The awards’ new visual identity embodies organic growth as a metaphor for creativity, blending generative design and dynamic typography.
The PRINT Awards have long stood as a beacon of excellence in design, celebrating bold creatives pushing the boundaries across all mediums. For the 2025 edition, PRINT Magazine enlisted The Collected Works to craft a dynamic visual identity and hero film that embodies the theme of “cultivating creativity.”
Departing from previous technology-driven aesthetics, this year’s identity embraces organic growth as a metaphor for creativity. The Collected Works, led by partner and creative director Justin Colt and senior designer Christian Townsend, developed a system inspired by biophilia, melding generative vines, blooming flowers, and sculptural rock formations into a strikingly fluid design language.
The inspiration behind this year’s theme stemmed from a desire to move away from tech-centric narratives and explore a more human and organic approach. Colt explains: “Each year, PRINT comes to us with the beginnings of an idea they’d like us to develop.
“This year, that idea centred around biophilia and moving in a different direction—one that didn’t focus solely on technology, which we had explored in previous years.”
The team expanded on this concept by visualising creativity as organic growth breaking free from rigid structures. “Plants symbolise creativity, while our rocky alcove represents the rigid grid from which it breaks free,” adds Colt.
The result is an identity that visually and metaphorically reinforces the expansive nature of creative expression.
From the outset, The Collected Works drew inspiration from the natural world, particularly macro photography of microscopic plants and creatures. “We loved the idea of really embracing organic randomness but subtly guiding and shaping it with a human touch,” says Townsend.
A key visual reference was sculpture, particularly work that merges organic rock textures with geometric forms. “We were constantly joking about putting our rock assets into the Noguchi museum,” Townsend notes, referencing the renowned sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
These influences led to the careful incorporation of chiselled stone textures and carving tool marks throughout the identity.
Typography played a fundamental role in ensuring the identity remained cohesive across all touchpoints. In Colt’s view, “when someone sees a piece of design work—a film, a poster, a brand—and they don’t know why they like it, it’s often the typography speaking”.
The Collected Works selected Playground by Pangram Pangram as the display typeface for its celebratory yet unconventional character. “We needed a typeface that had lots of curves and swashes that our generative vines could ‘grab’ onto,” Colt explains.
He adds: “As our film is, overall, vines and flowers climbing up and covering typography, we needed lots of nooks and crannies for our vines to climb.” This approach ensured the typography seamlessly integrated with the film’s visual narrative while maintaining a strong, recognisable brand presence across digital and print applications.
The identity’s centrepiece is the hero video, a meticulously crafted animation that showcases vines and flowers blooming over sculptural rocks and typography. Townsend describes the creative process as an exercise in controlled randomness.
He says: “We got really excited about the idea of committing to building individual systems separately and throwing them together into a single scene to see how they all interact.”
This approach mirrored the unpredictability of organic growth, with each system turning into a mini project in its own right as they all required a different approach.
All elements in the animation were built using Houdini, a 3D software known for its procedural design capabilities. “Rather than simply building final assets, you’re really building the ‘recipe’ which describes how to create the asset,” Townsend says.
For instance, creating a rock sculpture involves multiple algorithmic steps. The process began with selecting a base geometric shape, which was then populated with scattered points onto which random geometric forms were copied.
These shapes were continuously added or subtracted from the initial form, repeating the process until a layered and intricate structure was achieved. Finally, organic rock textures were applied, and surfaces were flattened to refine the overall look.
This procedural workflow allowed the team to fine-tune and iterate on the generative design without losing creative control.
Ensuring consistency across different media was a priority, and the application of typography and colour really tied it all together. Early teaser campaigns for social media featured blurred or frosted macro renders of flowers, gradually revealing more details as the awards’ entry date approached.
As the awards began to open for entry, the idea was that the design system would slowly come into focus. This strategy not only built anticipation but also provided additional time for animating and rendering the film.
By locking in type and colour from the start, the team maintained a coherent aesthetic throughout the campaign.
The hero film also actively shaped the overall brand identity. While, typically, you would develop an identity system first and then have the film match that, The Collected Works took the opposite approach, letting the animation guide the visual language.
Colt says, “By setting up procedural growth simulations, we could sit back and watch the vines grow where they wanted to.
“Then we’d drop cameras to capture interesting moments throughout the process.” This hands-off approach to animation allowed the identity to evolve naturally, reinforcing the project’s overarching theme of growth.
One of The Collected Works’ key goals was to move away from awards show clichés and from the clichés of awards and competitions in general. This meant no gold, silver, or bronze colors and no trophy imagery.
“I think we did a nice job here of creating an identity system that feels celebratory and exciting without relying on any of those elements,” says Colt. This fresh perspective positions the PRINT Awards as a forward-thinking institution that continually redefines how creative achievements are celebrated.
Townsend believes that digital-first, dynamic identities are becoming the new standard. “As these awards are increasingly fully digital, we have so many more opportunities to create flashy, moving systems with dynamic content,” he says, citing Studio Dumbar’s work for D&AD and the Demo Festival as prime examples.
A major challenge, however, is enabling clients to independently generate branded assets. “A longtime interest of ours—and something we’ve been seeing gain traction—is the creation of generative design systems and custom-developed creative tools,” Townsend explains. “Instead of just handing over static assets, we could deliver branded pattern generators or interactive design tools.”
Colt echoes this sentiment, emphasising the shift towards more flexible systems. “I hope it’s clear, but this film does not have one shred—not one flower petal—of AI in it. But the idea of defining the ‘rules’ for animation and giving the client room to play within them is really exciting.”
With PRINT already expanding this identity across multiple platforms, the 2025 Awards branding exemplifies a future where design is not just visually compelling but also responsive, adaptable, and deeply immersive.