London Fashion Week, London Fashion Week Men’s and London Fashion Week Insiders are a series of biannual events hosted by The British Fashion Council – a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to building and promoting the UK’s status as a global home for fashion and creativity.
With three distinct events showcasing the work of some of the world’s most innovative designers, over the past two years the BFC and Pentagram have worked together on a project that seeks to bring these events closer together through a strong, overarching graphic design system.
Each event attracts a different audience, and a major challenge was creating a strong sense of differentiation and personality for each event while maintaining a consistent feel to unify the events in each season.
London Fashion Week AW19 was Pentagram’s fourth campaign with the BFC and continued to deliver this shared sense of purpose. By building on the ideas of diversity and inclusivity of previous campaigns, the aim was to promote gender and style fluidity and an accepting view of all cultures.
To represent this, Pentagram's campaign visuals all used a simple motif of morphing letterforms that could be subtly adapted for each event and audience. Each event was denoted by these changing letterforms, rendered in a different material or texture. For example, LFWM saw the lettering rendered in the form of metallic rods that flexed to fit its environment. Whereas, the type adapted for LFW resembled a glass tube: able to curve and flow freely.
A further consideration was ensuring that the campaign lived up to the BFC’s vision for positive fashion and sustainability. It was therefore decided to render the visuals almost exclusively through digital means. Alongside reducing the amount of printed collateral, the team also ensured that all materials used were fully recyclable and FSC approved; delivering a campaign that was as sustainable as possible.
The result is a campaign that connected with the audience across a wide range of platforms, channels and screens. To encourage engagement, animation brought each logo to life and led to the identity being displayed on digital screens across Britain and reaching over 5 million people over the course of the three events.
