Advertising Awards Judges Work: Sid Lee
December 10, 2018
As we get closer to our 2018 winter issue drop – which features our 2018 Advertising Awards Winners – we have been showcasing some work from our ad judges. This week we are exploring Kristian Manchester’s latest hits as global executive creative director and a partner at Sid Lee.
Manchester’s especially proud of two recent projects. The first one is ‘She Moves Mountains’ for The North Face.
The North Face wanted to celebrate adventurous and courageous female explorers and showcase
the incredible accomplishments of athletes, scientists, artists and activists in order to inspire girls
and women everywhere.
Move Mountains is a global initiative rooted in empowering the next generation of explorers and
includes a multi-year outdoor adventure in collaboration with Girl Scouts of the USA; a platform for sharing more stories of women in exploration; and a business commitment that affects everything from representation in advertising to investment in product design, renewed focus on employee development and ensured closure of the gender pay gap on the athlete team.
The second project from Sid Lee is the 'Posters for Peace' and 'Bed-In for Peace' projects. In honour of international Day of Peace, there was a call to graphic designers internationally, to express what peace means to them. Out of 400 submissions, 40 posters were showcased as part of an outdoor bed-in held to celebrate the unveiling of Montreal's Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth Hotel's redesigned Suite 1742 (one of the original sites of John Lennon's and Yoko Ono's famous Bed-Ins against war). The project illustrates how hate can be transformed into love. Fun fact – the work for Posters for Peace was the cover of our 2018 Design Annual, as a winner in the Poster Design category! If you missed it, see it here.
Inspired by the lyrics of the song at the centre of the work, this satirical film portrays the contrast
between our naive perception of a peaceful world and the harsh reality that surrounds us. The
beginning of the film presents a bubbly universe created with illustrations inspired by the flower-power era but is quickly replaced by real footage depicting war and human intolerance.
The crafty ending combines both mediums, overlaying illustrations and raw footage to position design as a simple solution to larger problems. This psychedelic anthem launched “Posters for Peace,” a competition created to inspire visual artists to join the conversation on peace.
Bed-in For Peace
To celebrate the International Day of Peace, Sid Lee Collective and MASSIVart invited the public to attend the largest bed-in in North America on Place Ville Marie’s Esplanade. There, the public had a chance to take in the Posters for Peace exhibition featuring posters by artists depicting their vision for peace, its current state in the world and what needs to be done to achieve it. Their poster artwork was displayed as bedsheets on the 40 beds laid out on Place Ville Marie’s Esplanade.