Responses by Karan Singh, illustrator
Background: Commissioned by Ogilvy Hong Kong and inspired by the games slogan, “We Win As One,” I created a suite of nineteen key visuals, with a range of key visuals focusing on the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games’s ethos of togetherness, and on specific individual, group and Paralympic sports. The illustrations were used in conjunction with the branding across all media to promote the games, which included large scale OOH advertising, merchandise and event visuals throughout all the venues.
Reasoning: The campaign celebrates inclusivity and diversity, and our goal was to capture this visually. The visual language was created through a combination of dynamic patterns, inspired by movement and a bright palette of rainbow colors. The key visuals were inspired by sporting gestures and rituals, where multifaceted hands come together to communicate a sense of harmony.
Challenges: A large-scale event like the SEA Games required an equally large suite of visuals to be used across a vast array of applications. With this in mind, we needed to create a fairly substantial library of visual assets that included not only primary visuals and accompanied by specific sport illustrations, but also a bank of secondary patterns and simpler assets to support the campaign. While we made over nineteen visuals, the total assets count closer to 50.
Favorite details: I was surprised to discover that my artwork was also applied to ribbons of the medals as well as the winning podiums. It was quite overwhelming to see images of these elite athletes celebrating their wins, and I felt pretty special to have been a small part of this moment.
Visual influences: Immersing myself in all the different sports was a fun aspect of this project. Exploring the elegance of all the different shapes and forms our bodies take on during different sports was especially influential—it was fascinating to see how some of the poses, actions and movements felt artistic and sculptural.
Anything new: The project enabled me to evolve my own visual style into portraiture. It’s something I had explored in a fairly simple way in the past, but the project and the team presented the opportunity to push things a little further, and create something a little different.
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