Great Why Not Associates Turner Prize promo made in just four days

Whether in the art world or in the tabloids, the Turner Prize has no small amount of artistic baggage to schlep about from year to year. As such, creating designs around the awards ceremony itself is something not to be treated either too flippantly or with too much deference to its heritage, a bridge crossed very deftly indeed in the promotional video by Why Not Associates for this year’s Channel Four Turner Prize broadcast.

Clayton Welham, moving image director at Why Not Associates, explains: “It had to be hard-hitting, controversial and in-your-face – it’s born from the idea of the Turner Prize.”

The agency has created the awards ceremony promo film with 4Creative director Brian Harrington for the last four years, but the most recent event saw them totally overhaul its aesthetic, which has in the past just been slightly tweaked for each iteration. For the 2014 edition, Why Not Associates had just four days in which to create the video, and so looked to hand-crafting – and to their own studio – for images and inspiration.

“We did the trailer for the Grayson Perry show and borrowed his sketchbooks, which gave us the idea to look at our own sketchbooks,” says Andy Altmann, Why Not Associates founder. “I had my sketchbooks from college, and so did some other people in the office, so we pooled those together and bought a silkscreen to use. It was strange seeing things from 30 years ago!”

These images were used alongside photographs from photo libraries, which were scanned in and placed with hand-drawn typography and cut paper pieces to form a glorious, rapid film that feels entirely apt for the sort of daring work the Turner Prize has been known to throw into our consciousness. So much so, in fact, that the film was sent back twice for being “unbroadcastable” – it’s flashing imagery failed the Harding Test, which detects flashing images unsuitable for epilepsy sufferers.

“The structure and pace of it [might be influenced by] the mental time scales we worked to,” says Clayton. “It does inform the end product – strange things happen when you work into the dead of night.”