CHAPTER FIVE
Media design “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media (1964)
After Effects and the invisible revolution Media hybrids are not limited to particular software applications, user interfaces, artistic projects, or websites. If I am right in suggesting that hybridity represents the next logical stage in the development of computational media, following the first stage of simulating individual physical media in a computer, then we can expect to find it in many cultural areas. And this is indeed the case. In this chapter I will look at a single cultural area in depth—moving image design—analyzing how the creation and aesthetics of moving images changed dramatically in the 1990s. Around the middle of the 1990s, the simulated physical media for moving and still image production (cinematography, animation, graphic design, typography), new computer media (3D animation), and new computer techniques (compositing, multiple levels of transparency) met within a single software environment— compatible software programs running on a personal workstation or a personal computer. Filmmakers, animators, and designers started to systematically work in this environment, using software both to generate individual elements and to assemble all elements