iPendoring 2025

Client: Pendoring Advertising Awards Board of Directors

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Period: 2018 – ongoing

Multi-stakeholder partnerships

Not-for-profit & civil society

Awards & events

Arts, culture & heritage

01 The sneak peek

Taal never die. We multiply.

For its 30th year, we helped the Pendoring Awards — South Africa's home for creative work in indigenous languages — evolve into iPendoring: a fresh identity, a creative idea, and a week of events that honoured three decades while opening the next chapter.

02 The liminal moment

For 30 years, Pendoring has been the platform that celebrates creative communication in South Africa's indigenous languages. At its thirtieth, the awards met a familiar institutional threshold — how to honour three decades without being held by them. The work had to give the awards a fresh identity that signalled relevance for the next chapter, reach beyond the advertising industry to students, publishers, content creators and the public, and carry an expanded year: a new partnership with Brand South Africa, a Student Radio Ad Challenge, and a deeper Indigenous Language Imbizo. The brief was a milestone programme and ceremony. The deeper task was to help an institution stay true to why it exists — championing creativity in indigenous languages — while evolving the way it shows up.

03 The transformation

We found the idea in the languages themselves. Working with Pendoring-winning creatives Sanele Ngubane and Vumile Mavumengwana, we built "Taal Never Die. We Multiply." — a recognition that indigenous languages aren't merely surviving but shapeshifting, remixing and multiplying across platforms and generations, from street corners to screens, from Kaaps to kasi slang.

We evolved the name itself. Adopting "iPendoring" wasn't cosmetic: the "i" prefix is how South Africans already speak the name, drawn from isiZulu and isiXhosa. The awards' own name now follows the indigenous-language patterns it exists to celebrate — and gave the thirtieth year its story.

We widened the room. We secured Brand South Africa as a major new partner and built the "Mzansi Sounds Better in Your Language" Student Radio Ad Challenge, while the Indigenous Language Imbizo at UJ took on AI and indigenous languages, mother-tongue literacy, and language as cultural resistance.

04 The craft

Bold, colourful, and unmistakably ours

The identity celebrated the richness and diversity of South Africa's creative voices in bold, colourful artwork, carried across social, the website, event materials and communications — and into a short film that gave the idea motion.

05 The validation of purpose

The work held where it mattered: an institution that, at thirty, knew exactly why it exists — and showed up fresh. The anniversary ceremony brought Sello Maake kaNcube's Archie Moroka back to the stage, with direction by Jefferson Tshabalala and performances by Muneyi and Kekelingo, closing a week that reached well beyond the advertising industry. iPendoring entered its next chapter as the creative heartbeat of Mzansi's linguistic diversity — its roots intact, its reach wider.