Gordon Ramsay is beloved for his straightforward no-nonsense personality. He’s rough-around-the edges and is ready to get straight into the action. For his new 6-part series, our partners and always great collaborators at National Geographic gave us the chance to design and execute the promo package.

Ultimately, National Geographic needed a full :30 second promo that would act as a template for cut-downs to live on-air in over 30 countries around the world and across social platforms. They would also need a toolkit that would coincide with their branding, but still feel unique to Gordon and his fresh stories.

To start, our team explored various treatments that would capture Gordon’s fearless exploration in both culinary and cultural environments. We began stylizing bold type and peppering minute details into each scene. This simple approach allowed for pops of the Nat Geo “yellow” and font to tie us back to the brand, while also creating opportunities to infuse unique elements of cartography, routes and ingredients to set a look for the series with a texture and flavor of its own.

We also ventured into incorporating topographic maps to frame photography of Ramsay and information. Ultimately, we all felt that the combination of hand-drawn accents and routes of exploration lent a “travelogue” feel and staged Ramsay and the hero type with a rustic energy, uniting the three prongs of Gordon’s journey: people, places and food.

We were thrilled to dig in with our partners at Nat Geo and see it run as one of the channels most watched shows!

-BGSTR