Our creative idea, Always Moving, reflects that the London Symphony Orchestra is always progressive and that its performances are always visceral and emotional experiences.

Inspired by the LSO logo, we started at the same place that the music and performances do – with the conductor. Our idea was simple, we wanted to create a visual identity that was conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

We set out to use Sir Simon’s passionate and distinctive conducting movements as he creates and shapes the music to inform the visual language of the brand. And to do this in a way that would stay true to his movements but also reflect the emotional qualities of the music.

Collectively the animations and subsequent stills form the basis of the visual language for print, digital and moving image.

A typographic approach was developed too, consisting of two techniques reflecting Sir Simon Rattle’s movements as he conducts. A fluid movement captures his grand and sweeping gestures; an angular movement captures his more intense and urgent gestures. This technique is applied sparingly to the headline font to express the movement and emotion of the music. Singular words are also split over multiple lines, to further add a sense of movement and rhythm.

Even the individual photographs of the musicians capture their movement, which is intrinsic to the creation of the music.

Moving image now plays a lead role in their communications and a series of films combining the animations and type promote the new season. These are being displayed across screens at The Barbican, LSO’s website and digital channels.

The brand’s new visual language captures the emotional qualities of the music, through movement and artistic interpretation, making it more accessible – helping LSO achieve its ambition to take classical music to new and younger audiences.

‘Our new LSO brand conveys the pioneering spirit of the London Symphony Orchestra. It represents classical music in a way that’s more accessible and reflects the visceral power of our performances. It does all this in way that brings new life to our existing marque and simultaneously places Sir Simon and our music-making at the very heart of our brand.’

‘The LSO launched its new brand to coincide with the 2017/18 concert season going on sale in January. Since, the LSO has had the most successful period of sales in its history. Many concerts are now sold out, with sales and multiple concert bookings being significantly higher than previous seasons.’

Edward Appleyard, LSO Project Lead