Aidan Owen

Creating social assets for the whole fleet of Hyundai’s cars.

Developing a marketable brand with multichannel’s and stakeholders. Creating concept to delivery across digital, print and livery for BMW Park Lane. I wanted a unified approach to how customers interacted with the brand, at every touch point the new logo I wanted familiarity, so I designed it around BMW’s new Thin typeface to give immediate elegance to the brand, while being instantly recognisable at every interaction for the user across the multiple disciplines it would be used in.

I created a branding overhaul to the highly successful division of BMW Group, International Specialist Sales Division. This was digital led with all communications from the business to the customer, Including digital offers, web banners, email footers and national magazine print materials. I decided on a colour palette that would express the sub divisions within ‘ISSD’ and was inspired by the architectural shapes of BMW’s Munich head offices. It’s incredibly angular and made up of these interlocking shapes showing a large corporate brand made of small sections, which I then mirrored in my design.

Below are some other examples of work from my time at BMW, including ‘The X Campaign’ which started as an email campaign which was so successful it evolved across all disciplines (web, event materials and a social stagey with GIF’s, animations and facebook interactive carousels.)

New car released Social assets. Plus designing a direct B2C campaign and all assets for print, digital and livery.

Creating fun and rewarding animations that Hult went on and used at all touch points with their customers through email, web and social.

Some were purely graphical, to lead the eye to information, to give branding and sense of familiarity. Others were purposefully fun and interesting to build on core values of Hult.

I researched Disney's twelve basic principles of animation were introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their 1981 book The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. The principles are based on the work of Disney animators from the 1930s onwards, in their quest to produce more realistic animations. The main purpose of these principles was to produce an illusion that cartoon characters adhered to the basic laws of physics, but they also dealt with more abstract issues, such as emotional timing and character appeal.

Making the complicated; precise.

“Simplicity is not just the removal of clutter, it’s how it works” - Steve Jobs.

I really believe that when designing anything the use case and your audience have to be front and centre of thoughtful design, long info heavy presentations can be tricky to simplify and evolve into a brand identity calling card. This work here then granted me the luxury of staying on for another project (animation work)

I was briefed to give the homescreen an update for new customers. My focuses were: 

Mobile first design (after learning from the client they have an app in the works I wanted to give them a platform to jumpstart the development from) 

Responsive design (creating a website ready for the current market and designing for the future)

Consistent communication (their current website had lots of different messages, colour palates and design choices. I wanted the visual language to be consistent for the user so hierarchy was easy to follow and people knew how to respond to the website placing focus on CTA and clickable links 

Accessibility ( I believe all great design is for everyone and I knew I wanted the website to not only be user friendly but intuitive to os screen readers for hard of sight customers as previously some text was baked within images that would of been lost to them users.)

On brand (they had a visual medium that I didn’t want to deviate to far from I just simply refined the colour palate and made it more modern without losing the charm the existing design had.

a mock up site can be listed here

Created for the rebranding of the highly successful WOW drinks, I was inspired by TOM FORD’s Black Orchid campaign and picked all these flowers from my garden and shot these at home to create dramatic imagery that stood out from the competition and enriched the existing packaging design.

Suspended in water, enveloped by fresh nature. Was the headline I created that was used in the PR launch.

Shot on iPhone.

Collection of theatre posters 

To keep myself creatively open and looking for new ideas, colours and themes I often paint. Drawing was how I first learnt to express my creativity as a child and it was something that I yearned to improve and develop and that has took me throughout my career; continuing to develop new skills from photography to videography to animation and digital design.

Shot and edited on iPhone 11 Pro.

I filmed my travels around New Zealand.

Found inspiration in Nature, guided by instinct and enjoyed the ride.

I hope you enjoy watching a couple they vary on location and the 0 budget I had.

But the time I was there will influence me artistically for years to come.

They are available in 4K!