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Shining the spotlight on UK’s innovation transfer into business success

KTP Awards 2022 recognised the people and partnerships behind the UK’s most inspiring and successful KTP projects.

The KTP awards celebrate partnerships between a talented graduate, an organisation looking to grow and a knowledge base looking to apply their expertise. More than 800 inspiring collaborations are currently running across Britain – each one forging a new pathway for UK Innovation.

These partnerships can create powerful change and progression in a variety of fields and some of the most inspirational are celebrated at the annual KTP awards. And that is where Carswell Gould’s team of design creatives and technical experts stepped in.

KTP Awards Announcement Video - Innovate UK KTN

The Aim

After holding a virtual awards ceremony last year, KTN wanted to make its 2022 awards a hybrid event with in-person attendees and a live online stream. They aimed to deliver an exciting and well-organised event with a clear visual identity, giving the KTP finalists and winners a chance to celebrate everyone’s successes.

To achieve these aims, Carswell Gould’s team of Ed Gould, Mariia Fediuk and Lizzie Walker-Arnott were asked to organise the awards and the live stream and create all visual content within the awards.

As part of this, we needed to create a visual identity, some assets to promote the event, a sequence of animated graphics to run throughout the event, a series of interview videos with the finalists and graphics to add interest to the live stream.

The Concept

Our main goal was to make the awards ceremony interesting, dynamic, memorable and attention-grabbing through our use of branding, animation and video content. After researching the design of current and popular award shows, we wanted to develop a unique style for the awards that showcased the show's purpose and contained engaging elements to keep viewers interested.

The main request from the client was to use two main brand colours - gold and black. As for the rest of the details, we got complete freedom. The main graphic element we received from the client was their logo, so we decided to develop it as much as possible and expand its capabilities and role within the design. We planned to do this by animating it and using the logo as the centrepiece to all animated content.

We also wanted to give each finalist the opportunity to showcase their KTP clearly and gain recognition for their achievements in their own engaging interview video that explored what made their KTP special.

To ensure the project was successful, we worked closely with the client, consulting with multiple teams within the company from marketing to events. Setting up weekly meetings, we ensured the project kept moving forwards at pace during the short timeline.

We also worked closely with members of the Carswell Gould Collective to offer a complete solution to the client, allowing us to manage the event organisation and video production, as well as the branding and animated content.

The Creative

Carswell Gould’s creative skills were used to develop the KTP awards branding into an identity for the entire event. This played on the three-part partnerships – the graduate, a business and a knowledge base - that are central to each KTP project by utilising the triangular logo throughout.

The animations we produced gave a strong structure to the awards, keeping up pace throughout the ceremony and ensuring the awards felt organised and professional at all times, while still being exciting for the viewers.

The graphics package we created consisted of two parts. One was designed for the screens at the venue, so the audience were entertained by videos, visualisations of the speech and video interviews of the finalists of each nomination, the names of the categories, lists of the finalists and the names of the winners.

The second part was developed for broadcast screens, which included special graphics for live broadcast screens. Viewers who followed the event through the broadcast could see the opening teaser videos, the names of the speakers, the names of the categories, and the names of the winners on the screen.

Everyone involved in this event, and especially each winner, got their time in the sun with exciting graphic design shown on the screens highlighting their win.

The Technology

We worked closely with the venue’s AV team and our videographer to ensure all the technology ran smoothly during the event. We needed to make sure that our animations looked their best during the awards event, so an expert understanding of the technology used from screen resolutions to deployment was essential to ensure we created a high-quality output for the client.

The Marketing

We used our marketing skills to create some key messages and a unified and relevant style for the event that could be used throughout all promotions and the show itself. We designed and produced an announcement video and an array of social graphics for the client to use to promote the event to their audiences.

The Logistics

We managed the entirety of this project from contacting the finalists, organising their video interviews, creating animated graphics, supporting the running of the day and delivering a live broadcast of the event. To achieve this, we worked closely with the client at KTN as well as utilising members of the Carswell Gould collective to run the event and to shoot and edit the video content.

We carefully planned out the running order of the event to ensure we had graphics ready to cover the entire event and that the event would run to time.

Overall, we took a management role and acted as the point of contact, arranged interviews of the finalists, ensure the videography team were on track and to collate feedback from the client.

In addition to this, we attended the event to ensure smooth running on the day and to help run the correct deployment of animated graphics and videos throughout the ceremony. We also assisted in the running of the live broadcast.

With sustainability in mind throughout this project we opted to undertake all client meetings virtually. We also kept the majority of the finalist video interviews online to reduce unnecessary travel and limited this to the three main finalists. For the awards, we created purely digital content instead of printed artwork. We also opted to travel to the event in Liverpool via train instead of driving to reduce the carbon emissions .

The Results

The team either attended the event or watched along with the live stream online. The event ran smoothly and all involved enjoyed the event. Each winner had their chance to be celebrated and each finalist had their chance to show the importance of their KTP project. The client was really happy with the work we produced for the event and thought the event went really well.

Overall, we’re delighted with the output. The team and I are really impressed with how you have captured everything we want to promote at KTP - you have nailed the brief. Thank you so much for all your hard work - you guys really smashed it!

George Lintott, Marketing Manager, KTN

Watch the live stream recording here: The Innovate UK KTP Awards 2022

KTP Awards - Best KTP Award Finalist Video