Sunderland-based Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art (NGCA) planned an exhibition entitled Think-Tank: A Marketplace of Ideas. The exhibition – part of Design Event 09, the North East’s annual design festival – would see Britain’s leading think tanks collaborate with the its top designers to imagine how we might create a better nation. Airside was paired with left-wing organisation Demos, who wanted to explain the results of a recent statistical survey on power in 21st century Britain.

Demos came to us with an intensely detailed statistical study, which rated every single constituency in Britain according to a number of different social and economic aspects. Each of these aspects has an effect on the power held by the individuals in each area, and by the constituencies as a whole. For Demos, this survey explained theoretical concepts about power as well as showing its practical implementation in 21st century Britain. For us, it was a lot of multi-layered information to squeeze into a short animation.

Over the course of several meetings with Demos, Airside wrote a script that communicated the main concepts behind Demos’ survey, as well as showing the practical significance of the survey results. We set the problem in a historical context in order to create a narrative that would help ordinary members of the public understand these concepts.

The final 2D animated film was directed and animated by Airside. Airside also commissioned the soundtrack, sound fx and voice-over.

For more details read our Process blog.

47,000+ views on YouTube

1 x 174 sec animated film

"Airside took a really complicated subject and made it understandable to a much bigger audience – something really difficult, which we could never have done."

Peter Harrington – Head of Communications – Demos

"Airside deftly used the jester’s tactic to reach it’s audience: humor mixed with equal parts profundity. The design and the narrative are simple enough to be swallowed on the first viewing but loaded with enough significance that fully digesting them requires time and—here’s the rub—thought."

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