachelor’s degree from ASU in 1975, should return to the public television station that launched his career as a branding and design expert. It was at ASU that he first connected his passion for politics with his visual art-making skills, and it was in the Valley of the Sun that he received his first lessons in the reciprocal nature of teaching and learning.

Ridgway’s work is rooted in his political ideals. He says it’s hard to figure out which came first for him, advocacy or design.

“I essentially got into design in newspapers and television because I had messages I wanted to help convey,” he said.

Attending college in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he was heavily involved in the Vietnam-era anti-war movement, serving as art director for the New Times, which was then a mainstay of the counterculture. He continued his advocacy after graduation, serving for two years as the executive director of the Arizona Students’ Association, which lobbies the state legislature on behalf of the state’s university students. One of the organization’s priorities during his tenure was lobbying the governor and the state legislature to have the state board of regents to add a voting student representative.

Ridgway was hired by KAET immediately after graduation in June 1975, following two years of “pestering the art director” for a position. He quickly became the boss of all things visual at the station.

“I was doing any number of things I wasn’t qualified to do—set design, display cases, magazine layout … it was a really great job and I was pretty successful,” he said.

After his stint with KAET, he continued to combine his love of political activism with his design work by freelancing with the political consulting firm First Tuesday. In 1978, he left Phoenix for Los Angeles, where he found a job with PBS station KCET. Since that time, he has used his professional skills for pro bono political projects, something that he says allows him to do the work with “a clean conscience.”

One of the highlights of Ridgway’s volunteer activism was advising Russian President Boris Yelsin in 1993 on how to give his fledgling party a strong identity and educate voters about his package of democratic reforms. Ridgway spoke with long-time friend Ben Goddard, a mentor of his and the founder of First Tuesday, about the struggles Yeltsin and the reformers were facing on a Sunday morning; by that Thursday, Ridgway and Goddard (who happened to know the mayor of St. Petersberg) were in Russia meeting covertly with Yeltsin and other top officials, and designing a campaign.

The work was done in secrecy, he said, until the L.A. Times broke a story about their project. “Officials would meet with us at remote dachas,” he said. “It was B-movie mystery stuff.”

Ridgway looks back on the effort, which led to the passage of Yeltsin’s reforms, with pride.

“Nobody had a leash on us,” he said. “We were able to do what was right, and it worked. That was very satisfying to me.”

Influencing the course of a new democracy could be expected to bring out one’s passion, but Ridgway is also effervescent when discussing his commercial work. He has a special fondness for news programs, and his company, Via Worldwide, has consulted on the evening news shows for CBS and NBC, as well as international news programs for Germany’s RTL, Britain’s Sky Broadcasting, and the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera.

Ridgway’s work on news shows goes well beyond graphics to influence the very structure of the program.

“We start with frame one of the newscast and determine how everything will be delivered,” he said. “We’re responsible for everything that’s not footage or an anchor speaking … we work with the producers to determine how and when (an element) is used.”

This all-encompassing approach to creative design is called “visual architecture,” and it’s something that Ridgway has taught for the last 20 years to students of his broadcast design class at UCLA, as well as to students at the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, and the International Film School in Cologne, Germany. One important difference for current students, he notes, is that television now demands that more and more information be packed into shorter and shorter periods of time.

“In 1975, we would make top of the hour graphics that were 10, 15 and 30 seconds long,” he said. “Modern audiences would never stand for that.”

If Ridgway loves teaching, he’s also shown his gratitude for the education he received at ASU. He’s served on the Herberger College of Fine Arts advisory board since 1995, and has funded the Sylvia Orman Scholarship, which benefits art school students, for more than a decade. He has spent time mentoring Sun Devil photography students one on one. He was recognized for these efforts in 1996 with an Alumni Achievement Award from the Alumni Association.

The Orman Scholarship is named after his photography teacher at Central High School in Phoenix, who was herself an alumna of ASU; her example of mentoring students and encouraging them to mentor others has inspired him to give back to his alma mater.

“The kind of education I received shouldn’t be taken for granted,” he said. “I was fortunate to attend ASU — it had so much to offer.”

Ridgway says that the university is one of his “important long-term relationships.”

“I have this joke about ASU: I’m always saying it’s my university, it’s mine. I’m responsible for it,” he said.

“I think everyone should do that with their alma mater.”
It’s that living embodiment of one’s passions that distinguishes a person, he notes, and defines their personal brand.

“How you dress and act, what you do is all part of your brand,” he said. “My brand is rich, but simple, clear and direct. The brand I seek for my company … is the concept of ‘we’re here today, and we’ll be here tomorrow.’ I plan to be here for many more years.”