Charter of Gold, for King and Country
Interstate was honoured to be appointed as the lead creative agency working on this year’s annual Charter of Gold ceremony of Bahrain which was held at the National Action Charter Monument and marked the 18th anniversary of the National Action Charter endorsement.
The ceremony represented HM King Hamad’s future-facing vision for building a modern Bahrain and awarded medals to Bahraini citizens who have attained landmark achievements around the world.
The event was an opportunity for Interstate to design the identity and develop corresponding digital content at a huge scale, on an international basis. We partnered directly with the Bahrain-based teams producing the event, working seamlessly in a short timeframe to deliver a beautifully crafted and timeless piece of heritage.
With a number of elements to plan for the ceremony and several counterparties involved in multiple locations, it was essential that we approached the project with a well-planned graphic identity.
The Charter of Gold required a marque to establish a commemorative symbol that would galvanise the nation. The face needed to display the scripted title of the Bahrain Charter and to convey the numerous areas for which the medal could be awarded; whether that be in recognition of achievement in sports, arts and culture, science and technology, business or religion.
With deliberate thought, our London-based calligrapher developed a number of design forms to fit the title of the Charter into the defined two thirds shape. The final composition uses the majestic and elegant Thuluth script and imbues a strong sense of rhythm. Thuluth allows for multiple graphic possibilities, including the use of harikaat decorative markers to further beautify the careful arrangement of the letters.
The words of the script element are deliberately arranged in a hierarchy to give foundation and stability to the word Gold at the top. The open ended swooshes of the words add power and gravitas to the design and complement the more closed forms on the right of the design.
These graphic patterns complete the messaging of the marque representing the five pillars of Islam from Bahrain’s national flag but also allude to areas of achievement for which the medal can be awarded.
A detailed toolkit was then developed and circulated to maintain consistency across the varied digital, TV broadcast and physical applications. A concise colour palette, Latin and Arabic type usage and ‘Charter of Gold’ patterns were also devised to reflect the significance of this national expression of achievement.
Alongside designing the medal, we also edited a short film for the ceremony which highlights the achievements of Bahrainis during the 18 years of the National Action Charter across various fields. A total of 236 Bahrainis attained 251 achievements ranging from weightlifting and painting, to Quran recitals. Corresponding motion graphics were developed that helped to tell the story of achievement and underpinned the stature of the event.
Due to the extraordinary width of the final film and motion graphics projection, where the final display was across two screens of 12 x 60 metres, with certain elements projected across the full 180m width, it was critical for the team in London to utilise our VR render system. This enabled us to experience the scale of the venue and to size accurately and position the elements across the 180 degree surface of the monument.
An integral part of the celebrations centred around the seamless choreography of live staged moments and video content. We produced intro and outro video sequences, archive footage to live speech transitions and animated backgrounds for screened content together with motion graphics quranic verses, and an accompanying music selection to help tie the event together.
The Bahrain team were on site to oversee the delivery of our content and the theatre of the event itself, ensuring that everything flowed seamlessly and reflected the magnitude of the moment.
Following the ceremony, the story continued to unfold through the media with the Interstate-designed identity appearing in the coverage on the Bahrain News Channel, the Gulf Air website the Bahrain News Agency, and The Bahrain Daily Tribune among many others.
