SmartNews

(Info)

With a mission to “deliver quality information to the people who need it around the world,” SmartNews, Inc. operates the SmartNews news app in Japan and the United States. In 2015, the company established the SmartNews Awards to recognize the work of media organizations behind the high-quality content available on SmartNews, and to contribute to the growth and vitality of the media industry as a whole.
For the second consecutive year, Equal.studio collaborated with SHIFTBRAIN Inc. and Taro Yoshimura on SmartNews Awards 2022, the eighth edition of the awards. We were responsible for the campaign’s communication design, visual development, and website production.
The visual concept uses glowing spheres of light, or Hikaridama, to represent the overwhelming flow of information around us. It captures the continuous cycle in which information encounters people and becomes knowledge of value—a process that has long been part of SmartNews’s DNA.
The campaign also delivered measurable results: votes for the Readers’ Choice Award increased to approximately 150% of the previous year’s total, representing an overall increase of approximately 225% since the current creative team began working on the project.