It was yet again an honour to return to North Warwickshire and Hinckley Colleges Hinckley Campus to provide our services for their annual fashion show. This was our fourth year providing the audio and visuals for the show which took place on Wednesday 21st June after two days setting up. As well as being asked back to work on the show we were also invited to exhibit at the show as alumni.

Back in 2014, (which feels like a century ago) Brio was non-existent and we were simply two students at the college (Aero+XY for anyone that knows our history really well). After entering the D&AD awards together earlier that year we decided that we wanted to pitch to produce the campaign for that year’s exhibition and fashion show. What more can we say…the rest is history, of course, we’re joking the rest is below if we’ve got you captivated.

Spectrum

Exhibition and Fashion Show Branding 2014


We pitched a concept called Spectrum, a word that by definition means a range of things and to us that’s what the exhibition was, a range of things from a range of disciplines, by a range of people. This was accompanied by a spirograph design displaying a range of colours and giving a contemporary overall look and feel with a subtle hark back to childhood for everyone that remembers Spirograph sets (they were so frustrating don’t get us started, but for research purposes alone we had to buy one). Our pitch was successful and we were invited to meet the internal marketing team to be briefed on the project, this was the first real taste of industry that we had and believe us it felt like a massive deal at the time. We both remember feeling so nervous going into that meeting to present our ideas.

The brief was very comprehensive and included a list of everything that needed to be done with strict deadlines. The following weeks were spent partly working within the marketing studio and partly at the creative Hinckley campus putting our campaign together. For two young creatives, it was one of the most exciting times of our lives, we watched our first campaign come together and were given the freedom (within reason) to do exactly what we wanted. We produced everything from tickets, press adverts, outdoor media ads, social media artwork, posters, brochures and directional signage. And of course we went above and beyond to produce things that weren’t on the original brief, for that year’s fashion show we produced a full keynote allowing the campaign to run throughout the show, we also held a social media competition which encouraged students to upload their images of the show under the hashtag #SpectrumSelfie.

We often look back to that point as the start of Brio, it was the first commercial project we worked on together and in our eyes, it was a great success. We received multiple compliments about the design and implementation of the campaign. One of the biggest being an invite from the marketing manager to provide a temporary design service for them over the summer as freelancers. This later ran into contracts with the college to produce all their marketing materials, our relationship with them continues to this day. Our latest work for the college can be found here.

Work

2017 Campaign


This years campaign was designed by Mark Day studying the HND in Graphic Design, just like previous years, the campaign had striking graphics and a consistent look and feel. As mentioned above this is our fourth year working on the show and preparations began months in advance, the exhibition is spread across a week while the fashion show is on for a singular day split into three shows.

As well as working on the show we were invited to exhibit as alumni, this was very much a last minute arrangement between us and the college, giving us precisely 48 hours to design and build a full exhibition. But we love a challenge and put a very late night into planning, printing and framing art work for the exhibition, we called in a couple of favours with a local printer who turned a large format print around in a day as well as a friend who produced vinyl stickers and t-shirts for us. Which just left us to pull all the elements together and construct the exhibition.

Day One


Early Monday morning we arrived at the campus knowing we had a busy day in front of us, throughout the year the theatre gets used for a multitude of shows and events meaning that each year has its own set of problems as everyone uses a different setup. We thought it logical to start the day by constructing our exhibition, after so much preparation right down to the smallest detail this was a fairly straight forward process. There’s something very satisfying seeing a well thought out plan come together, we would like to say it’s what we do best.

Our next job was to sort out the audio, lights and visuals. We are self-taught audio and light technicians and still have a hell of a lot to learn. The rest of that day is a blur of cables, lights and frustration. If you’ve read our blog before you will know we’re big fans of a good old time lapse, who isn’t? Grab your popcorn because here’s day one of us coming in and out of a tiny room about a billion times at very high speed.

Day Two


Day two was rehearsal day as well as allowing the models to rehearse it’s a great time for us to begin to polish the show. We spent a lot of time repositioning and reprogramming lights as well as setting up microphones and balancing audio. The show is also filmed and this year was live streamed to Facebook (for abit until the internet let us down, but that’s another story). Using a small team of ex-students and friends of Brio we set up 3 cameras that fed to a live edit followed by a capture card which then fed into a laptop to allow the live stream to work. Let’s just say it didn’t go well, it was a hell of an ambitious setup. All afternoon was spent trying to resolve many technical problems. In the end, we got there and left happy that the show would go without a hitch.

Day Three


After two days of setup, we were finally there, show day! It’s certainly the most nerve racking day but it’s physically easier than the other days. After a technical run through in the morning, we were happy that everything was going to run smoothly. Three shows were scheduled throughout the day; 11:30, 13:00 and 19:00, there’s not a lot more we can say about day three apart from that it was again a blur. So much concentration goes into each show from the camera operators to the live editor and ourselves on audio, visuals and lighting, being a live show mistakes are really obvious and impossible to cover up. As the last show drew to a close we breathed a sigh of relief but also shed a tear, we love working on the fashion show every year. We would like to say congratulations to all the models, designers and a massive thank you to our team that pulled out all the stops to make the show what it was.

Keynote design is something that we are very passionate about, it combines many elements of creativity including layout design and animation. Good presentation is the key to winning that project pitch or blowing away an audience at an event, we are able to offer our clients competitive packages for keynote design as well as audio, visual and technical assistance. Whether you are pitching to a small group or holding an event to an audience we’ve got you covered. If you want awesome presentations lets chat today, hello@briomedia.co.uk