IDENTS 2019

The Children's Media Conference (CMC) is the UK's leading conference for people who develop, produce and distribute media content for kids. Each July over 1000 delegates gather in Sheffield for 3 days of talks, panel discussions, pitching sessions, networking events and parties. For the 2019 edition of the conference we were asked to create a set of animated idents that could be used to open each session, establish the CMC brand and encourage the audience to settle down. The theme of the conference was ‘limitless’ and the idents needed to complement the print branding which was built around a series of chunky overprinted infinity symbols.

We proposed converting the infinity symbol into an ‘infinity zoetrope’. We divided the ribbon of the infinity symbol into 20 square frames to form a simple animated loop. We then accelerated these frames in a stream around the symbol to create a distinctive zoetrope effect. We experimented with adding multiple zoetropes and overlaying them in different ways to create interesting compositions and a juxtaposition of ideas between the animated loops. Each ident was designed around one of the broad themes being tackled at the conference. Original music was created by multi-award winning composer Sandy Nuttgens.