With the return of renowned conductor Sir Simon Rattle, the London Symphony Orchestra (LSO) has today unveiled a new brand identity, created with the help of Vicon and University of Portsmouth.
Enlisting the help of creative design and branding experts, The Partners, Sir Simon Rattle is at the very heart of the visual identity. The new brand marks a new chapter in the history of the LSO and they wanted to create a visual language that both depicted the conductor’s movements as he creates and shapes a musical performance, and reflects the emotional power of the performance itself through colour, texture and motion.
In order to create the new identity, Vicon captured Sir Simon Rattle’s conducting movements to excerpts of Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, ‘Enigma’ at the Barbican. Working closely with the LSO and the teams at The University of Portsmouth’s School of Creative Technologies, we were able to capture the nuances of Sir Simon’s conducting movements. Using a motion capture suit and specially modified baton, the setup included twelve Vicon Vantage cameras capturing movement at 120 frames per second, resulting in incredibly accurate data capture.
Once the data was gathered, digital artist Tobias Gremmler transformed the motion capture data into a series of animated films reflecting the emotional qualities of the music. The movement captured is not only reflected in the animated artwork, but runs throughout all elements of the identity. Bespoke typography has been crafted by The Partners to represent a conductor’s or musician’s movement through music.
You can learn more about the new visual identity conducted by Sir Simon Rattle here: https://alwaysmoving.lso.co.uk