Re-brand announcement card

Singposium flyer

Schools Prom flyer

National Festival flyer

Brand announcement card; Schools Prom flyer; National Festival flyer

Business cards

National Festival programme

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It was also brilliant to engage with many of the young people who thrive on the opportunities that the charity provides to perform at work class venues during the week long event. You can find out more about Music for Youth here.

Staff tee. Photo: Alick Cotterill

Symphony Hall

Symphony Hall entrance

Wristband

Programmes ready for the taking

Tees and hoodies

Bags!

Symphony Hall on stage. Photo: Alick Cotterill

Tech team backstage in black logo tees

Programme backstage

Checking the programme

Big screen in the shopping centre (!)

On stage

Deep in the programme

Rock, Pop & Urban at O2 Academy. Photo: Alick Cotterill

Defined by the D&AD as one of their most successful campaigns and events to-date, several of the Research Studios team enjoyed an afternoon of seeing the next wave of new young creative industry talent and the opportunity to meet with educators and industry in support of the invaluable work the D&AD, an educational charity, undertake.

Perhaps one the most successful elements was the D&AD Student Awards newspaper which was free to all enabling the charity to give more space and exposure to the successful students’ work and reach greater numbers with its free distribution.

More images below and click here for more information about the D&AD Student Awards 2010.
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With a client publication brief to give more space and impact to each category, bring vitality to the publication, add context to how important the awards are and get the message out further and wider than before; a newspaper seemed the perfect approach this year. The empty dispensers and much thumbed copies clutched by the students, award attendees, passers by in Spitalfields Market (London) and very happy clients at the D&AD gave us a warm fuzzy feeling of a job well done.

More images below and click here for more information about the D&AD Student Awards 2010.
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The Times front cover

While we are on the subject of newspapers, we wanted to show one of Research Studios’ more iconic newspaper projects of recent years – The Times London.

Research Studios completed a twelve-month task in 2006/7 of designing a new visual language for The Times as it moved from broadsheet to tabloid format, which included the creation of a new font called Times Modern, a major restyling of the navigation of the newspaper, a new masthead, new crest, iconography, new weather icons, style-sheet layouts, suggestions for picture use/editing and creating a total tool-kit with which the editorial team could continue The Times’ tradition of telling breaking news stories in a compelling way and continuing to set the visual and typographical agenda.


The new Times Modern typeface (worked on by Brody and other Research Studios’ employees) encapsulated the paper’s heritage while adapting to the demands of the new compact format. Like The Times’ previous typeface, Times Classic, Times Modern was designed as a bespoke type family. The Times is the only newspaper to create and use bespoke fonts, all other UK newspapers purchase ready-to-use fonts.


The project was led by Ben Preston, then Deputy Editor of The Times, in partnership with Research Studios’ founder Neville Brody who acted as Art Director. Neville was formerly art director of The Face, and lead designer on Actuel, City Limits, Arena and several issues of the recent Arena Homme + magazines. He also worked on the redesign of Times2 supplement in 2005.

The new Times masthead

Times modern

Newspaper spread

The Times Comment

The Times World

The Times Register

The Times Sport

Sport spread

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Neville Brody and Research Studios have collaborated on the 33rd edition of mens’ fashion title Arena Homme+ with Editor in Chief Jo-Ann Furniss and her team.

The inspiration for this edition came from the notions of time and travel. In her editor’s letter Furniss comments “The initial premise of this edition of Arena Homme+ was ‘Home and Away’ – not the cheap Australian soap sponsored by BrightHouse, but the notion of where many of the contributors began and where the have travelled to, both in their lives and their careers, both literally and metaphorically.”

Brody has designed a custom font ‘RS Champions’ for this edition which is juxtaposed with supporting font Mercury to create Neo-Classical layouts and story introduction pages. Cover star Oliver Sim of the XX was shot by David Sims and resulting image combined with simple, clean and structured typography. Brody reinstated the original Arena logo as a personal nod to his point of beginning as the original Art Director of the sister title in 1986.

