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.

The 3D artists we brought in explained that when they Play & Explore it looks like wireframes or sculpting, code, or vertices. This completely opened up the playing field, and we brought on artists from multiple disciplines to be part of the development process.
Animators, developers, and musicians from all of our BUCK offices brought their point of view on the three principles through their craft and expertise. This turned the system into a celebration of craft, the creative process, and the tools used by all our different artists.

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.

Credits

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