Turley, madly, deeply

Last year we won a three way pitch to name and rebrand what was formerly ‘Turley Associates’, along with creating a launch campaign aimed at existing and potential new clients, which would raise awareness of the new direction the company was taking.

The original brief was to raise the profile of all their 12+ services, with the introduction of sub-brands, whilst retaining a 'one company approach'.

“We challenged the brief at pitch stage, as we believed the two requirements were at odds with each other. Our recommendation was for a workshop with key decision makers to explore and address both the company structure and core messaging.” Explains Simon, our MD.

“We wanted to find out more about the people, culture and services as well as how their clients felt about the Turley brand before starting creative”.

Our approach to the tender (which didn’t include creative) was liked, and the workshop was commissioned, along with a series of telephone interviews with key clients. The report outlining our findings, from the interviews and the key outcomes of the workshop, steered the project in a new direction.

“The session lasted a full day, and was pretty full on! Everyone got involved which was brilliant, plenty of lively debate and interaction with key directors and service heads.” Recalls our Creative Director, Kevin “We were able to refine the 12+ services to a core of six, with the remaining ones being categorized as support services to this core.”

The final report recommended a more subtle approach to sub branding of the six services and an evolution of the Turley Associates logo, dropping the Associates and refining the logotype to a more simple yet sophisticated mark. A visual language, which included colour coding, supported this approach.

“The aim was agreed as repositioning ‘Turley’ as a bold, forward thinking, creative planning company whose huge depth of knowledge across its six core services [planning, design, heritage, economics, sustainability and engagement] provides added benefit and insight for their clients.” notes Simon “The website was already underway with a separate digital agency as the rebrand started, however tothepoint worked with their web team to ensure the new website was on brand for the new look Turley.”

The rebrand was communicated with a launch campaign entitled ‘A different perspective’, which not only introduced the world to Turley’s new look but also reminded people of the knowledge and insight they provide to clients. We developed the theme and applied the creative across various materials, from literature, an email campaign and press advertising (including Estates Gazette, Property Week, Planning and Retail Week ) to a promotional launch video.

To make sure the new brand maintains consistency a set of thorough guidelines where produced, demonstrating brand usage and this has been supplied with a range of indesign and word templates. This toolkit helps Turley’s in house design team to implement the huge volume of materials they need to generate on a daily basis, efficiently and consistently.

“Tothepoint has done an excellent job, first in teasing out the right brief and then in bringing our visual representation up to date, clarifying our offer and developing our messaging. Early feedback from across the company, and outside, has been great and we look forward to rolling out our new branding and offer over the coming months.” Says Mike Best, Executive Director at Turley.

The brand and website are now live – with the rest of the collateral being rolled out over the next few weeks.

www.turley.co.uk

Bringing Informa to life

When Informa – one of the world’s leading academic, training, events and conference providers – came to us asking for help to create an engaging corporate video to bring the Informa brand to life, we knew it was going to be an interesting but challenging experience…

It’s been a great project to work on as it’s had a bit of everything – scripting, music research and editing as well as illustrations, animations and a search for the right voice over artist. This was vital in providing the right tone and pace and we even re-recorded this to ensure the timing was spot on. The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony proved to be the perfect backing track for the final video, although I think it’s safe to say that if we never hear it again it will be too soon!

The brief

Our brief was to add personality and fun to an otherwise corporate brand look, convey the diverse areas in which Informa operates, as well as its past, present and future ambitions and integrate both animated illustrations and video material into the final result – quite a lot to consider.

The first thing we needed to do was come up with the concept and style that summed up everything Informa does – not an easy task when the company spans a vast array of sectors and whose roots go back to the 18th century. So, it was a pretty big challenge to find an overall style and draft a script that summed up Informa’s ethos of bringing ‘knowledge to life’.

The process

We came up with the original idea of ‘the journey of the dot’, taking the dot from the ‘i’ in the logo to create illustrations and working them into an initial storyboard. From this, we created an animated demo to help define the style and developed this into the final version. The dot gave the video personality and allowed us to create the story around it – an engaging and quirky way of bringing the Informa brand to life.

part of the initial storyboard showing the progress of the Informa dot

We art directed a video shoot on location, filming Lloyd’s List – a core part of Informa’s business and the world’s oldest, continuously running daily newspaper – coming off the printing press. Not only that, but to communicate Informa’s multi-platform solutions we also filmed one of our very own staff downloading the latest edition on an iPad through the Lloyd’s List app.

Finally, to ensure the video had the right balance of animations and live footage, we also edited supplied footage of Informa’s conferences, exhibitions and ‘a day in the life’ of Informa employees for use in the final video.

Our head of Digital, Ben Jackson who was responsible for all the animation and post-production work said:

"This was both fun and challenging to work on – Informa is a really interesting company with an incredibly wide range of brands and specialisms, so we had to cover a lot of ground. Keeping to the target four minutes meant quite a few bits ended up on the cutting room floor (perhaps we'll release a 'Directors Cut' one day!). We also had to make sure we kept the pace up through the whole piece. Whilst the original plan was for a totally graphic based animation, we found that over a certain length, adding footage helped avoid 'animation fatigue' – this of course meant we had to beg, borrow or just go out and film it – which presented a very different set of challenges! All the graphics were created from scratch in Adobe Illustrator – these were then imported into Adobe AfterEffects where the entire piece (animation, video and audio) was created."

Informa is delighted with the final video and so are we. Graham Jerome-Ball, Director of Brand and Communications at Informa, said:

“The Informa corporate video had to achieve a number of objectives, include our history, our ethos, our people, our products and services and wrap it all up in a memorable 4 minute time-frame. No pressure there then but ToThePoint rose to the challenge and provided considered and innovative input at all stages. This project could easily have stalled but TTP team kept focused and gently prodded me along when needed and, most importantly, listened to our needs as they changed and multiplied during the project lifespan. Creative, friendly, communicative, on budget and a sense of humour – what more could you ask? 

