“Ring in the Ru-Year”: Studio Moross creates new campaign for RuPaul’s Drag Race

Studio Moross has created the visuals and a new promo for season 13 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, set to launch on screens on New Year’s Day. Aries Moross and their team were tasked with illustrating individual type lock-ups for each queen for the Ruveal, as well as animating a 30-second TV spot illustrating powerful quotes from each queen.

For the type design, Anna Czuż and Johnny Brennan from Studio Moross worked with Leandro Assis (AKA Lebassis), a lettering artist and illustrator based in Brazil, whose work Aries says “fits perfectly for this campaign”. Explaining the process in more detail, they add: “We didn’t really pull from any references, just worked on creating a suite of hand-drawn assets, which had different personalities but worked in unison.”

The bespoke word marks for each queen were “based on their name, personality, personal style and story,” Aries explains. “For example, Elliott with 2 T’s is from Las Vegas so we approached it like a traditional Vegas sign. Olivia Lux has Old Hollywood style, so we wanted to capture the glamour, and we wanted to capture Gottmik’s edgier persona with the detailed script.” GottMik is the first out trans man contestant to feature on the show.

Once the type design and lock-ups were done, Aries and their team set about creating the promo (which you can view here), working with directors in the US to combine their assets into the commercial, and collaborating with a team of motion designers “to add that extra love to each sequence”, as Aries puts it. The motion and animation work was carried out by Santiago Avila, Linus Kraemer, Margaret Bialis and George Wheeler. Throughout this process, they were working with a bright and bold colour palette picked out by Ryan Bernis, the art director for the campaign, with whom Studio Moross worked closely throughout.

Drag Race is returning for its 13th season, which will kick off on New Year’s Day in the US. Meanwhile, RuPaul’s Drag Race UK is set to return for a second and third season.