YouTube Originals NYE – Hello 2021

Hello 2021 was a major broadcast and digital event for YouTube Originals, created to mark the arrival of a new year through a high-energy mix of music, performance and visual spectacle. FORMAT.LDN collaborated with Gramafilm to deliver a substantial body of motion work across the project, helping shape a graphic language that could hold its own within an ambitious, large-scale production.

The brief was centred on transforming a series of illustrated patterns and typographic elements into a fully integrated motion system that could live dynamically within the content. This was not simply a matter of layering graphics over footage. It required a careful and technically demanding process of isolating performances and talent from their original environments, then rebuilding each moment so that the visual identity could move through the work with clarity, rhythm and intent.

Extensive rotoscoping and detailed compositing formed a core part of the process. Performers were meticulously lifted from background plates, allowing the illustrated textures, graphic interventions and text elements to be introduced with precision. The challenge was to make these disparate elements feel part of a single visual world — one that felt celebratory, bold and unmistakably built for screen.

The result was a rich fusion of live performance and motion design, where graphic pattern, typography and moving image worked together as one. Across a wide range of assets, treatments and deliverables, the work helped give Hello 2021 a distinctive visual energy and a heightened sense of occasion — supporting an event designed to feel expansive, optimistic and culturally current.