2025 RGD Branding Awards, Shifting perspectives for a global branding award program.
What We Did
The Challenge
The Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) came to ZAK to launch their 2025 campaign for a competition dedicated exclusively to branding and identity design. The challenge was twofold: create a visual identity that feels authoritative enough to judge the world’s best work, while remaining flexible enough to act as a functional container for hundreds of diverse submissions.
The Insight
As a branding agency, we know that a great brand is never one-dimensional; it requires looking at a problem from multiple angles to find the solution, multiple rounds of revisions, multiple people’s minds melding together to find a solution. This led us to anchoring the campaign in the concept of “perspective”.
“Show Your Perspective” served as the rallying cry for the campaign, inviting studios, in-house agencies, and students to submit work that showcased their unique viewpoints.
The result is a cohesive, scalable system that allows the RGD to celebrate the best in global branding with an identity that is as distinct and well-crafted as the winners it honours..
A Modular 3D System
To bring the concept to life, we moved away from static logos and created a dynamic, 3D visual language. The core asset is the RGD cube, a perspective-shifting block that reveals the letters R, G, and D depending on the angle.
This wasn’t just a hero image, it was built to be part of a functional design kit. We developed a three-tier system to ensure the brand could scale across every touchpoint:
Level 1 (Brand + Key Visual): The hero 3D blocks used for high-impact campaign moments.
Level 2 (Brand Shape + Image): A framing device to showcase content such as award winners and judges within the brands framework.
Level 3 (Brand Motion + Messaging): A typographic layer for clear communication and calls to action, bringing typography to life following the same motion language we’ve developed.
