Branding
Just as Encore's is a starburst, Starz's signature logo is a star. In the 1994 launch design, the star was composed of two stars, one large one and one smaller one a silhouette inside the first star. In the 2005 relaunch, this version of the Starz logo was abandoned for a hand-drawn star shooting upwards. In April 2008, the logo was redone with a starburst inserted in-between the "a" and "r" in a lowercase Starz logo. This change was also applied for all of Starz's multiplex logos. On April 2011, the 2008 logo is all orange.
The original on-air graphics were styled like a movie theater. The main network ID featured seats opening (by themselves), various theater imagery, and even images resembling the Caduceus. The word "STARZ!" in the network logo was styled after 1930's-era movie poster typography. Starz! also heavily included its designation of "Encore 8" in their graphics, even after the numbering system was abandoned for "an encore network" (a branding Starz! also used, though sparingly) in 1997. The Feature Presentation bumpers also heavily used the movie theater themes (here spotlights and film canisters) and the "Encore 8" name. This look was ultimately abandoned in May 2002.
In 2002, Starz! introduced the InfoBar, a bar that appears on the bottom of the screen during breaks and at the end of movies. The original purpose was to promote upcoming programming. In the same year, Starz! underwent a major on-air branding revamp, changing from the "theater" look that had been used since the day the network signed on to a look based around natural themes (particularly water). The new look did not carry over to any of the spin-off channels, despite that, Starz! introduced a 7-note fanfare as a musical motif. All of the 2002 branding (excluding the fanfare, which was remixed) was dropped in 2005. In 2005, Starz began branding its feature film content with a semi-transparent version of logo appearing in the lower-right corner of the screen. This practice was discontinued after the April 2008 revamp; instead, a bright white logo (all channels) and a bright orange (Starz Kids & Family HD only) logo, respectively, are in use as of July 2011.
Former Starz president Tom Southwick explained his channel's apparent identity crisis: "Our research found that a large number of our viewers did not know which channel they were watching when they tuned in, particularly if they were channel surfing and came in after the start of the film. We do not use the bug continuously or on all our films. But we need to get attribution for the films we run, and for which we pay hefty fees to the studios. The situation has grown worse as additional premium channels have launched in the past few years and many viewers subscribe to more than one package." Another part of the relaunch is a revamped InfoBar, whose purpose was expanded to tell viewers they were watching "one of the six Starz channels", promote events on the other networks, (example: the InfoBar on Starz promotes "Stand Up or Shut Up" on Starz Comedy) and display entertainment headlines from The Daily Variety's website. Encore has also adapted a similar version of the InfoBar for its networks, and is still in use today. After the channel's April 2008 rebrand, the InfoBar began to once again only serve to promote programming on the main Starz channel, while on its multiplex networks, the InfoBar only serves as a network ID.
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