Anzac Live
Role: Creative Director
To mark the centenary of Australia’s traumatic experience at Gallipoli in 1915, News Corp set out to offer something different to the familiar third party, sepia-toned WW1 reportage; to tell those extraordinary stories in an entirely new and enticing way.
It uses social media to tell the stories of real people from 1915 using their diaries, as if they are alive and posting right now. It is highly visual, engaging and entirely different to traditional telling of the Anzac story. Users embraced the concept immediately. These people talked about war, love, sadness, jokes, they were people just like us today.
Social media is a very visual forum; words alone struggle to grab attention in a busy space. Serving them up with endless mono and sepia period pictures - the traditional visual fare of WW1 coverage - would not bring the words to life convincingly. Therefore we had to be innovative, creative and bold to make it more engaging for the users and differentiate us. We also had to overcome the challenge of poor-quality WWI photos and a general scarcity of images of our characters.
Colourising old and sometimes low-res images; “then and now” images blending past and present; “memes” featuring AnzacLive characters’ quotes; new studio photo shoots of real objects that some family relatives kept; creating new pictures in a period style; illustrations; graphic data visualisations; and short motion graphic video clips. All helped telling their stories in a beautiful way.
Photoshoot and teaser video of Bert Reynolds personal items and letters
A successful brand also relies on its visibility across all available media platforms. The designs carried the AnzacLive brand way beyond the social media pages.
Role
Creative Lead (art direction, graphics, motion graphics, illustration, photoshoot, branding, social media post)
