I conceived and designed the look and theme for the 2019 CMT Music Awards. After creating the initial style frames and treatment, I was assigned a team to art direct as we created the final pitch, shown here, to be presented to top MTV executives.
working with fellow creatives is often like trying to keep 40 kittens in a cardboard box, but I kept the team focused and faithful to my original vision while also staying open to their ideas. At the end of of a rigorous iteration schedule, we had created a cohesive branding system for the show across broadcast, merch, social platforms, and beyond.
The look had two main goals: (1) be simple and flexible to work within a fast-paced production environment (where assets would often be given to us as-is, but still needed branding), and (2) show the genre's roots in a new, fun way by pulling patterns inspired by the work of legendary country fashion designer Nudie Cohn. The concept was COINED "party camo."
CMT has had a long love affair with strong patterns in their designs. In the past, the patterns had been neutral and geometric. This year, I wanted a subtle but specific callout to country heritage while still retaining the loud, party atmosphere of the show.
Functionally, the design package had to be able to take any asset provided by artists or labels and rebrand it for the show. Since most of these images often arrived as "finished" pieces intended for press or marketing, we needed a strong color/pattern treatment to make sure all assets blended seamlessly into the show. All images and footage, from press photos to music videos, were skinned in the design to be cohesive across all elements, but also could stand on their own as new creations.
Color, shape, type, and pattern systems were created to allow flexibility for both internal design staff and external vendors.
All of this expanded to designs for broadcast, Merch, and Social platforms. We even designed experience rooms for fans and artists who wanted to share posts to their preferred social media outlet.
And, of course, an awards show isn't complete without an award. The design team, under my art direction, cooked up a skinned trophy for the show's winners.
Finally, we created a sizzle reel for MTV Executives to get a sense of the Motion Language. Audio has been removed due to copyright.
