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Evolving English
How do you represent, visually, an exhibition about spoken (and written) language; how do you convey such a complex subject in a simple, compelling message?
Curated by and hosted at the British Library, this was the first exhibition to tackle the complexity of the English language, from Anglo-Saxon runes to modern day rap, a language spoken by a third of the world's population.
Working with their in-house marketing and curatorial teams, we created designs to be used for a broad campaign (online and offline) rolling out across the months of the exhibition.
We did all of the copywriting in-house; it was obviously essential to get the language right. It had to be clever enough to be interesting but accessible enough for the wide target demographic. We used a mixture of word-play, puns and idiotic idioms to give a sense of the full breadth of the exhibition.
The campaign was a huge success and Evolving English was their busiest ever winter exhibition.
British Library Evolving English Bill Poster
Jane RichardsonCog cleverly captured the essence of our complex messages in seemingly simple combinations of words and pictures. They delivered a core campaign that we could adapt, in-house, across any media. We’re delighted because that imagery helped us reach our target audiences (38% of visitors were under 35; 43% were first time visitors to the Library) and made this our most successful winter exhibition, ever
Marketing & Programme Manager
British Library Evolving English Scoreboard
Full set of posters for the Evolving English campaign
British Library: Evolving English - Slideshow
Ocky MurrayThis was a great example of how hands-on the process can be. I got to work with the BL Conservation team, sourcing aged leather, that they foil-blocked (by hand). And Michael got his mother-in-law to do the cross-stitching.
3 slideshow images (click image to view)
