The Eurovision Song Contest is the world’s biggest live entertainment event. More people watch the annual music competition than watch the Super Bowl, and in this year alone, the contest’s official channels have generated more than two billion impressions.
So when Eurovision decided to refresh its brand identity, ahead of its 70th anniversary in 2026, you might expect them to turn to one of the big design agencies.
Instead they commissioned PALS, a Sheffield-based agency run by Amy Bedford. PALS eschews the usual agency set-up in favour of the so-called “hub and spoke” model, where teams of freelancers are convened for specific projects, depending on its requirements.
Some believe this is the future of design agencies. In a widely-read op-ed last year, Emma Sexton argued the design industry was going through “a long overdue shake-up” and the freelance-based model, used by studios like PALS, would come to the fore.
Bedford came from a traditional agency background, working at studios like Peter & Paul, Jaywing and Fist of Fury. When she started PALS in 2019, she initially recreated the model with which she was familiar.
But she became convinced that there must be a different way to run projects, when, for example, the team worked on a drinks pitch and needed educating in the acronyms and other terminology that the client used. Wouldn’t it be better, she thought, to draft in people familiar with that world who could hit the ground running?
“The nature of each project is so different, so I wanted to build a different way to respond to briefs,” Bedford explains. “I didn’t want us to be the same five people, delivering the same five campaigns, even though it’s for five different clients.”
Instead Bedford built a global network of 150+ creatives around the world, from design directors and illustrators, to animators and copywriters. Most of those she works with have been freelancing for at least five years, which she believes is the sign of a talented creative.
“It’s the cream of the crop of freelancers, and when you put the right people together, you end up with a team that is totally different to the traditional agency model,” she explains. “In agencies, you often have one or two brilliant people, and then loads of people underneath who are not necessarily able to match that brilliance.”
PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest
A key part of PALS’ approach is to bring together not just different skillsets, but also different perspectives, Bedford explains. So for a recent project for a client that monitors environmental data, the team included an artist, a comedian, and a water expert alongside more traditional creative roles.
“An agency is essentially a machine to solve communication problems,” she says. “So if you do it with the same team, who only ever solve problems in the same way, you’re only ever going to get the same work.
“I can put totally different brains on it, who are going to bring different perspectives, and challenge how we reach people.”
Bedford and PALS first worked with Eurovision in 2023. The studio created the brand strategy for the BBC’s show in Liverpool, after the UK stepped in as the 2022 runner-up to Ukraine, who couldn’t host due to the ongoing war with Russia.
PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest
During that work, PALS created the “United by Music” brand idea, which was later adopted by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) who oversees the contest.
But most of the work done for each individual host country is jettisoned after each show. And so when Bedford pitched for doing the brand strategy for the 70th celebrations, she pointed out that Eurovision’s overarching brand was pretty nebulous.
“They obviously have a cultural behemoth of a brand that exists in people’s heads,” she says. “But if we were going to put it on paper, and say what the assets are associated with that, there was very little to communicate.”
The EBU wanted the new identity to work better on digital platforms – the previous one had stacked elements that could become cluttered when scaled down – and it needed to have stronger trademark protections. They also wanted PALS to incorporate the 70th celebrations into the new look.
The refresh took ten months, and Bedford worked with more than 20 freelance collaborators, from type designers and 3D artists, to specialists in youth culture and sports PR, who helped them think about reaching new audiences.
There is a new beating heart logo, which can respond and be adapted to different host nations, performers or campaign themes. For the upcoming anniversary, it has 70 layers, to represent each year of the contest’s history.
The core visual assets have been consolidated into a single hand-drawn marque, to create more consistency. And a new bespoke typeface, Singing Sans, replaces Gotham, to build in more personality and “create more ownership of the contest’s typographic voice.”
Martin Green, the director of the Eurovision Song Contest, welcomed the new look as being, “ bold, playful, and full of heart – just like the contest itself.”
But Bedford admits the process wasn’t always straightforward.
“It’s not been painless,” she says. “The design work chopped and changed until we found the sweet spot, and we went through so many different iterations to find something that reflects the heart of the contest.”
The PALS model, she points out, is perfectly set up to address these challenges in the creative process, as she is able to reset the team to address feedback and meet new requests. “It can be like Tetris,” Bedford explains.
Although fan reaction has been mixed – especially on Reddit – Bedford is proud of what the team has created. “I knew it would get a reaction, but I wasn’t really prepared for the Reddit threads,” Bedford says.
“But the client is happy, and I think people get used to things like this. People absolutely fall in love with something they hated when they’ve seen it more than once, and in context.”
PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest
PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest
PALS’ new identity for the Eurovision Song Contest