Magic in five steps: Studio Blackburn and Co. spotlight the folding wizardry of Brompton Bicycles

Brompton, renowned for their ingeniously designed folding bikes, approached London-based creative agency ScienceMagic with a vision – to elevate their brand through a global advertising campaign that truly encapsulates the charm of their products, notably, their ability to fold small and open big in just five moves. A hand-picked collective – including Studio Blackburn, Daniel Eatock, Time Based Arts, Art Practice, ScienceMagic, Tony Davidson, Kim Papworth, Strings and Tins, and Havas Media UK – were assembled and tasked with creating a global advertising campaign. Through their unified efforts, they distilled the essence of Brompton’s signature folding mechanism into a compelling narrative, infusing the mechanical marvel with a touch of magic. When developing initial ideas, Studio Blackburn’s Senior Designer Adam Moore explains that they tried several different routes, including investigating how typography and artboards could fold and unfold, abstract shapes that mimicked the movements of the bike, five-column grids with one movement occupying one column, and associating different colours to different folds and unfolds. “Some of these experiments lead somewhere, some nowhere and others persuaded us we were on the right track all along,” he says. “There’s so much we could have done, but where we landed is simple and intentional.” Ultimately, the team landed on a magic-like transformation of the bike, encapsulated in the phrase ‘ab-ra-ca-dab-ra,’ representing the five moves it takes to fold and unfold the bike. Ab – flip, ra – lift, ca – pull,  dab – stir, ra – swing. This concept, devised by Eatock, involved turning the bike’s movements into a performance, animated by human voices and anthropomorphic actions. “This took the bike from inanimate to somewhat sentient which felt right in terms of communicating the magic of Brompton,” notes Moore. “The background initially started as a more literal environment with colours representing land and sky – this developed into something more ambiguous, dreamy and ‘magic’ with the bicycle’s aura bringing it to the fore.” The shift allowed the campaign to transcend typical product advertising, focusing instead on the ‘magical engineering’ behind each Brompton.