BBC Sounds - United Zingdom

I was commissioned by BBC Sounds to create the artwork for United Zingdom, a new podcast exploring British identity.

“Zing Tsjeng can apply for a British passport. But she’s already got one from Singapore, and she can’t have both. It's got her thinking, what does it mean to be British? She's off on a trip around the UK to find out.”

I was briefed to create some playful artwork which included a portrait of Zing as well as incorporating British iconography and stereotypes such as tea-drinking, the Union Jack and the Royal Family.

Development

I initially worked with the Commissioning Podcast Producer at BBC Sounds to develop a concept which included a lot more stereotypical ‘British’ items surrounding the portrait of Zing. However, we ended up removing most of these as it felt too crowded and the detail got lost at smaller sizes, such as on mobile devices.

Solution

I ended up delivering a final concept which worked as a bold hero image across multiple touchpoints, including as the podcast cover image and on banners across different iterations of Apple Podcast (mobile, desktop and Apple TV). Many of these have differing guidelines and restrictions that needed to be considered within the design.