Some projects sit on a screen. This one took over a city.
When Columbia Threadneedle Investments sponsored the ITU World Triathlon in Leeds, I was one of the lead designers on the branding and marketing. For one weekend, if you arrived in Leeds, you couldn’t miss us. From the moment you stepped off the train to the second the swimmers hit the water, our logo and colours were there.
It took months of planning, artwork and print management. Everything landed on time. Then I got to see it all come to life, camera in hand.
The brief
Make the sponsorship impossible to miss, across every touchpoint, for athletes, spectators, guests and the people taking part.
That meant thinking about the whole journey. Where do people arrive? What do they see first? What do the athletes wear, hold and ride? What do our guests take home? Then designing for every one of those moments.
Arriving in Leeds
The experience started at Leeds station. We branded the ticket barriers with our logo and colours, so the first thing you touched was ours. Look up as you walked through and a large billboard told you the triathlon was on that weekend.
Out in the city, banners hung down the front of Leeds Town Hall and other major buildings. Lamppost banners lined the streets, and giant inflatable banners stretched right across the roads.
Finding your way
A triathlon spreads across a whole city, so people needed to know where to go. We designed large public maps showing where the swimming, cycling and running would take place, so spectators could plan their day and catch the action.
The race itself
This is where it got properly hands-on. I designed:
- the start and finish areas, fully branded
- miles of temporary crowd fencing wrapped in our logo
- flags along the course
- the swim caps the athletes wore in the water
- the water bottles the athletes carried
- race bibs with each competitor’s name, number and our branding
- bike stickers with race numbers and names
Every one of these had to work at speed, at a distance and on camera. A swim cap is a tiny canvas that has to read from a riverbank. A bib has to survive rain, sweat and safety pins.
Friends, family and guests
Part of the sponsorship let Columbia Threadneedle enter its own people. Staff, friends and family took part, and the sales team invited clients and partner companies to race as individuals or teams. Great for relationships, and great for getting the brand out there.
For them I designed branded t-shirts, plus the save the dates, invitations, brochures, race cards and online material that got everyone there in the first place.
Working together
I worked closely with the marketing and corporate communications teams from the first idea to the final delivery. That meant juggling a huge number of items, suppliers and deadlines, and making sure every piece was consistent, correct and printed in time for one fixed weekend. There was no moving the date.
On the day
The night before, I travelled up to Leeds with the marketing team. We were up before dawn on race day.
Then I swapped my designer’s hat for my photographer’s one. I spent the day shooting the elite athletes, plus every Columbia Threadneedle team, individual competitor and guest. It’s a rare thing to design a whole event and then photograph it. You see your work out in the real world, being worn, ridden, waved and swum in.
Where it started: Hyde Park
Leeds wasn’t our first triathlon. Before it, Threadneedle Investments was official partner of the World Triathlon Grand Final in London, with the racing in Hyde Park and the bike course running right past Buckingham Palace.
This was before the merger that created Columbia Threadneedle, so the brand was completely different: black and yellow, with the old Threadneedle wordmark. Same job, though. Get the brand everywhere that mattered.
I designed the VIP invitations, the participants pack and guide built around the line “Swim it. Ride it. Run it.”, team cycling tops and jackets carrying our global partner logo, water bottles, and the feather flags lining the swim start. We also had our own team welcome area in the park for staff, guests and their families.
Two pieces went beyond race day. In Trafalgar Square we put on a free outdoor photo exhibition called “Strength. Stamina. Spirit.”, a row of tall white plinths under Nelson’s Column showing great triathlon photography from races around the world. I designed the plinths and the layouts. People who never went near Hyde Park stopped to look.
I also designed a commemorative photo book of the event, and we printed a limited run for our reception areas, so clients and visitors could see the sponsorship long after race day.
Then came the rebrand. Threadneedle became Columbia Threadneedle Investments, with a new logo, new colours and a new look. Carrying a sponsorship this size across from one brand to another, without losing what made it work, was a big part of what made Leeds so satisfying.
What I took from it
This project showed me what a brand can do when it leaves the page. Great event branding isn’t one big hero piece. It’s a hundred small, consistent moments that add up to a feeling: this is our weekend.
It’s still one of the projects I’m proudest of.
