PRISM PRIZE
OVERVIEW
Canada's most prestigious music video award designed to feel as alive as the art it celebrates.
The PRISM Prize is Canada's premier celebration of music video artistry. A national, juried award presented annually at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, carrying the richest cash prize for music videos in North America. Administered by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television, it is where the country's finest music video directors and producers are recognised before an industry audience that spans broadcasting, film, radio, and digital media.
THE CHALLENGE
Designing for an industry that defines visual culture. The audience for the PRISM Prize is not a general one. The directors, producers, the artists in that room, and watching online. They are the exact people who make some of the most visually inventive work in Canada. The work has to be genuinely considered, genuinely crafted, and genuinely current.
A live event with cinematic expectations
The PRISM Prize screening at TIFF Bell Lightbox is a theatrical experience. A curated screening of the year's best music videos followed by a live awards presentation. The design system had to feel at home in that environment: bold enough to command a projection screen, refined enough to sit alongside world-class filmmaking.
A fresh identity every year
Like the CSA work, each PRISM season began with a blank page. No visual carryover from the previous year, a full new identity, new Look & Feel, new design language. By 2022, the challenge wasn't just doing it well. It was doing it differently, having already done it twice before.
Scale across formats
From a 4K broadcast title card to an Instagram story to a printed programme to a homepage banner, the identity needed to remain coherent and impactful across radically different formats, aspect ratios, and contexts. A rigid system would break. A loose one would lose coherence.
CLIENT
Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television / Prism Prize
DISCIPLINES
Art Direction • Motion Design
Graphic Design • Brand Identity
SCOPE
Web • Social • Print • Broadcast
DIRECTION
Nick Coyle
DELIVERABLES
Multiple Assets
YEAR
2020 - 2023
Building a system that moves like music. The starting point for any PRISM season is the same question: what does this year's design feel like? The prize exists to celebrate music video as an artform, so the identity itself should carry some of that energy. It should feel intentional, expressive, and alive.
THE APPROACH
Look & Feel Development
Before any assets were produced, a full visual direction was created from concept to completion, exploring creative territories that could serve the live show environment, translate to print, and hold up in social. The 2022 direction leaned into the visual language of film and performance: bold contrasts, kinetic energy, and a graphic confidence that reflected ten years of some of Canada's best creative output.
Live Show Assets
The centrepiece of the PRISM Prize season is the live screening and awards presentation at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Motion assets for the show, titles, transitions, lower thirds, and event graphics, were designed for a theatrical environment. Built for the specific scale, luminance, and pacing of a live awards show. The challenge is designing something that reads in a fraction of a second but still feels crafted.
Print, Marketing & Social
The identity was extended across every remaining touchpoint: event posters produced in both English and French, marketing materials for pre-show promotion, and social content across platforms. Each channel demanded different compositional thinking, but all of it needed to feel like it came from the same creative world.
LIVE SHOW ASSETS
WHAT WAS DELIVERED
A complete seasonal identity and production suite for the 2022 PRISM Prize, including:
Live Show Assets - Motion graphics, titles, and event design produced for the live screening and awards presentation at TIFF Bell Lightbox. Built for theatrical projection and live broadcast.
Event Poster - Bilingual event poster (English & French) serving as the primary print face of the 2022 season. Designed for both physical and digital distribution.
Marketing Materials - Pre-show campaign graphics for print and digital, supporting nominee announcements, event promotion, and season-wide communication.
Social Content - Platform-formatted graphics for nominee reveals, winner announcements, and event content across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
Three years. Three complete identities.
One continuous creative standard.
The 2022 PRISM Prize was delivered with a visual identity worthy of the milestone. A full creative system, built from scratch, designed to hold up in a TIFF screening room and across every marketing channel it touched. The work across three consecutive years of PRISM Prize design reflects something beyond a single project: a sustained creative partnership where the brief never got easier, the standard never dropped, and every season began again from a blank page.
CONCLUSION
PRINT MARKETING & SOCIAL
© NICK COYLE CREATIVE. COPYRIGHT 2026
