Jump In With #btsia Visuals

Ahead of the BT Sport Industry Awards 2018 on Thursday, Sport Industry Group speaks to Jump’s Richard Norley and Russell Hilliard, official visual graphics supplier of the industry’s most anticipated night of the year, about growing and adapting over the last 20 years and the appeal of the sports sector…

Jump was founded way back in 1996. How has the agency grown and evolved in that time?

For the first years of Jump the five directors ran the company on their own – the designers, the animators, the accountants…making the tea!

Now we have a team of 15 staff (although we’re still making the tea). When Jump formed we were working a lot in broadcast comedy on shows like The Day Today and Smith and Jones. This led to a few quiz shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and then to Saturday night entertainment like Ant and Dec Saturday Night Takeaway and The X Factor).

These prime-time shows led us to creating broadcast title sequences for major sporting events, which gave us foot in the door working direct with sports governing bodies such as FIFA and UEFA.

The technology has changed a lot of course over that time. When we first started we had one animation machine worth £140,000 working 24 hours a day – divided up in to 3 x 8 hour shifts. Now everyone has their own Mac at a fraction of the price and significantly more powerful.

Technology has clearly had a huge impact on the way your business operates. How difficult is it to stay ‘on-trend’ and up to date with the latest styles and innovations?

It’s hard to be across everything individually as there is so much out there, but trends and examples of cool new work fly around the world very quickly on social media and the team here are great at keeping an eye out and sharing inspirational work with each other, so our sharing mentality really helps.

As a company we regularly keep an eye out for young talent leaving college and having a mixture of experience and young fresh ideas is healthy for any company.

You are working more and more in sport – working with the Paralympic Games, FIFA World Cup, Football on 5, UEFA, Six Day London, England Hockey and the Rugby World Cup over the past few years – why is sport so appealing as a sector?

It’s probably a combination of a few things. A lot of these events are global – and we’re helping to create a platform for engaging with hugely passionate fans. Getting the chance to capture that energy and excitement for the massive audiences is a very rewarding challenge.

To be honest, budgets are generally better within sport as well – which can open up some more creative treatment possibilities – such as the animation work we did for Channel 4’s Rio Paralympic Games (including David Weir, below).

What’s the biggest difference working in sport, compared to the television and entertainment sector? Or is there one?

In sport there can often be a long established heritage – or amazing sporting action – that people are keen to feature or refer to, like the greatest goals in the history of a tournament perhaps. But sport is also very cutting edge and constantly looking for different ways to tell the story. So having archive material and pictures is more common in sport than entertainment – but always paired with a desire to find new ways to use them.

We think that one of the reasons we’ve had success creating sequences for sport is because of our background in entertainment. They often both have a desire to feel like a massive event and to have a huge sense of scale – which hopefully is something we know how to achieve.

Data continues to dominate conversation amongst many brands and rights holders. What’s the key to finding the balance between insight and genuine creativity? Does it help or hinder the creative process sometimes?

When we’re briefed on a new project, data doesn’t form part of it. We can be influenced by current trends in design but our work it’s always creatively led, never data driven.

You are working with the BT Sport Industry Awards for the fourth consecutive year – tell us about the creative this year?

This year we’ve evolved the original ‘movement of sport’ creative and taken it a step further this time and introduced the concept ‘moment of sport’.

We’ve taken dynamic moments in sport that have impact; like a rugby try, a tennis serve and a diver slicing through the water; and encapsulated these moments with motion lines, elegant curves and the Sport Industry Group roundels.

To accentuate the moments in each sport we have decluttered the background and placed the athletes in a darkly lit studio environment, so the sole focus is on the athlete and their moment.

The new creative has given each image a fresh contemporary look, which has pushed the BT Sport Industry Awards brand further and really celebrates those special moments in sports.

Finally, how can people get in touch with you?

Please give us a call, drop us an email, look us up on Skype, or even better drop in and say hello and we’ll make you one of those well practised cups of tea.

+44 (0)20 7253 1191  info@jumpdesign.co.uk