Part 01 – Embracing the brief

Briefing day stirs a mixture of emotions. Some say there’s no such thing as a bad brief, although we know that’s not always the case. Luckily, this year the brief was right up our street. We learned that we were completing a brief for the charity ‘Children In Hospital’ and instantly felt the gravity of the project – we had already found out motivation to create something truly impactful. CIH bring joy to children in hospital through playtime, and one of the ways they do this is through providing playkits for the children during their stay.

In short, the brief was to elevate Children In Hospitals’ current playkits, bringing branding to the forefront and create packaging that was more engaging. Although their current pack (see below) served them well until now, we were eager to put our skills to work and enhance it further.

Part 02 – Go time

After knocking back a few coffees, we were straight back to the studio to get cracking. Tight deadlines are our bread and butter, although this is a different beast. We’ve got 48hrs to - familiarise ourslelves with the brief, the charity, competitors, research, collate the research, generate ideas, weed out the “meh” ideas and then start executing our final route all for the submission on Sunday evening. On top of the packaging deliverable that was briefed we decided to go one step further and give Children In Hospitals brand a little refresh… because why not? 😀

After endless research came (drum-roll) The Imagikit – a series of 5 playkits for curious kids that aims to inspire, create connection and aid emotional resilience for children in hospital. Bright and bold we created visually striking illlustrations on the front of pack to symbolise the CIH volunteers at play with the children. The format of the kits is subtly reminiscent of a doctors set, with a handle to carry the kit to your neighbours bed for a play session. We divided our solution out into 5 different kits, one for each age category as we felt we could better tailor the contents of each kit. Across our project we made the conscious decision not to mention hospital, as we wanted to put the primary focus on play. As mentioned earlier, we made the executive decision to go one step further and give the brand a little refresh which was included on our final submission. See below a short animated piece we included alongside our submission to give a holistic view of what we tackled.

Part 03 – Shortlist

We were beyond thrilled to get the email letting us know that we had been shortlisted along with two other teams in the design category, but it wasn't over yet. We were back in the hot seat, this time presenting our solution to a panel of judges. This was the real test. Was our rationale and pitch convincing enough to show that we had the winning idea? We would have to wait a few days to find out...

Part 04 – The Call

A sunny Friday afternoon and myself and Amber are working from home. I could see an unexpected incoming group call from Shreesha resulting in my heart relocating to my throat for a brief moment. I answered and had to patiently wait for Amber to join the call before Shreesha could share the news (C'mon Amber!!). Finally the words we were waiting for…"Congratulations, you’re the winning design team this year." Instant delight. All the hard work had paid off, we had been selected as the final design team to go to France and complete globally. 🤯

Part 05 – CYL Showcase

The final stage of the Irish leg of Cannes Young Lions is the winners showcase, where each winning team gets a chance to present their idea on stage. With some good preparation and a bit of dutch courage, we took to the stage and presented our Imagikit. With this experience under our belt, we now firmly set our eyes on the main event, that was only a matter of weeks away…

Part two coming soon