Chris Condron and I met at W+K London in 2011 and set up DISARM the following year. Our second pitch and up against two of the largest UK advertising agencies, we still managed to secure the campaign. Thanks to our strategy, design and a contemporary approach to attract a younger audience to one of the UK's most prestigious art centres.

 

Barbican's existing members and many exhibition-goers are accustomed to their familiar iconic marketing design - which in turn tends to alienate everyone else who does not share the same appreciation of the Barbican, the artist, or the event that's on show. Once we passed the first hurdle, what followed was an intense few months of learning everything about Marcel Duchamp and the Dada movement, to the point of tracking down people who have worked with him, interviewed him and produced a documentary about him. The idea was to get people to stop, and look at these posters and create a conversation with themselves and others once they had witnessed the tease campaign.

 

I was so amazed at the work of these artists that I couldn't possibly put my own words to their work - so the idea was born to use quotes from their archives which we matched to images and generated even more intrigue towards their work.