Freelance graphic designer Levente Szabo received a nice email from the Human After All agency (creative partner of BAFTA) in November, asking if he'd be interested in working with them on the 2016 campaign. After running around in ecstasy for minutes, Levente accepted and expressed his interest on the project. So the agency sent a brief, a short style-guide, and a concept as well: Window to Another World.

Whether it’s about a movie or a book, the first step is the deep understanding of the material, and usually it’s a lot more than the story itself. When you can distill the true meaning of the material, you can start to dish out as many ideas as you can. You can see on my Behance page that I make a lot of layouts for each project, and those are only the possible candidates, there are always even more ideas that remain as a sketch.
-Levente Szabo

Well, working for BAFTA was an inspiration in itself (the first time I read the email I thought it was a joke) even the idea that I was being considered would have been a huge honour. The most important (and the most demanding) part for me in each scenario is coming up with a suitable idea. Sometimes it takes a minute and other times it takes days or the whole eternity. I still haven’t figured out why. After that, you “only” have to make a nice illustration but that is definitely the easier part.
-Levente Szabo

I really try to look at less things day by day as I think we are living in oversaturated times. But if I have to, I try to be inspired from other mediums (books, films, music) rather than other artists. It is too easy to be sucked into other’s styles as there are some many mind-bendingly talented artists out there. If you want to feel guilty for not working in every waking moment, you can always check out the first page of behance.net, but I suggest a good sleep is more beneficial to the creative process. :)
-Levente Szabo

The second part of the project was to produce five posters for the nominees in the Best Film category. There were still a dozen of candidates in December but we already had to start developing the series' visual identity as the final nominees were announced only at 9th of January and we had roughly two weeks to finish them.

• Carol
• Spotlight
• The Revenant
• Big Short
• Bridge of Spies

Art direction: Paul Willoughby / Human After All

You can check out all five versions of the 132 page brochure on this link.

About Levente Szabo

Levente Szabo finished MOME (Hungarian University of Applied Arts) in 2006 and has been a freelancer ever since. While working for ad agencies as a storyboardist/illustrator he made two comics and illustrated some children’s books in his free time. Nowadays he's only accepting illustrated cover and poster projects. See more of his works on Behance or his website.