Line, form and chaos: our design for the Shine School Media Awards 2024
Richard Chapman
Specialist in brand and web design for financial services, interior design and real estate firms
This time was personal!
We’ve been working on design for the Shine School Media Awards over ten years, creating the logo, website and a ton of event print and digital graphics for the awards day itself. We love the project – and it’s always so enjoyable. This is a piece of work my team and I feel very proud of, not least because encouraging young people who design, write and edit a school newspaper or magazine feels like something our young selves would have so appreciated.
However, I took over as Chair of the awards in 2023, and as a badge of pride, I really wanted this year’s design work to stand out and feel truly fantastic.
I like to think we achieved the aim. Back in the spring when the team ask me what I want to do with this year’s design theme, I left it quite open. However, in 2023, we used a loopy, unusual typeface designed by foundry F37 in their ‘font playground’. As we began this year, I looked again at their selection and saw a very different sort of design which was all jagged lines and angles. I really loved the total contrast with the year before and suggested we use that as a starting point.
So here we are – our work for Shine 2024.
Moves like jagged
Having chosen this typeface (called Apex), we set about applying its sharp angles and negative spaces as inspiration for everything we did this year for Shine. We deconstructed the typeface, re-drew the shapes, extended, expanded, squashed, deleted, concentrated – and left space bare.
The first things we needed to actually design for the event was a cover concept for the 24-page winners’ annual as well as a huge sign that would form the backdrop to the awards day. Dropped from a height of seven metres, it would completely cover the ancient wooden backdrop of Stationers’ Hall.
It turns out that in creating the concept for the Shine School Media Awards each year, having a physical, print design end-product in mind as we begin, is handy. This real life object both sets a useful parameter with the real-life rigour of, say, a single sheet of A4 (or wraparound cover), while giving us freedom to be both loose and concise, all at the same time. In this instance we had both print and massive sign to work on. But – first things first.
This year’s winners’ annual was printed, as ever, by key sponsors PurePrint with paper supplied by Denmaur. We had the incredible luxury of being able to use the uncoated crisp tones of GFSmith Colorplan for the cover, while the inside pages were printed on Arctic Volume White. The cover used two Pantone colours and two foils (one matt, one high gloss), creating a truly dynamic end result that we absolutely loved.
Orange blossoms
The colour orange – or more accurately mandarin – has been such a huge part of our work for Shine this year. Having played around with different tones, this choice was a hit right away with the Shine team and then suddenly ended up being ‘the signature thing’. It was part of a completely new colour palette we created this year – a blend of a hot red, sharp magenta, creamy yellow and an ashy pale blue. This heady mix served to deliver the statement and impact such an event needs.
One of the ideas we’ve settled on in recent years for Shine is that we can wipe the slate clean, more or less, each time. Creating something completely different from the prior year is the way we approach the work. Without a specific team or marketing director to please, we only have ourselves and the work we did last year to out-do, or contrast with. We’re unleashed, shall we say, and able to be as off-the-rails creatively as the students to enter the awards, who in essence areour client.
The (literally) biggest thing we designed this year was a huge backdrop sign for Stationers’ Hall. At six metres by four this was to say the least significant. And it was very, very orange. Our idea was to make a massive ‘distance impact’ in all the images of the day, and in particular work close-up when our Shine winners received their awards.
The end result really pops off every image taken that day, creating not merely backdrop, but atmosphere, which was then backed up by screens displaying the names of each winner and highly commended student as they were announced.
So yes, it was personal: a pop of distinctive, self-initiated design we’re really proud of.