CASE STUDY

Eurovision

Song Contest

M&S Arena • UK

Collaborators + Partners

About

Client

Eurovision

Year

2023

Reach

162m+ Viewers

Context and Brief

We were approached by the BBC about the Eurovision Song Contest in November 2022 before commencing design work in January 2023. It was an honour to be a part of this huge show seen by such a vast global audience, especially with the UK hosting on behalf of Ukraine. It was great to play such a big role in designing up so many elements of this show.

We designed and created the screen visuals for the Opening and Interval acts as well as all the Broadcast and Screen Graphics across the finals. This included the Scoreboard Graphics, Postcard Transitions and Branded Screen Holding Looks.

Services

Broadcast Graphics

Visual Design

Live Camera FX

Project Type

Live Show

Broadcast

Approach

For the Opening & Interval acts we created the performance visuals for the Grand Final ‘Flag Parade’, Kalush Orchestra’s Opening Performance, ‘The Liverpool Songbook’, ‘Kalush Orchestra’s Opening Performance’ and the Semi-Final performances ‘Be Who You Wanna Be’ , ‘Music of Ukraine’ & ‘United By Music’.

It was important for each to have its own identity, and we worked closely with Lee Smithhurst, Dan Shipton, Tom Denning and German Nenov to bring these to life.

It was really fun to bring such a vast range of styles and techniques to this element of the show, combining rendered and real-time graphics along with camera-overlays.

Creative Vision

For the broadcast graphics, we wanted to combine a polished aesthetic with energy and 'edge', combining 2D and 3D graphics with a fusion of flowing and choppy animation styles to take this year's Eurovision to another level.

We first developed the main logo animation with the idea to transform the logo from a 2D beating ECG heart monitor into polished 3D branding with choppy typographic text overlays. This style was then used as our benchmark to roll out to other areas of the broadcast graphics, screen branding and scoring elements, totalling hundreds of deliverables and variations for each nation.

When it came to the screen visuals it was clear it had to be centred around the 'heart logo' which represented the 160 million hearts of the viewers of the contest beating as one. We built a 3D heart installation, pushing the colours into neon for the evening TV shows.

The backdrop not only provided the ‘heart’ into the stage, which is based on the shape of a ‘hug’, but reacted to the action of the show , dropping into blues and pulses for tension moments and exploding into gold particles for the ‘Winners look’.

Technical

As one of the most-ambitious live shows in the world the sheer volume of deliverables that were required were more than we had ever delivered before. We worked closely with the broadcast team from NEP to ensure all the broadcast assets would run seamlessly in their real-time systems so they could react to what was happening live.

Thanks to

The Eurovision team

It's been amazing to play such a big part in this historic show and this year has served a much bigger purpose by helping to unite nations whilst there’s so much conflict going on, it's really been special to be a part of it.

Team

Tom Bairstow (Executive Producer / Director)
Chris Gaughran (Creative Director)
Henrique Ghersi (Creative Lead)
Alice Ryland (Producer)
Laura Clark (Producer)
Lydia Caplan (Lead Designer)
Florian Lecoq (Lead Technical Artist)
Emile Frederick (Motion Designer)
Dan Richards (Motion Designer)
Aaron Honda (Motion Designer)
Alessio Monaco (Motion Designer)
Ash Kayser (Motion Designer)
Liam Gilheany (Motion Designer)
Dan Wise (Motion Designer)
Dale Croft (Motion Designer)
Duncan Tune (Motion Designer)
Dana Couling (Creative Assistant)
Alice Best (Studio Manager)