NEW MATTER

James Dawe X TfL Go:
A collaboration that heroes one
of London’s most iconic logos

Last month we welcomed digital artist and creative director James Dawe to Grand Matter. James’ work is a melting pot of strikingly surreal visuals created through his exploration with both 2D and 3D mediums; consisting of dynamic collages and abstract landscapes which lend themselves to a broad variety of clients. He's worked with everyone from Adidas and Porsche, to The New York Times and British Fashion Council.

For his exciting latest collaboration, James was commissioned by advertising agency VCCP to bring to life their new integrated campaign concept for Transport for London’s app 'TfL Go'.

The campaign's design was to promote TfL Go as a means of engaging both new and existing users to track their travel costs, review their journey history, and manage travel more efficiently while on the move across London.

The organisations' iconic roundel is the central inspiration for the creative of this campaign, which in this instance dynamically depicts the journey of a London commuter through energetic collages consisting of photographic elements taken from all across the transport network.Through five bespoke roundel collage artworks, a different facet of Londoner’s journeys are represented, highlighting the ways in which the app is designed to help those travelling on the network.

I think it helped having a knowledge
of the transport network when it came to planning our three shoots. As a teenager I used to ride the lines with a friend, to the last stop... and see what places like Amersham had to offer.

– James Dawe 

With the nature of James' work, he will often create his more collage-based artworks using a combination of found and royalty-free imagery, but in this instance where the campaign involved sourcing and working with models – and to allow for full flexibility with the collage source imagery – he collaborated with photographer Mark Cocksedge to shoot not only the five models in a studio shoot setup, but to also spend several days out across London photographing the transport network to create a huge bank of photographs which could be utilised by James across the series of campaign artworks.

The creative challenge was to capture the network "on its best day" through the photography for the campaign artworks, and once James had enough of a bank to work with, his early concept artworks, which used placeholder found images, were rebuilt using the new photography from the shoots – using the iconic TfL roundel logo as a loose structure from which to build each collage.

Through various rounds of feedback from both TfL and the VCCP team, each artwork was gradually honed and refined to help best communicate the idea of a narrative, which follows a hero characters's journey around the circular roundel shape – symbolising them using the TfL Go app for their journey.

The result is a beautiful series of dynamic and energetic digital collages, which really speak to present day London whilst also each clearly communicating a concept relating to the app's various offerings.

Having free reign of the network was something quite unusual; which involved checking in with Station Managers and donning high-vis jackets.”

– James Dawe

www.grandmatter.com/jamesdawe
www.markcocksedge.co.uk
www.vccp.com

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