8 October 2012 - 4:16pm | posted by Staff Writer | 0 comments

What happens when you invite 12 rival design agencies to do posters for each other: Brand Union for SEA

As we explained this morning The Drum invited 12 rival design consultancies to do posters for each other. Well why not? They always advise clients not to attempt their own creative work on the grounds they might be too close to certain issues to be objective. And we thought it might be a good way of marking the international day of peace, held on September 21st which was when the posters were launched.

But our online community are now getting a chance to see the work, too. Over the course of this week we will show what happened when the 12 design firms suspended hostilities to respond to a brief from one of their competitors.

This morning we revealed what SEA did for Brand Union. Below is the work Brand Union did for SEA, together with the original brief and a rationale.Tomorrow we will reveal the posters that Howdy and Brilliant Path designed for each other.
Read more at http://www.thedrum.com/news/2012/10/08/what-happens-when-you-invite-12-r...

SEA's Brief

Background:
Founded in 1997 by Bryan Edmondson, who still works as hard as anyone on St John Street/EC1M, the agency now employs 10 people in one global office.

What would you like your poster to say about you?
Just because we are small, doesn’t mean we can’t be corporate and boring.

Who should your poster be aimed at?
Anyone who wants to look at it – reminding people that big, corporate agencies are not the only way forward!

What do they currently think of your agency?
Close by and convenient, being on St John Street.

What would you like them to think of your agency after seeing the poster?
There are other typefaces than Univers Ultra light by Monotype.

Mandatories:
Use Univers Ultra Light by Monotype. Over to you, Bland Union – apologies, Brand Union.

Creative Review:

The Brand Union's poster for SEA

The Rationale by Toby Southgate, CEO UK and Ireland, The Brand Union

Bryan Edmondson and I were friends until he designed our poster. However, I was magnanimous in my view of his design company SEA. They are a small business but produce beautiful crafted design that really does punch above it’s weight. Bryan of course was a boxer, so I have to be careful what I say especially about his use of typography. I only ever use six typefaces, Bryan only uses two, Univers and Baskerville. Now Baskerville is fine if you are doing books for kids and Univers is great if you lived life as a designer in the 60’s. But who am I to judge, I’m just an account director.