Banff Centre is a world class arts education centre, and yet not many people know it exists. As a space that works solely to support artists – whatever their needs are – it wears many hats, acting as a performance venue, artist residency, conference centre, studio space, restaurant, hotel, and much more.
The multi-faceted nature of Banff Centre proved both a strength (from an artistic perspective), and a hurdle (for marketing and communications). So instead of trying to distill Banff Centre to one thing, we embraced how incredibly varied it is, showcasing that its definition and purpose is unique for every person that experiences it.
We utilized a fill-in-the-blank approach as a mode to showcase the huge array of descriptors of Banff Centre. The line “Banff Centre is ___.” acted as both a payoff line, and a way to emphasize how they are continually redefining the arts.
The bold and minimal branding (by Pentagram) gave us the perfect canvas to adapt their existing advertising design to a grid-based editorial-style campaign look and feel.
To reach a broader Canadian audience, we were asked to create pieces that focussed on specific artists that have been impacted by Banff Centre in their artistic practice.
We worked with photographer Kari Medig to produce portraits of the artists, along with additional shots to help tell the story online.
These portraits would be rolled out in monthly editorial-style print ads in the Globe and Mail (on the back of the Arts section), along with feature stories on the Banff Centre website with accompanying short videos.
The headlines in the print ads were taken from quotes from interviews we conducted with the artists, where they described what Banff Centre meant to them.
The online artist stories were designed and built using the existing site CMS. The campaign homepage served as a hub for all the artist stories as they rolled out.
To create a unique pre-roll video that reflected the creative nature of Banff Centre, we chose to use a stop motion treatment using two pieces of paper as our frame. Each frame was printed out on individual pages, then photographed page by page.
Each photograph was then individually edited for colour and clarity, and compiled together with an original composition by Banff Centre alum Edo Van Breemen.
Agency: Camp Pacific
Copywriter/ACD: David Giovando
Creative Director: Josh Fehr
Producer: Claire Khan
Photographer: Kari Medig
Pre-roll Photographer + Editor: Ryan Savella