Brody was supported by Research Studios’ designer George Sheldrake and project manager Phil Rodgers in the design and production of the magazine.

Edition 33 features work by an eclectic mix of internationally renowned photographers, stylists and writers including Don McCullin, David Sims, Bruce Weber, Juergen Teller, Panos Yiapanis, Alasdair McLellan, Willy Vanderperre, Olivier Rizzo, Angelo Pennetta, Jane How, Jon Savage, Paul Morley and Laura Houseley.

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Neville Brody and Research Studios have collaborated closely with the BBC to redesign their online Global Visual Language (GVL) and take the organisation and its users into a more compelling digital space. At the heart of the project was the joint desire to bring joined-up cross platform concepts and experiences to users of bbc.co.uk and bbc.com now and into the future.

Having been appointed after winning a competitive pitch in August 2009 by Head of User Experience and Design, Brownyn Van Der Mere, Research Studios worked closely with project lead Ben Gammon and teams gathered from across the BBC. Neville and the team have collaborated in a spectrum of design, interaction and strategic challenges. From working together on the strategy and philosophy of the project to the nuts and bolts of a GVL (typography, colour palette, iconography etc). Further work was contributed to look at interaction and developing compelling experiences within the new GVL. During the project Research Studios also worked with internal teams on News and Sport, Homepage, Search and Search Products, Embedded Media Player (EMP) Global Navigation and Mobile. The studio are currently in the process of consolidating all the work into a styleguide that can then be used across the organisation.

Neville Brody, creative director of Research Studios, comments;

“We are very proud to have helped create the new Global Visual Language for the BBC. This is probably the best job in the world! To have been so intrinsically involved in changing and growing the design and philosophy of the BBC’s digital offering has been amazing. To be asked to do this is a huge honour. The BBC is seen globally as a trusted source of information, and as a beacon of engineering and story-telling excellence.

Over the last few months we have worked a huge amount of hours together and produced hundreds of in-depth explorations in order to arrive at what appears to be the simplest of solutions. Together with the BBC we have, to-date, established the central philosophy and core building blocks or DNA, and, we hope, to continue to work closely with the organisation in depth across differing and different BBC sites in order to expand the language and establish its scalability.”

The new GVL will not be an overnight rollout, but will begin to appear across core properties within bbc.co.uk over the next few months. The resources involved are massive and managing the process along with daily demands of the organisation are a challenging one but, Research Studios are confident that having worked in such a collaborative and inclusive way with internal teams, the BBC will be able to adopt, embrace and take forward the new GVL as it develops internally.

Much more on this story will be added over the coming weeks so check back here for the latest.
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Global and local navigation

Grid structure

Selected fonts

Baseline grid

News page template

Drawers device and typographic styling

Colour wheel

Gradient usage guidelines

Neutral wheel

Colour usage guidelines

Embedded Media Player

Embedded Media Player

Carousels

Dynamic content module and text links

Typography over images

Iconography

BBC development work in progress

Research Studios has worked with Bonfire Snowboarding since 2005 on a range of projects from Branding to designing fabric patterns. Having designed their overarching logo and visual language in the first year, each year we develop this to give them a fresh look whilst retaining the solid foundations we originally created. Together we have established a brand language that is pioneering for Bonfire as it sits outside the typical style for the snowboarding sector. Research Studios consults with the business on all aspects of their collateral including apparel labeling, hang tags, sales graphics and website to ensure they are on brand.

We collaborate with Bonfire to create each seasons ad campaign: after agreeing the concept together, a member of the Bonfire team shoots the photography and Research Studios creates the final adverts, 2008/09 versions below.

We also work with Bonfire’s apparel designer to create custom patterns for the fabrics, and ‘Bonfire’ embroideries which are featured on garments.

View the Bonfire season 08/09 work >
View the Bonfire season 07/08 work >
View the Bonfire season 06/07 work >
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Bonfire Branding

Bonfire Advertising

Fabric Pattern Design

Embroideries