When Swiss filmmaker Reto Caduff asked us to create the opening titles for his upcoming documentary on Herber Matter – the legendary Swiss designer – we answered! The title creation was an amazing collaboration with Reto as we created unique elements for the titles as well as integrating much of Herbert’s massive library of diverse work.
Rather than write our own description, we’ll just borrow the logline from the film’s website. “THE VISUAL LANGUAGE OF HERBERT MATTER is a revealing look at the fascinating life story of the highly influential mid-century modern design master. Known as a quintessential designer’s designer, Swiss born Herbert Matter is largely credited with expanding the use of photography as a design tool and bringing the semantics of fine art into the realm of applied arts.”
In other news, Reto is in negotiation with an Academy Award winning actress as the narrator. We can’t reveal her name just yet, but it will be well in-hand by the time the film is released this summer.
Even cooler news? For the second time in 3 years we’ve had one of our projects accepted at the South by Southwest Film Festival. Last week these titles were nominated, as one of 18ish finalists, by SXSW’s inaugural film titles competition – Art of the Title Sequence. The competition is judged next week – March 16 – so we’ll let you know how we do!
Oh yes we did! We created a sweet video for the swingmasters over at Nike. The stellar folks at Summit Projects approached us to collaborate on an anchor video for their redesign of the NIKEGOLF website. The SQ MACHSPEED Driver is one of the featured clubs in NIKEGOLF’s new arsenal of tour weapons. Summit and Nike wanted to show-off the aerodynamic aspects of the driver head… and nothing is more show-offy than a wind tunnel smoke test! Our video puts the sexy back in techy.. check it:
First of all, the gang over at Summit Projects is great. Jeanne, Eddie, and Chris gave us lots of freedom combined with a healthy dose of direction. Starting with a rough model of the driver, we cleaned-up some issues, textured it, and then rendered the bejesus out of it in Cinema 4D. The sweet simulated smoke generator for wind tunnel testing comes from 3ds Max. Adding some killer animated infographics and pseudo-telemetry, we composited our animation over footage of Justin Leonard shot at the Nike research facility in Fort Worth, Texas. The coup de grace of final touches is the sound design mixed by the fine peoples over at Circa Music.
The final two posters of our print campaign for ESPN/NASCAR are finally ready to be unveiled. Working with Wieden + Kennedy, we crafted the sequels to our original Speed poster. Called Fans and The Chase, these two posters appeared as large fold-outs in various publications such as USA TODAY, ESPN: THE MAGAZINE, NASCAR ILLUSTRATED, and NASCAR SCENE.
The Hong Kong based design publisher – IdN – is releasing their 15th Anniversary Edition What Do You Love? this month. Their monthly magazine is well known for its stellar collection of all that is great in the world of print, product, interactive, environmental, and motion design. The 452-page hardcover book features specially commissioned work from 250+ talented creators who have collaborated with IdN over the last decade and a half — sharing their thoughts on the past, present, and their visions of the future. leftchannel was invited to submit 3 selections, including our vision of the future in a custom animation specifically commissioned for IdN: Domination.
Domination is piece based around theories surrounding looming future planetary consumption and the outward stretch towards interplanetary domination. In the case of this piece, spider-like missionaries are able to tap a planet’s resources dry, conserving the planet’s livable shell for later use in constructing a inhabitable surface on a distant, larger planet. This piece portrays only a case example or snapshot if you will, of the expansive process of such domination. Perhaps domination is a process that could be compared to a innocent, wonder-filled child playing in a sandbox building castles and later destroying them to rebuild bigger and better ones. Does moss not grow on wet sand?
leftchannel’s gone mobile! Grab your iPhone/Android/Blackberry and surf on over to leftchannel.com to check out our new mobile site (don’t worry, our redirect robots will make sure you end up on the right page).
After coming across our music video for 1976, mega-agency Wieden + Kennedy approached us to create a 3 part NASCAR print campaign for their client ESPN. The year-long campaign is based on 3 themes and will be launched in 3 phases over the course of 2009. The first theme is “SPEED” – the other two are “FAN” and “CHASE”. The art direction called for a collage-style, combining various types of media such as photography, digital illustration, hand-drawings, etc. Along with strong NASCAR photography – cars, crew, checkered pavement, we brainstormed with the creatives at W+K on a number of semi-literal and metaphorical objects to create the overall mood of speed. The only mandates were to avoid obvious clichés and to craft the visual metaphors into playful combinations. The collaboration was a stellar experience, resulting in some really fun quirks and hidden gems in the final piece. Along with the 2 to 3 reviews a week with the agency, W+K had bi-weekly reviews with ESPN.
The centerpiece of the SPEED project is a 16.5” x 24” poster that will appear as a quad-fold pullout in the February 12th issue of NASCAR SCENE, shown above.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky recently launched a TV campaign and Web site for The Reality Coalition to help communicate its concerns on the recent political push for the development and use of “clean coal” technologies. The use of a canary in the logo art as the mascot for the campaign gets repurposed in a several animations that illustrate a series of quotes and talking points about the reality of “clean coal”. Leftchannel was commissioned to create some of these animations in which the canary collides with a wall of type. The agency wanted the collisions to be brutal and wince-worthy. Unfortunately we were slightly restrained from going all the way. Below are the two animations that CP+B incorporated into the online experience, which can be seen at thisisreality.org. But the real fun is in the two animations that they did NOT use!
We recently completed this spec TV spot for Altoids. The breath mint has a very interesting history that goes back a couple hundred years in British history. We wanted our concept to take a light-hearted view on the origin of the mints by putting it in the realms of a quirky-looking candy land.
Pencil, paper, After Effects, Photoshop, magic, and Cinema 4d were used to create, model, and animate our curiously strong lumberjack and his Altoids forest.
Always looking to keep those creative juices flowing, we here at leftchannel occasionally hold an internal event known as The Design Challenge. Basic parameters are set up and each of us work out a print design that’s presented and critiqued at the project’s due date. This process helps us refine styles, experiment with different media and programs and sometimes even serves as catalysts for internal motion pieces.
CHALLENGE
Design a piece based off a sound selected by another member of leftchannel.
