Case Study

90th Oscars Campaign

Art Direction
CONCEPT Ideation
Visual Design
Brand Identity

The Oscars was celebrating its 90th anniversary, and the Academy wanted a campaign that would celebrate the history of the Oscars while also driving attention away from the emotional rollercoaster of Envelopegate that happened during the 89th Oscars presentation of Best Picture.

THE CHALLENGE
Jimmy Kimmel was unable to participate in another promotional photoshoot for the 90th show, thus, we were limited to using photos from the previous year’s promotional shoot, creating a unique challenge that required a creative pivot.

To overcome this, I developed the concept, visual design, and art direction for the 90th Anniversary Oscars Campaign and designed the key art, blending old and new media design elements inspired by the behind-the-scenes moments of filmmaking. Utilizing outtakes from Jimmy Kimmel’s 89th Oscars shoot, the key art highlighted his dynamic personality and showcased unpolished, authentic moments. The design mimicked the process of selecting and rejecting film clips, using film frames and markups to convey the idea of creative project iterations. The key art was distributed globally to 225 countries and territories and won a Graphis Gold Award in the Advertising Annual 2019.

Moodboard

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Pitch Deck & Outake Selects

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Envelopegate was rooted in human error, it revealed a human side of a ceremony that traditionally follows a strict structure. While reviewing hundreds of outtake images from the 89th Oscars promotional shoot with Kimmel, I found myself amused with the range of emotions he demonstrated and the unpolished energy.

I felt that a contact strip design would not only be a nod to film history, but it would be a unique departure from the Oscars’ traditional Key Art style. I also knew it would be the perfect design to utilize several shots from the previous years promo shoot.

Digital Details

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I have always gravitated towards digital assets that appear to have an analog texture to them. I wanted the Key Art to embody the various stages of the creative collaboration process— from being on set to making selects.

I created custom “messy” lettering and digital markup elements to mimic the traditional contract sheet photo selection process. ABC wanted to add in the tagline “What could possibly go wrong?” to the poster as a nod to #Envelopegate. I saw this a perfect opportunity to incorporate a little more texture using a piece of masking tape that I had scanned when making my texture library.