What more indeed, thanks Graham!

See the video in full here or view on our website
the video can also be seen on the Informa homepage

Informa – bringing knowledge to life



use the 'expand' icon in the lower right to view fullscreen

The making of Metamorphose

Artistic and innovative hairdresser Sean Hanna needed two cool and unusual video sequences to introduce its fashion show in Paris, where the company was recently promoting its latest hair designs.

The theme for the show, titled Metamorphose, drew inspiration from Blade Runner and, as such, the video needed to set a futuristic scene. Split into two parts, part one introduces the model before she steps out onto the catwalk, whilst the second part is shown half way through the show, as the model reappears after going backstage for a complete transformation.

We met with Skyler McDonald, Sean Hanna’s creative director, to define a brief which in the early stages was fairly loose, with the simple idea of using a black and white, sparse look. We knew that both sequences would be reliant on the exact footage we could achieve in the studio shoot, so it was difficult to story-board before this was done. To give us a better idea of what we were aiming for and to achieve something both striking and unusual that would also complement the show, we created a couple of test animations. The first basic test animation, which formed the basis for the video shoot, featured black and white tones combined with a flowing, almost hypnotic, ink-in-water effect to represent the flowing hair.

In the second test animation we experimented with the use of slow motion to create a much slower, more graceful look – essentially going for a stylised ‘bond title sequence’ effect. Sadly, however, we couldn’t quite persuade Sean Hanna to include an Aston Martin in the shoot.

Ben, our head of digital, went along to help art direct the video shoot, which involved a model in vertiginous heels walking on a specially created green treadmill swishing her arms and glowering into the camera – definitely a first for him.

Once the shoot was complete, we then keyed out each video sequence in turn – the fine hair and other details such as rivets in the model's hair along with her flowing dress – presented the biggest technical problems to isolate from the green screen background. From these sequences we then created the two video sequences using Adobe AfterEffects to achieve the unique look we wanted.

Through the initial test animations we decided to expand on the original visual look by adding a little more more 'narrative' to both pieces. Whilst each features the drifting 'ink-in-water' motif, part one has a much darker and more confined feel to illustrate the more ‘bound-up’, industrial hair style. Part two, however, introduces a brighter tone with more vivid colours and conveys an ‘explosion’ of freedom and creativity as the hair is set free.

The show (including the two videos) received a standing ovation in Paris and will be repeated at KOKO in London, October 2012. Both Skyler and Sean Hanna were thrilled with the final result.

Skyler McDonald, Creative Director for seanhanna, said:

"We discussed our project with a number of people before we chose to work with “To The Point”. I have worked with them previously on a number of print and graphic projects but never on digital media, so to be honest, was a little apprehensive. I was looking for someone who would really try and understand the ideas that I had in my head and the videos needed to integrate into a live presentation in our show. 

After a very positive initial meeting to discuss the project in loose terms, we got together for a creative ‘think tank’. Both Simon and Ben brought a lot to the table and out of all the other people we spoke to, I felt that they really understood what I was trying to achieve. Ben worked with us on the day of the shoot and again, his expertise helped save us time and money. The final results were outstanding."


You can watch the final videos here:
(click the 'expand' icon to the right of the player to go full-screen):


Metamorphose – part 1







Metamorphose – part 2





You can also see an interview with Skyler about the Metamorphosis show here which includes clips from the show itself.

To find out more about seanhanna salons, visit their website

Bringing Informa’s knowledge to life

We have started work on a corporate video for Informa, the global academic, publishing and exhibition providers, combining illustrations, animations and live footage.

This is a really exciting project and is going to be a combined team effort, utilising our skills as illustrators, animators, scriptwriters and editors. Our first video shoot was of Lloyd’s List – a core part of Informa’s business and the world’s oldest, continuously running daily newspaper – coming off the printing press.

Informa is a dynamic, rapidly changing company, with the ethos of ‘bringing knowledge to life’. We’ve been asked to create a short, snappy, dynamic video that reflects Infoma’s history, what the company is today and conveys the sectors in which they are active whilst being engaging, quirky and clever. Phew, just a simple job then!

The real Christmas lights

CBRE’s Architecture and Design division approached us earlier this year to create an innovative concept for their new headquarters in Henrietta Place. As part of the project we installed a sculptural lighting installation in the reception area (see our previous blog on this here). This was really well received and has become a great talking point, so we decided to help bring some Christmas cheer to visitors and CBRE employees by designing a bespoke Christmas animation sequence for the festive season.

The ambient animation consists of a number of sequences and is around 12 minutes in total. The aim was to create something vibrant and colourful without it being too garish or distracting. It seamlessly blends a series of seasonal images, including gently falling snowflakes, exploding fireworks, flickering candles, Christmas tree and baubles. Santa even puts in a brief appearance, complete with reindeers and sleigh.

The lighting installation is on permanent display in their main reception area and the Christmas animation will be running there until the new year.

Martin Lewis, Chief Operating Officer at CBRE had this to say: “Once again TTP has created an inspiring and visually appealing lighting installation, and it is an imaginative conversion of well trodden images into a fresh format that catches people’s attention.”

Ben Jackson, who created the sequence adds: "This was a fun and unusual project to work on, after all, it's not every day that we get to create something more as abstract art than functional design. The LED tile displays are perfect for a more ambient kind of animation - whilst lacking in the crisp detail of a TV screen, they convey movement and colour really well and I tried to take advantage of that with various sequences that convey some of the fun and 'sparkle' of Christmas."

You can see a section of the sequence above (or visit their headquarters to see it yourself).