Responses by Thomas Clever, cofounder, CLEVER°FRANKE
Background: The Eurovision Song Contest was started ten years after the end of the Second World War, as a way to unite Europe through music. Since it began, the competition has gone out of its way to embrace new countries, new talent and new technologies. To emphasize this message, we developed a data-driven vignette that honors the history of the Song Contest in a contemporary way, while leaving room for future growth.
Reasoning: The Eurovision Song Contest is a celebration of sovereign mentalities. Rather than looking at what divides us, we aimed to create something that unifies. The vignette is an abstract representation of the flags of the countries that are participating in Eurovision Song Contest 2020 in Rotterdam. By adding the flags chronologically in order of the countries’ first Eurovision participation, we created a design system that is primarily based on data and visually amplifies the contest’s colorful and uniting spirit.
Challenges: We had to push ourselves to rethink what an identity is beyond visual elements and a logo, and what it should be for a contest like Eurovision. Also, the challenge was to bring our expertise in data-driven design to create an integrated versatile identity, one that visually works on several mediums including print, city dressing, merchandise and TV. To overcome this challenge, we developed a design system based on the ambition to turn data into a meaningful visual story.
Favorite details: The complexity of the identity in its simple form that consists of multiple layers to explore. At first glance, it’s visually attractive and can be applied in many different ways. But behind it, there’s a story that complements the theme of Eurovision 2020, “Open Up.” Both in static images and motion, we tied our design to this theme by connecting the flag colors of the participating countries, creating a unified, yet diverse feel. Last but not least, we are proud to have created the first data-driven logo for the Euraovision Song Contest.
Visual influences: The identity is true to the Dutch Design tradition: simple, intelligent, minimalist and experimental, without losing sight of the song contest’s humor and sparkle. The vignette builds on the design from the three previous editions of the Eurovision Song Contest that were held in the Netherlands in 1970, 1976 and 1980.
Anything new: Since the Eurovision Song Contest is an international TV event, we needed to take a variety of factors into account. Our design had to work for a wide range of target devices, from state of the art displays to very low-resolution TV screens. Throughout the process, we balanced complexity and accessibility so that every detail of our design solution is comprehensible under different viewing conditions.
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