Written by:
George Sexton – Creative Lead
Ben Gallagher – Creative Lead

At 64 Million Artists they believe everyone is creative, and when we use our creativity we can make positive change in our lives and the world around us. Every January, they release a different creative prompt on each day of the month.

All of the challenge ideas come from creative people around the country including musicians, chefs, comedians, sports stars, authors and… you!

This year we at Hamilton-Brown took the challenge one step further and worked with 64 Million Artists to develop a new brand for the whole campaign.

The theme we went for centred around ‘The Marks We Make’, with a focus on the human aspect of the challenge and the idea that everyone can take part whoever or wherever they are. 

There’s a certainly level of creativity in everything we touch, see, smell, taste and hear that makes us human and we want to celebrate these traits. ‘The Marks We Make’ are about the physical lasting impressions from every simple pen stroke to fine art painting, from a signature, to a doodle on a notepad.

Everyone can be creative on some level, every mark can tell a story and every human has a story to tell which this festival aims to do.

We evolved the existing logo to showcase the very marks that hold the whole campaign together. 

This ‘active’ logo allows the festival to have a more digital first feeling and really push the presence online. Ensuring the active logo can easily be adapted to partner with any topic of discussion or theme from within the campaign.

Along with the logo the chosen colour palette for this years event was been rooted in bold, energetic and exciting festival based colours. Themed around the diversity of people, their tastes and different cultures.

These colours were chosen specifically for their accessibility values and tested to ensure that the 1 in 20 people affected by colour-blindness could also see the selected colours with more clarity.

To further build on the inclusivity and diverse nature of the campaign the chose typeface was selected to have a variable output, to give us a wider selection of weights to work with and build on the visual dynamic.

The illustrations we created were all quick and simple marks, that could easily represent a story, a feeling or emotion. More importantly they could be created by anyone, with any tool. 

Which is the beauty of the challenge and why it relates to how anyone and everyone can participate without fear. These simple marks formed the building blocks of the brand and gave a real vibrancy to the output.