European Championships Glasgow 2018

Design Agency: Imaginary Friends®

Brief: In 2018, the inaugural European Championships came to Glasgow. The city’s campaign needed its own identity – one that would speak to a local audience of potential volunteers and spectators. Although the 2018 European Championships already had logo guidelines in place, Glasgow’s campaign deserved its own identity. The creative had to raise awareness of the event while showcasing Glasgow as a vibrant, welcoming destination. It would also need to evolve over time, enabling us to deliver a campaign that spoke to target audiences at each milestone.

Solution: Such a diverse event needed a visual frame of reference to make things clearer for the audience. We used aspects of the brand marque to form a dynamic structural device, taking the colour palette directly from the logo and linking each shape to a specific sport. This strong graphic approach was flexible across a vast range of media and could be evolved over time. To communicate the essence of the brand in seconds, and visually represent the Championships’ tagline – ‘The Moment’ – we planned and art-directed a series of photoshoots capturing athletes doing what they do best. The resulting images became the heart and soul of the campaign, evoking the feeling of breathless anticipation before the action.