The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Bringing the city to the continent
Dundee is bidding to be European City of Culture 2023 and Barry Strachan, lead designer at Avian in Broughty Ferry, is part of the team behind the campaign
It didn’t take much persuasion for my colleagues and I to get behind Dundee’s 2023 bid for European Capital of Culture and mobilise the agency’s creative (Avian) and digital (Blue2 Digital) teams to visually articulate what Dundee’s bid might look and feel like.
The initial brief was purposely vague and it was clear the team had an ambition to explore various ideas.
This allowed us a huge amount of creative freedom to develop concepts that really pushed boundaries.
It also gave the team the freedom to create something vibrant, fresh and reflective of the enthusiasm that Dundee has to become European Capital of Culture 2023.
When undertaking a design process here at Avian we adopt a “research, review and develop” approach to all of our projects.
Firstly, it’s important we conduct a thorough amount of research to fully understand its aims, goals and the competition we are up against.
As we conduct our research we create moodboards and sketch ideas to provide us with a visual platform that will help to shape our solution.
From here we review this material, discussing and deciding what works (and what doesn’t) and any inspiration we can glean.
This in turn aids us in developing a creative approach that answers the original brief in the best possible way.
For Dundee 2023 we wanted the logo to be made up of as many different facets, shapes and colours as possible.
This would represent the wide and varied audiences and cultural events that would make up the city’s bid.
The resulting campaign aims to reflect the confidence evident in a resurgent and regenerated Dundee with an energetic, modern and colourful visual style.
For the development of the www. dundee2023.eu website, Avian worked closely with our digital sister company Blue2 Digital.
Together with Rob Black, Lead Designer at Blue2, and the rest of his team, we ensured the website embraced the core campaign approach, visual style and ultimately provided an informative online hub.
Our design process started with initial wireframe sketches and templates to ensure the website’s functionality, content and hierarchy of information was correct.
These templates were then developed through meetings with the bid team to ensure we arrived at a solution which is highly creative yet always information led.
It was important, as with all of our web developments, to adopt a “mobile first” responsive approach.
With websites now being viewed on a wide range of devices it’s essential to ensure the website translates seamlessly from a mobile phone screen to a larger desktop browser window.
One of the common goals shared by everyone involved in the campaign was to harness the vibrancy of the creative approach and use this to instil an exciting energy on the site.
We intended to do this through the use of bright colours and a wide range of images, videos and photography that reflect Dundee’s culture.
We wanted to create a website that would provide a vibrant hub of information, inspiration and encouragement to support the bid.
We believe the Dundee 2023 brand inspires, connects and celebrates the city’s culture and relationship with Europe.
It will work to bring the city’s residents together and connect people and places both in Dundee and outwards to Europe.
Ultimately, we as a team hope we have created an inspiring campaign and website for the Dundee 2023 bid.
We hope it is something that Dundee as a city will be proud of and that it will provide real motivation for the people of Dundee and beyond to get behind the bid.