Crunchyroll × Sony · 2026

Anime Future Forum

The identity for an invite-only creative summit run by Crunchyroll and Sony. The atmosphere is generated in Midjourney. The system is drawn.

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Identity · motion · environment · 2026

01 / Brief

A research institute, not a fan convention.

A new event for creators, studios and licensors who have seen every anime brand there is. The identity had to hold up on a stage, a lanyard, a hoarding and a t-shirt before the event itself existed.

02 / Division of labour

What was generated and what was drawn.

Generated images supplied the atmosphere. Everything structural, the mark, the line, the type and the layouts, was drawn by hand.

Generated

The gradient world every surface sits on
Environmental renders — the room, the hoarding, the scale
Product and merch renders
Texture and grain across the atmosphere layer

Drawn

The A mark and its star, with the Crunchyroll lockup
The line — one continuous path, A to B
Linework and type-on-path rules
Hierarchy, colour, safe areas, every lockup

03 / The system

Two layers, one system.

Rules that keep working once they are handed to other people: an agency in another timezone, a fabricator, a social team.

The A symbol suite — **Drawn · the mark**A custom A with a star at its centre. Alone, or locked to Crunchyroll.

The journey line, A to B — **Drawn · the line**One continuous path from A to B. It is drawn as a line on the page before it is animated.

Linework system with type on path — **Drawn · linework**The line becomes a container. Type sets along it, so the headline and the device are one object.

Gradient atmosphere library — **Generated · atmosphere**Cinematic horizons and light, shipped as a downloadable library rather than as one-off renders.

Built · the generatorThe atmosphere layer is also a WebGL2 generator. It has ten authored looks, a set of colour directions, a timeline that follows the day's sessions, and exports at the wall's 8064 × 1920 resolution. This is a screen recording of it in use.

Generated · motionMade in Midjourney's video model at 4:1, the ratio of the room's screens. Kept slow, because at that scale anything faster looks like a fault in the screen.

Title card for the room's screens — **Delivered · the room**Generated atmosphere, drawn type, and the lockup turned on its side to hold the left edge.

Emissive capsule lockup — **Delivered · the capsule**The line closed into a shape and lit from inside.

Layouts combining linework and gradients — **The two, married**Linework over atmosphere, with type on the path.

Delivered · the siteThe live site, scrolled from the landing page through the programme to the FAQ. The generated atmosphere sits behind the drawn type and the line, and the sign-in gate stays in place.

Merch render — **Generated · context**Merch and environments rendered rather than photographed, so the client could see the identity in place months before anything was produced.

In flight

Anime Future Forum has not happened yet. This page shows the identity system and the public landing page only, with no speakers or programme detail, and it is shared in confidence. Please keep the link private. I can walk through the rest on a call.

Squarespace →

The 2018 rebrand, run from the client side.