Out of home campaign

The Barbican Classical Music

A vibrant and exciting out of home campaign created for Europe's largest performing arts center.

The Barbican – largest performing arts centre in Europe. Opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1982, it is owned, funded, and managed by the City of London Corporation, the third-largest arts funder in the United Kingdom. Our relationship with the center focussed on the Classical Music division, particularly related to live concert events. Our work for the Barbican included campaign visual identity, portrait photoshoots, bespoke imagery creation, out of home media, print and digital advertising and printed communications.

We created a very humanistic image campaign for The Barbican.
The early concepts featured just natural environments combined with silhouettes. We later decided to introduce urban structural elements to contrast with the human portraits.
We wanted to tap into the sensory experience of sound, and therefore we focused on where your mind travels to when listening to a piece of music.
We combined images of the audience with their eyes closed together with moody environmental imagery.
We used a combination of rural and urban scenery to illustrate the broad changes in mood and tempo associated with classical music.
We deliberately worked with real people - either friends of Firedog or the Barbican Center.
Firedog partnered with the Barbican over a four year period, producing a number of campaigns.
The campaign ran as a number of landscape and portrait formats. The typography has been deliberately softened to give the image asset pride of place.
The creative was executed in order to create a very cohesive look which worked well when commuters noticed various executions.
The extensive placement of media on the Tube combined with the broad use of varying assets created a recognisable and striking campaign.
We created a suite of sixteen images to ensure depth and flexibility in the campaign.
We used a limited palette of neutrals combined with acidic primaries in order to create a series of memorable imagery.
The assets are combined with key copy and utilised across all print and ambient media.
The campaign has run for four weeks with 255 posters across 129 London Underground stations.
The calm nature of the subjects placed in a simple background enabled great flexibility in layout and positioning.
The Barbican utilised the campaign assets across all their digital channels from home page to facebook and social media outlets.
The campaign retained the use of the existing Barbican brand guidelines so that it did not feel out of place with existing Barbican communications.

The early concepts featured just natural environments combined with silhouettes. We later decided to introduce urban structural elements to contrast with the human portraits.

Firedog has worked together with the Barbican to produce a series of above the line campaigns designed to communicate the Barbican’s classical music offering.

We were required to express classical music in a new, exciting way that conveys the emotional experience of attending a concert. Clearly, experiencing this genre of music in all it’s three dimensional and multi-instrumental form, is very thought provoking. Previous marketing efforts lacked punch and did not provide enough of an emotional narrative to what it may be like to experience a live classical musical experience.

We wanted to tap into the sensory experience of sound, and therefore we focused on where your mind travels to when listening to a piece of music.
We combined images of the audience with their eyes closed together with moody environmental imagery.
We used a combination of rural and urban scenery to illustrate the broad changes in mood and tempo associated with classical music.

We juxtaposed images of jarring, urban structures with softer, natural landscapes.

Research suggested that The Barbican’s communications lack openness and personalisation. Firedog’s solution was the “Dreamscape”, a series of landscapes reflecting the intensely diverse imaginative and emotive reactions upon listening to classical music at The Barbican. To signify this breadth, we juxtaposed images of jarring, urban structures with softer, natural landscapes. While the images retain soft hues of brown, lilac and light blue, each reveals the use of dense materials such as concrete or steel to offset this contrast.

We deliberately worked with real people - either friends of Firedog or the Barbican Center.

Firedog partnered with the Barbican over a four year period, producing a number of campaigns.

The campaign ran as a number of landscape and portrait formats. The typography has been deliberately softened to give the image asset pride of place.
The creative was executed in order to create a very cohesive look which worked well when commuters noticed various executions.

We achieved the Dreamscape through using multiple-exposure techniques to create a series of surreal images.

We achieved the Dreamscape through using multiple-exposure techniques to create a series of surreal images, illustrating an ethereal place that has been created in the mind of the audience. Using “real people” for the photo shoot enhanced the authenticity we were aiming for and we designed, illustrated, and post-produced everything within the Firedog studios.

The extensive placement of media on the Tube combined with the broad use of varying assets created a recognisable and striking campaign.

We created a suite of sixteen images to ensure depth and flexibility in the campaign.
We used a limited palette of neutrals combined with acidic primaries in order to create a series of memorable imagery.

Firedog was nominated as a finalist in the Drum Creative Out of Home Awards.

255 posters have been displayed in 129 tube stations across the London underground. Firedog has worked with the Barbican over a period of four years, producing the key seasonal campaign imagery as well as a raft of tactical performance based campaigns. Based on the success of our work, the Barbican has launched a Facebook “musical journey” app and have extended our creative work into animation and film. Firedog was nominated as a finalist in the Drum Creative Out of Home Awards for 2013 for this memorable campaign.

The assets are combined with key copy and utilised across all print and ambient media.

The campaign has run for four weeks with 255 posters across 129 London Underground stations.
The calm nature of the subjects placed in a simple background enabled great flexibility in layout and positioning.

The Barbican utilised the campaign assets across all their digital channels from home page to facebook and social media outlets.
The campaign retained the use of the existing Barbican brand guidelines so that it did not feel out of place with existing Barbican communications.

Out of home campaign

The Barbican Classical Music

A vibrant and exciting out of home campaign created for Europe's largest performing arts center.

Expertise

Sector

Topics

Firedog has worked together with the Barbican to produce a series of above the line campaigns designed to communicate the Barbican’s classical music offering.

SOME MORE OF OUR RELATED WORK

Rocudo

Royal Academy of Engineering

BBC

Out of home campaign

The Barbican Classical Music

A vibrant and exciting out of home campaign created for Europe's largest performing arts center.

Expertise

Sector

Topics

Share

Firedog has worked together with the Barbican to produce a series of above the line campaigns designed to communicate the Barbican’s classical music offering.

SOME MORE OF OUR RELATED WORK

Rocudo

Royal Academy of Engineering

BBC