We Are Playgrounds
2022
After Covid forced them to go virtual two years in a row, We Are Playgrounds wanted the inaugural in-person launch of The Art Department Festival to open with a bang and a brand new visual identity to celebrate the return to IRL.
As an event that draws creatives from the world of concept art and design from a host of different media (film, animations, games, etc) they wanted to develop an identity and flexible design toolkit to encapsulate all of these different disciplines in The Art Department Festival’s visuals.
That meant designing everything from the opening titles to onsite signage, environmental graphics, lanyards, the web and social assets — the whole kit and caboodle.
Drawing on inspiration from the festival’s range of artistic styles and disciplines (game art, VFX, and picture books, to name only a few) — we developed a comprehensive system that would connect with the audience of diverse creatives.
Creative challenges are project specific, but our creative process, in the abstract, adheres to this loose framework of first principles:
-Think & Wonder
-Play & Explore
-Make & Make Better
These principles apply to an overall approach as well as specific tasks like character design.
First, we think about an idea and wonder what it could be. The idea is soft and floating in the ether. If we hold onto it long enough in our mind’s eye it becomes tactile and something we can play with. Turn it on its head. Make it green. Poke and prod and explore what it can do.
Once we begin to get answers to these basic questions we are ready to start making — working on details — refining, and making it better.
Design System Inspo
We approached this almost as an Art School project: everyone had a seat at the table and could explore and express what the three principles looked like and meant to them through design and exploration.
A lot of the designs we were exploring at the time were done by 2D designers and illustrators so their association with the Play & Explore principle was rooted in pencils, paper, paint, and sketches.
Antfood all the Way
Our pals at Antfood are geeky, hands-on collaborators who, like us, are willing to test, try, scrap, and experiment throughout the process. They approached the audio task exactly how we approached the visuals, by making sure each scene felt like a surprising new space, and every transition was treated as a creative process unto itself.
Sound is integral to every project we work on, and we wanted our frequent collaborators at Antfood to enjoy it and tell the story of their process in their own way.
BUCK
Executive Creative Director
Vincent Lammers
Executive Producer
Chance Woodward
Creative Director
Richard Gray
Art Director
Fabrizio Lenci
Simon Buijs
Animation Director
Daniel Rodrigues
Joe Brooks
CG Supervisor
Joao Rema
Senior Producer
Carolina Brandão
Jamey Kitchens
Production Coordinator
Bénédicte Gold-Dalg
Design
Anna Moessnang
Bernd Bousard
Christo Silveira
Dan Cantelm
Léa Zhang
Mijke Coebergh
Rasmus Stenberg
Thea Glad
Yana Abramova
2D Animation/After Effects
Andrés Cuevas
Dan Cantelm
Jardeson Rocha
Jaume Mestre
Johan Eriksson
Laurentiu Lunic
2D Animation/Cel
Thea Glad
Tinghe Yang
Creative Technologist
Rozi Zhu
CG Artists
Beatrice Viguier
Charlotte Vallet
Manon Sailly
Sonal Jadhav
Client
Music & Sound Design
Antfood
ECD
Pedro Botsaris
Lead Composer & Sound Designer
Charley van Veldhoven
Composer & Sound Designer
Rory White
Producers
Alette Boogman
Marina Kagan
