History of Wembley Arena

An animated showreel history of one of the world’s most famous music venues

In 2014, Wembley Arena underwent a multi-million-pound facelift as part of its new sponsorship deal with SSE. We were tasked with creating a loopable video that showcased a selection of events from the venue’s 80-year history: no small task with 6 weeks to research, collate and execute the whole thing. They supplied a chronological list of every event that had ever been at the arena, which we transferred into a database, conformed and mashed into a ranked list of the most frequent events. We then went through the list, picked a selection of the most well-known events, grouped these roughly by category (pop, rock, metal, “divas”, “legends”, soul & funk – there were quite a few and some were pretty arbitrary) and sourced appropriate imagery for them. Budgets weren’t infinite – are they ever? – but Getty Images were very helpful in supplying what we needed at a reasonable price; we also drew on the venue’s own extensive archive, which involved photographing a large amount of programmes, artifacts, posters and prints. The whole lot was then transferred into After Effects and animated, while our music researchers dug up interesting snippets about each artist.

The final reel runs to just over 12 minutes, and contains spots for artists as diverse as James Brown, ABBA, The Beatles, Paramore, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Whitney Houston and the Rolling Stones. We also designed the vinyl wraps covering the pillars that the screens are on.

Initial Development & Print Artwork

Initial designs for several of the foyer screens

Print artwork designs for Wembley Arena