The Scots Illustrating Challenge
Each year, Scottish Book Trust holds Book Week Scotland, their annual celebration of books and reading. The week-long event brings together people of all ages across Scotland together around the joy of reading and writing, from occasional readers to bookworms, storytellers and illustrators. For its 2019 edition, Scottish Book Trust launched a new campaign: a quest to find the most iconic Scots word through a special Scots Illustrating Challenge and a public vote.
Finding The Most Iconic Scots Word
We were commissioned to create a campaign film to support the Scots Illustrating Challenge. In this upbeat film, well-known children’s book illustrator Alex T. Smith illustrates 5 beloved Scots words, before encouraging viewers to illustrate and share their own. The film attracted considerable positive attention from the public on social media and generated over 400 pieces of media coverage, including a feature on Reporting Scotland.
The results are in! 2019’s most popular Scots word is ‘Dreich’, meaning tedious or damp and wet, “an evocative word with the ability to sum up the Scottish weather, or mood, perfectly.” according to Marc Lambert, Scottish Book Trust’s CEO.
