January
Brightening up a few days in wintery, cold and dark London town in January was Lumiere London. King's Cross, Mayfair, Piccadilly, Regent Street, Leicester Sq and Westminster hosted 30 light installations from the likes of Julian Opie, Janet Echelman, Benedetto Bufalino and Benoit Deseille.
Not to be outdone, Canary Wharf put together their own ‘Winter Lights’ festival featuring 15 interactive light and sound displays.
February
February seemed to kick start the 2016 desire for global brands to have a bit of a redesign. McDonald’s team of agencies redesigned their packaging, treating them as ‘mobile billboards’ and, for some reason, fashion accessories. Budweiser did a little strip back, while Uber updated their branding to celebrate ‘our technology and the cities we serve’
March
The roroscoping technique, made famous in A-Ha’s Take on Me and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly, was used to beautiful effect in the music video ‘Disco’ for composer Ralf Hildenbeautel. Created by Boris and Miwha Seewald, the movements of dancers Simone Schmidt and Althea Corlett are beautifully rendered through 1,200 individuals drawings.
April
British/Iraqi architect sadly passed away in April. Born in Baghdad in 1950, she studied mathematics in Beirut before moving to London in 1972. After studying at the Architectural Association in London, she launched her own practice in 1979. Her work's been described as striking, dramatic and radical – not unlike the woman herself.
The Serpentine Gallery in London is showing a collection of her abstract painting and drawings until 12 February 2017 and is well worth a visit.
May
The very talented lettering artist Oli Frape dropped in to our office in May to show a few of us his glorious portfolio of commercial and personal work. A small group of interested designers very quickly swelled to a much larger crowd, as he talked about how he creates his gorgeous hand-drawn script for a huge variety of projects.
June
A few RY designers went to hear two of our design heroes, Morag Mysercough and Camille Walala give a talk at the St Bride’s Foundation. Both designers are known for their bold use of colour and geometric forms. Through the evening we were treated to a wonderful journey through the visual development of their careers.
July
Things went a little bit bananas in July. Ry designers seem to spend a lot of time sketching on banana skins. This set of banana gifs from Xander Marritt and Elias Freiberger takes things to a whole new level.
August
Art director Kouhei Nakama’s released Cycle exploring the human form through a range of physics-based particle animation.
September
The Summer Olympics in Rio brought about a rich array of infographics and detailed break downs so we could all relive the moments over and over. Our favourites included New York Times’ composite photos showing decisive moments and their scrollable narrative of Simone Biles’ Olympic journey.
October
October saw the opening of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Natural History Museum. All we were interested in however were the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.
November
Christmas adverts were in full force come November. John Lewis went for a cute, jumping dog. We all felt that Buzz the boxer was much better than Buster though. Obviously hoping (along with most of the rest of us) that Hillary was going to win, M&S have gone for Mrs Claus. Aldi’s Kevin the Carrot wants to meet Santa. Young girl (with a haircut we all had when we were younger) waits for the Waitrose’ Robin. And Sainsbury’s for some reason features the singing James Corden
December
While we looked back at 2016, animator Misha Petrick looked back at 1995. In particular reimagining what Instagram would look like if we still used Windows 95.