Skittles has been dazzling fans with Pride-themed packaging since 2020, reinventing their classic design each year to amplify awareness and spread joy. This year, the vibrant new pack, crafted by NERD’s dynamic LGBTQIA+ talents Shay Hamias and Esther Lalanne, bursts with fun and energy to honour the LGBTQIA+ community.
NERD, an eclectic team of directors, illustrators, and photographers, is renowned for their creative flair and commitment to diversity across various platforms. Their recent collaboration with Skittles on the annual Pride pack is a testament to their shared mission of celebrating and uplifting the LGBTQIA+ community with exuberance and style.
Nerd Productions Teamed Up With Weber Shandwick To Design The Limited Edition Skittles Pride Packs For This Year's Pride Campaign 7 - Nerd Blog
For this project, Milana (NERDs Founder & EP) brought in visual artist Esther Lalanne, known for her dynamic style, to lead the design. Together with creative director Shay Hamias, Esther turned the Skittles rainbow into a lively scene inspired by Berlin’s Tempelhof Field. The design features hands, feet, and a single head, all engaged in different activities like roller skating, playing musical instruments, and forming a love heart with multiple hands. The design also includes an easel and a camera, symbolising creativity and capturing the moment. The vibe is confident and carefree, with the tagline: “When you find your community your colours shine.”
Nerd Productions Teamed Up With Weber Shandwick To Design The Limited Edition Skittles Pride Packs For This Year's Pride Campaign 8 - Nerd Blog
Esther shared that balancing diverse identities in the design was a delicate and intricate challenge. The final artwork brilliantly captures a supportive and creative community spirit, using vibrant elements that resonate with everyone. Instead of individual characters, the design weaves together symbols that celebrate unity and self-expression, keeping the essence of togetherness at its heart.
Nerd Productions Teamed Up With Weber Shandwick To Design The Limited Edition Skittles Pride Packs For This Year's Pride Campaign 9 - Nerd Blog
With Pride Month upon us, the limited-edition pack is now available to consumers, and Skittles has promised to donate $1 for every pack sold (up to $100K), as well as match donations up to $25k. These contributions will go to GLAAD, a non-profit LGBTQIA+ advocacy organisation that has partnered with Skittles for Pride Month every year for the last five years.
Nerd Productions Teamed Up With Weber Shandwick To Design The Limited Edition Skittles Pride Packs For This Year's Pride Campaign 10 - Nerd Blog
We are beyond excited to introduce Karolina to our ever-growing talent roster. Karolina is an innovative filmmaker known for blending live action with analogue animation, creating a unique and textured visual style. We are excited to showcase her talent along with a strong commitment to authentic representation and inclusivity in the film and advertising industry.
We sat down with Karolina to chat through her career, favourite work and inspiration!
Fresh Talent At Nerd: Budding Mixed Media Director Karolina Papp Joins Nerd Productions Roster 20 - Nerd Blog
Your approach to blending live action with analogue animation is truly unique. Could you share a specific project where this technique particularly challenged or inspired you creatively?
Definitely! Last year, I worked on a project that involved collaborating with a group of year 9 students from Riverside School in Barking. They had written a poem and a beautiful soundtrack, and with the help of the producer and DOP, had shot a lot of footage themselves. They had taken selfies, filmed their friends playing basketball, and recorded videos from music class. I wanted to showcase their creativity through the film, and analogue animation felt perfect to bring it all together. There was such a variety of mediums—Super 8, digital, disposable camera pictures, iPhone pictures—and this lent itself really well to the collage element of the film. To tie them together visually, I printed the footage frame by frame, drew directly on top of it, and scanned it back in to create a texture that ran throughout the film. It was really rewarding working in this way because I could draw from what the kids had already created, and this meant their personalities really came through in the film.
Fresh Talent At Nerd: Budding Mixed Media Director Karolina Papp Joins Nerd Productions Roster 21 - Nerd Blog
Representation in the film and advertising industry is a pressing issue. How do you navigate the complexities of ensuring diverse voices are not just included but authentically portrayed in your work, and what impact do you hope this has on your audience?
A very important question! Personally, if I’m working on a project where I’m telling someone else’s lived experience, it’s crucial for me to have a constant back and forth with the subject to make sure they feel heard and that what they see reflected back at them feels like a true representation. I’m quite passionate about this topic—I’m Hungarian, and I was really sad to hear when Hungary passed a law suppressing LGBTQIA+ representation in the media. People NEED to see themselves onscreen to know there are others like them and that there are opportunities for them too.
Fresh Talent At Nerd: Budding Mixed Media Director Karolina Papp Joins Nerd Productions Roster 22 - Nerd Blog
In terms of impact, I’m hoping for a change towards a more inclusive future where we don’t have to search far and wide for diverse talent because they’ll be right in front of us. It’s no secret that, at the moment, the industry is very white and male-dominated, making it difficult to find crew outside of that realm. I’m working on my first short film, and I wanted to make sure it had a fully female and non-binary crew so I could expand my network of talented women and non-binary folk—they’re out there and they want to be found but are often overlooked.
Fresh Talent At Nerd: Budding Mixed Media Director Karolina Papp Joins Nerd Productions Roster 23 - Nerd Blog
Working with a range of clients from Netflix to Lovehoney must offer diverse creative challenges. Can you tell us about a project where you had to push the boundaries of your style to meet a client’s vision, and how this experience shaped your artistic approach moving forward?
Working on The Crown mini-documentary for Netflix was a creative challenge for me because it required an elegant, refined design to fit with the style of the series. My work is usually colourful and a bit chaotic, so I had to find a balance between honouring the tasteful aesthetic that the show is renowned for while making sure my style was still present. It was an honour to work with Netflix on this project, and I learned a lot about the immense amount of work and attention to detail that went into making the show.
Fresh Talent At Nerd: Budding Mixed Media Director Karolina Papp Joins Nerd Productions Roster 24 - Nerd Blog
Your films often evoke nostalgia and have a tangible, textural quality that resonates deeply with audiences. How do you tap into this emotional connection while also ensuring your work feels fresh and relevant in today’s media landscape?
I think analogue techniques are more important and relevant today than ever before. The creative industry is fighting a battle with AI, and I’m personally quite worried about it growing to a point where humans are no longer needed to create! At the moment, though, AI animation is easily recognizable and is not yet able to recreate the look and feel of analogue media. I love that analogue techniques come with imperfections and unpredictability, which makes them more human and gives them a depth that AI content doesn’t have. So, I guess for me, to keep my work fresh, I’m looking backward to more old-school methods instead of forward.
Fresh Talent At Nerd: Budding Mixed Media Director Karolina Papp Joins Nerd Productions Roster 25 - Nerd Blog
And to finish off, tell us a NERDy fact about yourself
I LOVE going to the cinema and getting all the cinema deals – at one point last year I had a cinema deal for every day of the week. I’m also quite obsessed with Letterboxd, the movie rating app – I log all the films I watch and rate them too.
Fresh Talent At Nerd: Budding Mixed Media Director Karolina Papp Joins Nerd Productions Roster 26 - Nerd Blog