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Completed 2022
Animated Brand Identity
Agency: Flatpack Creative
Ten day arts and live performance festival running from 20th – 29th May 2022
The Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival comes back every year with a brand new look – the challenge with this project was to create a fresh visual identity whilst staying true to the core of the festival’s aesthetic to maintain that all-important degree of familiarity with its audience base.
D&G’s team of designers first created the cover for their 2022 brochure. This laid down the groundwork for this iteration’s visual approach – and all subsequent motion graphic materials were to be based off of this to ensure a cohesive overall aesthetic. So, I did what I do best; examined the visual reference to such obsession that it’s visual identity became my own identity.
Alongside a comprehensive style guide document, this was the cover I was sent as a starting point for the animated ident. Straight away something caught my eye; the great big swirl that formed the structure of just about the entire poster. So naturally it felt like this would be a great starting point for any of my designs. A further vote of confidence in the ‘swirl idea’ was that the D&G Festival’s logo itself featured the very same swirl.
And so it was set; the swirl would serve as the central structure to my approach when it came to any motion graphics and animation.
The central ident (an animated sequence that typically reveals a logo) was the first thing I tackled: once that was nailed I’d be able to base accompanying assets off of its design.
The final result is very similar to the original poster in the sense that the swirl is used as a vessel to show off the performers; except here we’re able to go all the way and feature moving image inside.
It’s kept highly energetic; firstly be having the swirl ‘draw on’ – this doesn’t just engage your eye in but also gives it a certain organic feel; playing on the fact that Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival is the biggest rural performing arts festival in Scotland.
Secondly, the bold snap transitions of colour really turn it into a modern and flashy piece of animation – no too-tired 80s crossfading here!
Keen to keep the swirl as a common thread throughout all the motion graphics and animation, I found ways to compellingly include it across all assets. From a transition device, to fullscreen interstitials and chyrons – the swirl and ‘swirly draw on’ animations we central to achieving Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival’s 2022 ident.
I also built a level of flexibility into the project that allowed for social versions – in all of their glorious resizes specs – to be produced at the same standard as the original 16×9 assets.
And after that feel free to have a look at the Dumfries & Galloway Arts Festival website if you’d like to find out more (how could you resist after scrolling through all this?!)
