Skittles is going monochrome again for London Pride, and this time it's brought animation too.
What does a rainbow taste like, anyway? As we all know, a rainbow's merely a colourful effect caused by the reflection, refraction and dispersion of sunlight through tiny water droplets in the air, so it's unlikely to taste of anything unless you have a particularly rare form of synaesthesia.
We doubt that the people at Skittles have lost much sleep over this, to be honest. What we're much more interested in right now is Skittles' treatment of its logo and packaging design for a new campaign supporting the LBGT+ community and raising awareness for this year's London Pride parade.
For the past two years, Skittles has done its bit for Pride by dropping the rainbow colours from its logo so that Pride has the rainbow to itself; in 2016 it brought a completely monochrome float to the Pride parade and handed out black and white packets of sweets; this year it's selling limited edition black and white packs to raise money for Switchboard, the LGBT+ helpline.
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And to help get the message home, campaign organisers adam&eveDDB have commissioned a set of fun animated shorts from assorted animators, showing various ways in which Skittles might lose their trademark rainbow colours, with beavers, piranhas and even a Wagnerian opera singer finding ways to drain the rainbow.
The various shorts were directed by Chris Bristow at Blinkink. If you need a little less colour in your life and fancy supporting a worthwhile cause, you can find the limited edition packs of Skittles for sale in branches of Tesco.
Jim McCauley is a writer, performer and cat-wrangler who started writing professionally way back in 1995 on PC Format magazine, and has been covering technology-related subjects ever since, whether it's hardware, software or videogames. A chance call in 2005 led to Jim taking charge of Computer Arts' website and developing an interest in the world of graphic design, and eventually led to a move over to the freshly-launched Creative Bloq in 2012. Jim now works as a freelance writer for sites including Creative Bloq, T3 and PetsRadar, specialising in design, technology, wellness and cats, while doing the occasional pantomime and street performance in Bath and designing posters for a local drama group on the side.
