The brief
In the second half of 2019, I worked on a rebrand project for the British Animation Awards, including a new website design and build – much of this focusing on promoting awareness and entries for the 2020 awards.
Following on from this, I’ve been working on the design of the printed event programme for the 2020 awards ceremony, held on 12th March at the BFI, South Bank, London.
The design
The awards programme is an eighty page, magazine style format, including sponsor ads, information about the award categories and nominees, as well as a showcase of prizes, which are all bespoke artworks designed by some of the animation artists themselves. Sponsors and attendees include famous names such as Aardman and Cartoon Network, but the awards also make a point of showcasing new student work.
To give the programme a lovely bespoke art feel, I commissioned Carys Tait at Carys-Ink to illustrate the front and back cover. Carys came up with a fantastic, edgy, ‘rock’ style, and very cool sheep character, complete with Union Jack slacks, tattoo-style tee-shirt, jacket and ruff. The front cover illustration was also used on posters at the event. (It’s only taken us six years to collaborate on a project!)
A printed format is naturally very ‘non-moving’, so, considering this is a celebration of all things animation, I came up with the idea to have a short flick book animation at the bottom right hand corner of the programme (above). Illustrations were done by Sam Grimwade at Cloth Cat Animation and it gives a touch of extra fun that readers may only notice after reading through a few times.
Three photos above courtesy of Black and Whiteley Photography
The result
The resulting BAA 2020 event programme was printed on uncoated paper stock by Taylor Brothers Bristol and feedback from the event has been really positive.