Nibbs Events produce spectacular events and activations for world-class brands, from film premieres and awards to BAFTA, Disney, Netflix and Universal. They conceived Playback Live as another: a new way for music fans to experience a landmark concert film by a legacy artist in a live room rather than a cinema. A premium night, billed as the Official Concert Film Experience, built for collective effervescence, the shared feeling that builds when a crowd is in something together rather than simply watching it. A standing floor, bars open throughout, a giant screen at the centre of the room, with immersive lighting choreographed to the film and expanded into the physical space, so the presentation does not stop at the edge of the screen. Archive exhibits and photo opportunities extend the night beyond the film. Sony Music Vision embraced the concept and came onboard for the launch, bringing the 4K IMAX release of Queen Budapest to the Roundhouse in London on 3 October, four days before the film opened in cinemas.
I was brought in for creative direction and to design the identity. The first application was the Queen Budapest campaign.
The name was non-negotiable. Playbacklive.com had already been acquired and Nibbs were also keen to include play and rewind within the design. Initial research showed this could be difficult. Playback is a common name in music and the two symbols are used everywhere, from streaming platforms to festival brands, but no single brand owns them. Whatever the mark became, it still had to sit beside Sony and Nibbs, feel cinematic, explain a night most people had never walked into and work from a poster to a giant screen. The challenge was to take ownership of the name, express the symbols and still be effective and memorable.
Motion was prioritised in the process. The mark was going to live mostly on screen. While it is moving, play and rewind are visible: a tape cueing, a picture locking, a room about to start. The two triangles then lock together and fall behind the negative space of a screen. The symbols remain in the sequence. They are no longer the mark. That space acts as the button. The press reveals the name. Once locked together, the controls stop reading as controls and become one shape.
The still form comes out of that sequence. What is left is spatial. It evokes the three-dimensional space of the venue. The outer edge is a 16:9 frame, so it reads as a screen before it reads as a logo. Inside the angles is the picture: the screen the audience has come to watch, and the light that leaves it and enters the room. LIVE sits outside the frame, anchoring the mark to the floor where the crowd stands. PLAYBACK holds the screen above it. Martian Mono gives the two lines one width, so they hold as a uniform block, stacked. Martian Grotesk runs the type around it, close enough to belong to the mark and open enough to carry a campaign.
The master mark is a single colour. It holds on an LED wall, on a poster and over photography. Campaign colour sits with the artist, not the brand. Still, it describes the event. Moving, it behaves like it. The animation is not a finish applied to a finished logo. The logo is the shape it is because it had to move. Sony and the band approved the direction, and the same lockup ran from the poster to the LED wall.
The mark. Play and rewind locked behind a 16:9 screen.
Play and rewind, before they meet.
The overlap. The screen is what remains.
The name sits in the screen. Live sits outside it.
The animation. The triangles are only there while the mark is moving.
Film made for Playback Live site. The site itself was built by Digital Gambit.