Title	WHAT DOES MUSIC LOOK LIKE?
Brand	ROYAL COLLEGE OF MUSIC
Product/Service	INSTALLATION EXPERIENCE
Category	D04. Brand Installation & Experience
Entrant	LANDOR London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	LANDOR London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production	LANDOR London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Peter Knapp	Landor	Global Creative Director
Emma Hodson	Landor	Client Director
Carl Halksworth	Landor	Design Director

The Campaign

Our brand idea, ‘The Future of Music’, captures the Royal College of Music as a living, breathing organism, fuelled by the musicians and sounds within and gives the college a renewed sense of purpose and permission to innovate. One such innovation involved asking, ‘What does music look like?’. The College provides sonic wonders, but what about to our eyes? By exploring new ways of combining digital technology with classical music, we created a means of visually expressing the emotion and beauty of music. Live. The result? A unique algorithm that builds along the five lines of the stave – the inspiration of the new visual identity – and paints along to the music, making every performance a beautiful brand expression. The transitory beauty inspired the launch event, whereby the algorithm worked in perfect symbiosis with music performed by the Alke String Quartet to project live visuals against a backdrop.

Creative Execution

We created a fresh and modern visual identity system for application across core brand assets including online channels, business stationary, internal communications and brochures. We re-imagined the 5 lined stave, the platform of musical expression and artistic innovation, and crowned it with the College’s Royal Crest, another symbol of the College’s rich heritage and proud patronage, to create a new logo that represents the Royal College of Music as the home of classical music. A fresh diverse colour palette and an embrace of innovative technology works to represent and pave the way for the College’s bright future. To encapsulate the innovation within the College we created an algorithm that reimagines music expression itself. By using the algorithm as a unique brand asset, we have infused the heritage of the College with a powerful manifestation of their strategy, ‘The Future of Music’ and created unique masterpieces and memorable brand expressions.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

With an embrace of modern design and innovative technology, we successfully propelled the College into the 21st Century. Gone is the old-fashioned feel of the brand that was. The rebrand accurately represents the College as the future of music and speaks to new audiences across multiple channels. Whilst the brand implementation programme is still in its infancy, the identity has had excellent feedback from stakeholders and endorsement from HRH The Prince of Wales. It has also created a launch pad for opportunity including the impending launch of a major fundraising initiative. “Fresh, modern, exciting. Our new brand marks a new era for the Royal College of Music.”  Professor Colin Lawson, Director of the Royal College of Music “The Agency’s approach to our brand project fused respect for the College’s heritage and tradition with bold new conceptual and creative thinking” Talia Hull, Director of Communications, Royal College of Music

Our strategy, ‘The Future of Music’, was born from the profound and inspiring impact the Royal College of Music, its teachers and beautifully crafted music has on the next generation of talented musicians. As the future of music, the College exists to create generations of musical visionaries. From this, we developed an ethos for the brand: “We believe that our history gives us the responsibility to set the bar for innovation. We believe in nurturing our students and inspiring the world around us. We believe that only an atmosphere of collaboration and unity will develop the greatest talents.” Our creative execution would reference the classical heritage of the College and look to the future with colourful design and innovation. The launch event seeded the idea that music could be more than just music - It could be visual and create new immersive experiences for different audiences too.