The World in Words campaign launches

Pop the champagne! Sound the trumpets! Because last week saw the launch of ‘The World in Words’, our new campaign in which acclaimed illustrators from all around the world depict what one of five words – ‘chaos’, ‘home’, ‘move’, ‘feast’ and ‘humour’ – means to them, shining a light on just how much our world view is shaped by the language we speak and the culture we come from.

We were excited, thrilled (and a little sweaty) to have fully-fledged illustration superheroes including Tim Lahan, Ori Toor, Lisk Feng and more contributing to the project. Their beautiful and extraordinarily diverse artworks provide an amazing insight into the diversity of meaning that can be found inside individual words and concepts. Which is our very artsy way of saying that sensitivity and creativity are crucial when it comes to adapting messaging for global audiences.

And as if having legit DONS of the illustration world create original work for us wasn’t enough, we got to show them off on Thursday and Friday night, with an exhibition held in London’s Spitalfields, in all the glitz and glamour of a disused public toilet.

 

The best and the brightest of the advertising and creative industries turned out (my Dad was also there) to find out how ‘home’ feels to an Indian illustrator, discover how an Italian might depict ‘feast’, and see ‘chaos’ through the eyes of a Chinese artist.

They mingled …

They marvelled …

They munched …

They brazenly stole the artworks to use as their phone screensavers.

Erin Bolens, poet-extraordinaire, was also there to enchant us with a reading of her new piece ‘Words of the World’, written especially for the occasion. It was the cherry on top of the delicious layer cake of culture, then words, then art, then wine, then more culture, that was the exhibition.

 

‘Ground-breaking’, ‘insightful’, ‘this exhibition has opened my eyes to new ways of seeing the world’ were comments I VERY CLEARLY overheard from attendees that night. And the press agrees, with coverage from the likes of Creative Boom, Digital Arts, and clinching first place on The Drum‘s Creative Leaderboard in the week after launch.

A huge thank you to everyone who brought this campaign to life, and to all who came to celebrate its launch with us. If you missed the exhibition, you can still see all the artworks at theworldinwords.co.uk.