Toronto's Cuppa Coffee Animation has launched a new broadcast design department to handle what has become a key portion of the company's business.

"It's more to formalize that broadcast design is one big chunk of what we do and concentrate on," says Cuppa founder Adam Shaheen. "We've done a ton of broadcast design stuff over the years. Bearing in mind the amount of stuff we are doing now, and a more concerted effort on my behalf to really push that side of the business, it just seemed right to formalize an actual department."

Over the years, Shaheen says other broadcast design companies have often called on Cuppa to do components of animation the originating shops weren't equipped to handle.

Formalizing a broadcast department, he says, sends a signal to clients who normally would have gone through the other company that Cuppa is set up to handle all their needs through a dedicated department.

"I think they look for a specializing company where the bulk of the work they do is broadcast design," says Shaheen. "The [clients] we are working with probably feel that much more safe in our hands in that there is a department that is concentrating on nothing but their broadcast design work."

Shaheen says, too, that Cuppa's continuing work in longer format and commercial productions can only help the final broadcast design product.

"I think the interesting thing that we still bring to the table is that we have our fingers in all sorts of other pies, which very much rubs off on our inspiration for broadcast design or any of the other facets of what we do.

"The perception with broadcast design is that it's so specialist, and I think mistakenly so. Once you are able to move around that world and know how it works, and how clients are looking to brand their network or station, I think it can be more of an open book than it is right now."

Cuppa Coffee has already proven it can compete on the world stage of broadcast design, winning more than 50 international awards over the years. Its list of international broadcast clients includes ProSieben, Cult Network Italia, Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Turner Classic Movies, The Cartoon Network and TNN. Closer to home, the likes of Teletoon and MuchMusic have sought its expertise.

Cuppa's Warren Brown and Hector Herrera are heading up the new department. * -www.cuppacoffee.com