NEXT STOP: HANBURY STREET
ROLE:
Conception
Art Direction
Design
Direction
Editing
Audio
Grade
TEAM:
Sibusisiwe Khupe
Umar Butt
Isabella Osterlund
“A Wieden+Kennedy office is one-third the network, one-third the people, and one-third the city.”
– Dan Wieden
To honour that final third, we commissioned nine artists: all London-based, all completely different — to reimagine the W+K London logo in their own visual language. From gold-leaf signage to Bengali street lettering, their work is a love letter to the communities, craft, and culture that make this city what it is.
Out of this came Next Stop: Hanbury Street — a four-part “social first” film series I directed, capturing the minds behind some of these designs. Framed like a moment at a bus stop — quiet, reflective, in transit — each video offers a glimpse into the artist’s story and what it means to create in London today.
9 different logo interpretations by 9 different Londoners
The initial proposal was to build a custom bus top outside the office, so it felt like an immersive piece that the public could interact with, even outside office hours.
The shooting style would be natural and the motion-blur of the passersby is what makes this feel so quintessentially London. It shows just how eclectic, busy and diverse we are as Londoners. And that outer world can also reflect our internal monologue, which is essentially what this series aimed to capture.
We landed on just the bus stand because we felt like it made more sense from a production/cost standpoint and also gave us more visual depth, creating room for not just the passersby and our talent in the foreground, but also our building – 16 Hanbury Street which is W+K’s London HQ.
The format of the bus-stand perfectly contained the names of all 9 artists with an ode to everyones FYP (for you page) because as the chronically online department of W+K, that will always be our Next Stop.
AUDIO-VISUAL WORLD
I wanted the videos to feel visceral; as though you were: tapping in to someone's inner-monogue, boarding a bus, looking at the signs to ensure you're at the right stop.
I took inspiration from the dither and glow you see on LED signs at bus stops to stylise the titles & I recorded a few bus journeys to use as a sound-bed, ensuring I got the "ding" sound when a stop's been requested and also the sound of a bus engine, as it's halting.