Pride: Design support for the City’s biggest celebration

The studio is a hive of activity

Boxes full of branded merchandise are everywhere. The team are feverishly working away on last minute changes to videos, schedules and the website ready for the big event; Canterbury Pride.

We’ve been lucky enough to support Canterbury Pride for the last three years and it is always a privilege. Every year we learn something more about our capability as a studio to deliver for not only the event itself but also to support the 40+ businesses who get involved. The whole project taps into every element of what we do as a studio. We’ve developed a user focused website chock-full of useful information about the event, designed and branded Canterbury Pride, worked with a host of businesses to create marketing paraphernalia, digital and physical, and had our studio used as a pit stop for all manner of Pride merchandise while it makes its journey from printers to the Dane John gardens, Pride’s venue for the day.

Managing over 40 businesses, communicating with them and working within all the different brand guidelines is a challenge we relish. Communication, as is often the case, is the (not so) secret ingredient to bringing together all the studio’s disciplines to help businesses supporting the day stand out without clashing with each other or taking away from the key message.

Pride has evolved hugely over the years, both in popularity and the level of input required from the team to ensure that visually and as a user experience it beats the expectations set previously.

This year we pushed ourselves that step further and decided to combine one of our favourite shows, Ru Paul’s drag race, with our motion abilities. To promote the studio at this years Pride, we created an animated Ru Paul to sashay across the huge screens and bring design studio realness to all those gathered to celebrate with Pride.

Of course, we left our own material to last but our design dynamo Tony managed to create a show-stopping piece of animation that had the crowds screaming when “Ru Paul” appeared on a D&F backdrop.

This short piece of design, tech and popular culture all in one place really highlighted how a mix of the latest design and marketing techniques created with a strong understanding of your audience can really put your business and message on the map.

Want to find out more about this project and how we can work with you? Explore our website, pop into our studio or give us a call.