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Client: The Observer
Project: Observer Music Magazine 'From Abba to Zappa'
Country: UK
Year: 2004

The advertising agency Mother asked me to work with them on a series of characters for an alphabet of pop stars for their 'From Abba to Zappa' campaign. Each letter would have a pop star (A is for Abba, B is for Beatles, etc.). I worked on designing a character template, and then drawing each of the pop stars based on that template. These characters were all placed in a generic colourful design to be used as posters, postcards, newspaper adverts and beermats.
The characters were also used in a TV and cinema advertisment produced by Nexus. (You can see the clip on their site)
Below are some photos of the posters in London underground stations; meanwhile, here are the original drawings: Abba   Badly Drawn Boy   The Beatles   Black Eyed Peas   Chemical Brothers   Christina Aguilera   Daft Punk   The Darkness   David Bowie   Elton John   Eminem   The Flaming Lips   Franz Ferdinand   Goldie Lookin Chain   Guns N' Roses   Har Mar Superstar   The Hives   Ice T   INXS   Jackson Five   Jimi Hendrix   Kiss   Kraftwerk   Led Zeppelin   The Libertines   Marliyn Manson   Missy Elliott   Morrissey   New Order   Nirvana   Oasis   Ozzy Osbourne   Prodigy   Public Enemy   Queen   Queens Of The Stone Age   Red Hot Chili Peppers   Rolling Stones   Scissor Sisters   Stevie Wonder   The Stone Roses   Tatu   Tupac Shakur   U2   Usher   The Velvet Underground   The Village People   Wham!   The White Stripes   X-ecutioners   Xzibit   Yeah Yeah Yeahs   Yoko Ono   Frank Zappa
And here's a little film of the posters alongside an escalator on the Tube.

This campaign has won a few awards, which is nice. The posters won the Best Use of Underground/Metro/Rail Advertising award at the Campaign Poster Awards; the animated TV/cinema ad made by Nexus won Best Animation at the BTAA craft awards; and Poke, won the BIMA Best Integrated Campaign award for their abba-to-zappa.com website.
Awards update March 2005: At the BTAAs, this campaign won Gold for best Newspaper or Magazine TV ad, Silver for best ad under 60 seconds, and Silver for best ad shown on TV and cinema. At the Creative Circle Awards it won Silver for best use of famous personality in TV ad, Silver for best use of animation, and Bronze for best TV commercial