Brompton Abracadabra
Campaign
2022
SCOPE
Creative Direction and Campaign
Art Direction
Digital Art Direction
Motion Principles
Visual Identity Systems
TEAM
Studio Blackburn
ScienceMagic
Tony Davidson
Kim Papworth
Daniel Eatock
Art Practice
Time Based Arts
Strings and Tins
Havas Media UK
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BRIEF
Our friends at ScienceMagic invited us to help create a global campaign for Brompton Bicycles. The goal was to celebrate their ingeniously designed folding mechanism: the ability to fold small and open big in just five moves. We needed to capture the charm of the product while highlighting the “magical engineering” that makes a Brompton unique.
WORK
We focused on the concept of “ab ra ca dab ra,” where the five syllables mirror the five folds of the bike. Working as part of a hand-picked collective, we explored various ways to visualise this movement, from five-column grids to typographic experiments. We decided to treat the Brompton as a “lowercase bike,” even tweaking the brand typeface to use a single-storey “a” that better reflected the rounded frame of the bicycle.
PLAY
The final campaign turns mechanical movements into a sentient, magic-like performance. We provided the art direction for a suite of CGI animations that move away from literal environments into something more dreamy and ambiguous. By combining human voices with anthropomorphic actions, we transformed the bike into something truly charming. We delivered a suite of films used globally to express the endless possibilities a Brompton provides.
“Some of the most important decisions were made with everyone in the same room, like the idea that Brompton is a lowercase bike.”
Adam Moore
Senior Designer, Studio Blackburn
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Brompton Abracadabra
- Creative Direction and Campaign
- Art Direction
- Digital Art Direction
- Motion Principles
- Visual Identity Systems
BRIEF
Our friends at ScienceMagic invited us to help create a global campaign for Brompton Bicycles. The goal was to celebrate their ingeniously designed folding mechanism: the ability to fold small and open big in just five moves. We needed to capture the charm of the product while highlighting the “magical engineering” that makes a Brompton unique.
WORK
We focused on the concept of “ab ra ca dab ra,” where the five syllables mirror the five folds of the bike. Working as part of a hand-picked collective, we explored various ways to visualise this movement, from five-column grids to typographic experiments. We decided to treat the Brompton as a “lowercase bike,” even tweaking the brand typeface to use a single-storey “a” that better reflected the rounded frame of the bicycle.
PLAY
The final campaign turns mechanical movements into a sentient, magic-like performance. We provided the art direction for a suite of CGI animations that move away from literal environments into something more dreamy and ambiguous. By combining human voices with anthropomorphic actions, we transformed the bike into something truly charming. We delivered a suite of films used globally to express the endless possibilities a Brompton provides.