🏆 28 Day Challenge: Prize Awards - Flow Creative

Last week we officially wrapped up our 28 Day Branding Challenge with the first of two award ceremony events hosted on zoom! We're delighted to share the winners of our second round of Agency Awards today, as selected by our partner agency Flow Creative who joined us on the challenge as mentors and to set one of three creative briefs for Inkygoodness Collective.

Massive thanks to the FLOW Creative team: Creative Director Karl Doran Art Director Winston Tsang and 2D Animator & Motion Designer James Lawson for their fantastic support, time and energy as mentors and award judges for our 28 Day Branding Challenge, who kindly joined us live on zoom earlier this month to announce their chosen artists for commendations, runners-up and one official 1st Prize Winner for a commission!

Flow is a multi-award winning, brand and motion studio. Combining brand strategy, storytelling and motion design to create brands and stories people care about. They create brands that move, and stories that move people. Because brands are not static any more, they flow.

The Brief

The mental health charity: Mind are launching a new campaign, focusing on the theme of connection- in terms of teenage mental health. You will need to create the visual style for this new campaign that will be used in an animated short film.

Tasked with creating a hero illustration, series of spots and gif animation for the campaign; our artists and illustrators started their projects with mood boards before progressing to sketches and colour development.

Illustrators were invited to show their thought process and the development of their idea: Is it character based, or abstract? What is the feeling you're trying to create in the audience? How does this style achieve that? What do you want the viewer to think / do when they see this?

Flow Creative joined us for a live zoom to kick off the project, providing an overview of the studio and their work, before we dived into the brief! The team were on hand for support and feedback, guiding and mentoring our artists every step of the way to ensure they understood the brief and deliverables, and nailed their ideation before progressing through to sketches, colour drafts and final delivery!

Karl was kind enough to share a few words for each of their selected artists alongside reflections and overall feedback on the standard of work submitted for their brief.

Here's what Karl Doran, Creative Director at Flow Creative had to say:

We’ve been blown away by the amazing range of ideas and styles and everyone really has done a fantastic job! It was a challenging brief dealing with a complex subject, and it’s been awesome to see so many different ways of approaching it. The ideation, visual research, copy and messaging ideas, creative concepts and artwork development have all been really impressive. It was really hard to pick winners when there were so many great ideas. Well done to everyone who took part, really good work!

🏆 Art Directors Awards: Flow Creative

For outstanding creative work produced during the challenge, Flow Creative chose ONE artist to award a live project commission. Each art director also chose a runner up artist for 1:1 Portfolio Crits. Plus others for commendations.

And the winners are...

🥇1st Prize

Illustrator Geraldine S. scooped the top prize of an illustration commission with Flow Creative. Congratulations! Flow will be collaborating with Ger on a live project later this year.

Here's what Karl Doran, Creative Director had to say about her wonderful work for the Mind Campaign Brief:

• We loved the surreal weirdness of the characters, and the thought that went into the designs but also the messaging and the little stories that they tell. The main strap-line of - Life’s better Connected - is excellent, and the variations on it are all great too - Connect with Pals / COnnect with Hobbies / Connect to Music - all of these simple joys in life. 

• The characters really bring it to life too, and add a sense of humour and fun. The combination of black and white characters, with bright colour backgrounds and type works really well, it has instant appeal and is easy to access. 
• We can all relate to one or more of the characters, they are all of us. Works fantastically on - OOH / socials / merch. Excellent work Ger, well done! We're looking forward to finding the right project for you later this year!

🥈Runners-Up

Karl, Winston and James also selected three runners-up for 1:1 Portfolio Crits for their outstanding work on the Casatera Brief! We will be introducing you to Flow Creative later this week via email early next week to organise your 1:1 sessions. 

Congratulations to Fiorella Quaranta Nat Ellis and Laura McHugh !

Here's what the team had to say about your projects...   

Runner-up Fiorella Quaranta

• With this one we really liked that it focused on one aspect of mental health in relation to social media use, and was very clear in its focus. 
• The visual style and the messaging worked together to challenge perceptions on how we present our lives online and the reality of them. 

• There was some clever ways to visualise this, using a mobile device as a window into another world, or a portal into reality / a pretend reality. 
• The sketchy illustrations and hand drawn type worked well with the idea of honesty and authenticity.

Runner-up Nat Ellis 

• Some really good concepts for the illustrations, a lot of thought into the concepts and how to visualise issues around kids and technology and how it affects their mental health. 
• There is a kids book illustrations style look that feels easy to understand while dealing with complex issues. 

• The dog with the logo as a lead is fantastic. The final designs look like a campaign you would see in the world and works really well on OOH / socials etc. Feels relevant for kids, but has broad appeal too.

Runner-up Laura McHugh 

• With this one we liked the thinking around the clear, strong call to action - Pause / Reflect / Connect - the hand drawn type for each of these worked well too, and made for a nice brand composition. 
• The character style fits with these well too - the designs, colours and halftone textures have a retro feel to them but still feel fresh and contemporary too. 
• Nice animation of each of the hero designs, you can definitely see it working in a campaign aimed at young people.

Well done everyone!

🥉Commendations

Finally, Karl Doran also wanted to take the opportunity to commend a further three artists whose work really impressed and stood out! Massive well done to  Alice Ferns Aleksandra Jevremovic and Cornelie de Hann.

Here's a few words from Karl Doran, Creative Director on their commended artists...   

Commended: Alice Ferns 

• We really liked the compositions with this one, the final designs felt very fresh and cool, but also quite calming and relatable. 
• The character designs are playful and feel inclusive and friendly, the type works well with the illustrations, and the overall look is considered and effective. 
• Feels like it would connect with a young audience, but not alienate anyone else too.

Commended: Aleksandra Jevremovic

• We were intrigued to see where the huge plants in this one were going, and think it ended up in a really interesting idea. 
• Using the oversized plants to represent the connection between us and nature, or us and everyone else was nice, but also the 

• Rooted in Empathy was a nice line. It felt like the natural forms weren’t just being used to represent nature, but in a more conceptual way to symbolise growth, support, connection. 
• The visual style is relatable and accessible, and can see it working well in a campaign like this.

Commended: Cornelie de Haan  

• We adored this! A bit weird and surreal, but also felt like it would appeal to a lot of people. 
• The combination of hand drawn bird people doing various activities and the textures of nature felt like a nice balance and fitted with the message of Jump IRL - which was interesting. 

• Jump into real life - stop scrolling and start living - experiencing nature and weirdness and spreading your wings to become a weird bird person. Brilliant!

We are absolutely delighted with the outcome of our 28 Day Branding Challenge and would love to invite you to congratulate our chosen artists by Flow Creative for their incredible work produced for their Mind Campaign Brief in the comments below!

Stay tuned for our next round-up of Agency Award winners as selected by Art Directors Julia Donchuk and Rick Hedof dropping early next week.

On Tuesday 4th June we will share the results of our Illustration Awards as chosen by our Masterclass artists & mentors MURUGIAH . Katie Lukes and Franz Lang before one final post early next week for our Inkygoodness 28 Day Challenge Community Awards, as selected by Inkygoodness Collective co-host Luke McConkey and me!

Finally a shout out to all participating artists and illustrators and our wonderful Inkygoodness Collective members for getting involved. We are super proud of all of you for taking on the 28 Day Branding Challenge and can't wait to see what you do next. Thank you for joining us!