AE Live’s creative arm, Ignite, has been working with the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) to develop and launch a new TV graphics package, which will also be used for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

SVG Europe caught up with Andrew Olley, creative director at Ignite, to talk about the company’s relationship with WEC and how these complex graphics have been developed and created.

What has been your relationship with WEC? How long have you worked with them, and doing what?

We’ve known the team at WEC for a couple of years and we were waiting for the right opportunity to be able to work together. We’d kept in touch and when the opportunity arose to quote for a full redesign of their onscreen design package we thought we’d be a great fit.

Over the course of a number of calls and meetings, we felt inspired by their drive and vision for where they wanted to take the sport and fortunately they felt like we’d understood the brief and would work well together. So, in January 2025 we got the good news and for the past seven months it’s been a brilliant collaboration in the truest sense of the word. It has felt like both sides have been aligned and appreciative of the care and attention being taken to bring this vision to life.

What did WEC wish to change about its graphics? What was the problem?

WEC has a totally unique proposition for fans and with that comes an incredible amount of data and storytelling capacity. They have excellent data and production partners and they wanted their graphics to match a bold, modern vision to delight a growing fan base. WEC has recently pushed forward on their digital marketing strategy and they wanted their TV graphics to complement the strides they’ve taken to deliver a new look and feel for the sport.

There are many fascinating elements to a WEC race weekend; the duration of the race being the most stark, but also the fact there are multiple car classifications competing on the same track at the same time, multiple drivers per team and many ‘race within the race’ elements to keep a track of through inventive storytelling.

WEC also has the privilege of having many of the world’s most recognisable premium car brands competing at their events so they have a responsibility to elevate and represent those brands in a meaningful way. All of these elements, and more, fed into the initial series of consultations and were key factors throughout the project.

What was your process to work out what to do?

Research! Watching full archive races, interrogating every element of the sport and the graphics pack and fully understanding the sport was essential. It’s impossible to innovate without a thorough understanding, and this was helped immensely with a multi-day workshop with WEC at our London office at the start of the process.

What were the main challenges, and how did you seek to overcome those challenges? How hard is it for you to understand everything about the racing format in order to translate into innovative graphics?

Even for motorsport, WEC presents many unique challenges, with (of course) races of immense physical length and duration, multiple classes racing on the same circuit at the same time and in the case of Le Mans, 60-plus cars on the track at one time. Creating an efficient, clean, clear visual system, increasing manufacturer/team/driver presence, and opening the sport up to new and casual audiences were the biggest challenges.

Also visualising and presenting the sheer volume of data was a challenge. A sidebar graphic for WEC requires information regarding 18 cars shown at any time, with a hierarchy of position, manufacturers, car numbers, teams and drivers, plus relevant stats, all in one element. Multiply that by many iterations in the same illustrator document and our macs were starting to steam.

I would say the success of the package was achieved through a shared dedication to making this the best motorsport package we could and an almost unrivalled access to the WEC team and their invaluable input. They were very open and engaged, and like ourselves were prepared to pull things apart and put them together in new and better ways.

What have you created, and how?

Everything. Race graphics, presentation, the whole visual identity has been redesigned from the ground up. WEC didn’t want the current package replaced item by item; we needed to think holistically and create a system that worked together coherently.

Focussing on race graphics first, we broke down the deliverables into discrete but integrated systems – sidebar race list, lower thirds, top and right side panels – and examined and interrogated the efficacy of the current system and how we could better present the data. We also needed to update the look and integrate and develop the current WEC brand.

Many iterations of designs would be worked through in Illustrator, while concurrently testing in After Effects. The sidebar race list was obviously the single most important element, and it was agreed early on that we would expand its functionality and that an internal shape shifting modular design was the best fit.

We created a shape-shifting element which achieves that, ie, changes shape over time, so understanding the pace of the race, sequence of events and data presentation was key. This can really only be done through animation and testing so we jumped into this early on. Managing this workflow and adapting this to changing designs is time consuming and challenging but there really is no shortcut.

At Ignite we pride ourselves on motion theory and bringing a graphic system to life, so we try and demo all key elements, we don’t just design a flat graphic, ship it to build, and run for the hills! Working closely with the build and operations team, in this case Al Kamel, was also essential and we established a very close and productive relationship with them which continues, as we develop and improve the package for coming races.

How innovative is it? Where is all the data for graphic use coming from?

There are many innovations but the added functionality of the sidebar in race and qualifying is probably the best example. It is now possible to see the status of a car during qualifying, whether it is on an out-lap, what sector it is on, whether it is improving or not for that particular sector or lap, all within the sidebar.

Accompany this in-race with pit clocks, tyre information, gaps, intervals, number of pitstops, championship information, expansions for driver info, picture-in-picture (PIP), battles for position, takeovers and many more, all housed within the same element that for the most part takes up the same footprint, is something we are very proud of. This combined with greatly increasing manufacturer/team/driver/partner presence across the package, and making it a much more dynamic, exciting, enjoyable and understandable experience for the viewer is greatly rewarding.

And what’s coming next?

We’re really looking forward to continuing the relationship with WEC over the remainder of this season and into the next. We still have new templates and presentation elements to deliver and develop, and we love working with them, it’s fun! Their enthusiasm and drive to improve their sport is infectious.

There are many more projects in the pipeline, and the constant roll of RFP responses of course. As the Tifosi would say “Forza Ignite!”