The One Show

The One Show is the world's most prestigious award show in advertising and design. For over 50 years, the Gold Pencil has been regarded as one of the top prizes in the creative industry. The One Show has a rich legacy of honoring some of the most groundbreaking ideas, created by some of the most remarkable minds in creativity.

2023 One Show - Design

A Silent Frown

Agency DDB Mudra Group / Mumbai

Client Charlie Chaplin Foundation

Category

Editorial / Books

Annual ID

OS23_DE002G

About the Work

16th April, 2022 was the 133rd birthday of the world’s most beloved performer: Sir Charlie Chaplin. But this occasion follows two years of great loss and grief, where humankind had begun to lose belief.

While we’d celebrated Charlie’s life and craft on numerous occasions, we felt he had something more to offer to the world now: resilience. Because although he’d endured a lion’s share of life’s tragedies himself, he had the strength to look past them and put smiles on faces where there were none.

We wanted to capture this story in a piece of art: a one-of-a-kind book narrating Chaplin’s tragic tale in its pages, coming together to form a whole much larger than the sum of its parts. A metaphor for his life, if there ever was one. Commissioned by the Charlie Chaplin Museum Foundation, this book (A Silent Frown) sought to bring hope and faith to all.

Titled A Silent Frown, we designed a book whose every page had a transparent section with line art illustrations depicting a grueling chapter of Sir Chaplin’s life. When the reader flips through the book and stacks the pages together, the drawings all come together to form the visage of the legend.

A key illustration challenge was to ensure that each line drawing stands alone, independently conveying a slice of Chaplin’s story, while also contributing to the larger visual effort. The art had to be carefully crafted and sequenced, so that they illustrations would achieve the ideal dark tones, middle tones, and highlights of Chaplin’s face when stacked together. This task was further complicated by the need to establish chronology in the story.

A precise production process was then used, marrying traditional screen printing on thin, anti-scratch acrylic sheets with an amalgamation of die-cut and flat-lay book binding

2023 Awards

Total Points: 45

Credits

Agency

DDB Mudra Group / Mumbai

Art Director

Manish Darji

Copywriter

David Vaz

Animator

Gaurav Malhotra

Chief Creative Officer

Rahul Mathew

Creative Director

Pallavi Chakravarti
Shagun Seda

Designer

Manish Darji

Editor

Kashif Memon

Illustrator

Manish Darji

Photographer

Sumeet Ballal

Typographer

Pramod Chavan

Creative

Gopal Katkhede
Mahima Mathur
Ravi Ananthan

Business

Sanjana Chetan

CEO & MD

Aditya Kanthy

HEAD OF ART

Manish Darji

Print Production

Prashant Tulaskar

Related Awards

 

 

 

 

Follow Us