janfebpreview2016

COMMUNICATION ARTS TYPOGRAPHY ANNUAL 6

Sophie Casson Assembly Dana Neibert Stranger & Stranger Sukle Exhibit

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January/February 2016 Twenty-Four Dollars commarts.com

NEW ZEALAND’S HOT PRODUCTION START-UP, RUN BY GROWN-UPS

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BY JOE SHEPTER

he unfortunate truth about visual effects is that if you do your job right, your audience almost never notices how hard the job really was. Assembly’s creation of glass cows running around a field for dairy brand Anchor serves as a great example: Translucency is hard. Splashing is hard. And reality is hard (a cow half full of milk would move like a sloth, if at all). But most people who see it only remember a sparrow that knocks itself silly trying to fly through a cow.

“That sparrow was a labor of love,” admits Damon Duncan, who directed the commercial. “But it was the big moment in the gag of making the cows see-through.”

Luckily, those who matter (namely, large international advertising agencies) have taken notice of Assembly. Right now, the seventeen-person firm is probably New Zealand’s hottest production company, drawing bids and love from big American agencies like Wieden+Kennedy and Deutsch— and awards from Cannes and the One Show.

Because Assembly seems to have suddenly burst on the scene, you might think they’re a bunch of whiz-Kiwis raised on the Internet. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The core team is old. Not old for the world, but old in the sense that Duncan, Jonny Kofoed, Matt von Trott and Rhys Dippie are still doing hands-on creative work at an age when most of their peers have taken a corner office. But this, like a lot of things Assembly does, was by design.

Five years ago, the team of four launched the firm when they all left a much larger company, Oktobor Animation, and the time was ripe for a new approach to production. Hardware prices had dropped, and technology had improved to the point that even complex executions could happen on a laptop, enabling them to get back to what they like doing: the work.

When you hire Assembly today, you get an almost exclusively senior team that typically aces it.

That said, it’s hard to stuff them into a category. They do lots of things, and all of them well. To understand why, we first have to dispel a myth about talent. We often hear that we live in a globalized economy where great people can be found anywhere, and anyone with a computer and a halfdecent connection can plug into the digital scene and become a rock star.

That’s not quite true. Most talent emerges locally, and the environment in which a creative person develops has

a shaping effect on his or her mindset and capabilities. You can see this most obviously in Sweden, where a government initiative brought broadband access to all of its residents years before the rest of the world. That’s one reason Swedish digital firms, like B-Reel and North Kingdom, were far more successful initially than, say, French firms.

New Zealand has its own peculiar set of circumstances. On a Mercator projection map, it may look like it’s snuggled up against Australia, but it’s actually one of the most isolated countries in the world. Auckland, New Zealand, lies more than 1,300 miles from Sydney, and the differences between their creative environments are greater still. New Zealand has only 4.5 million people. The country broadcasts three television networks, which people still watch, by and large— commercials included. The Internet is not widely used as a brand platform. And yet, the national TV audience is generally wealthy and sophisticated, and they expect international-level commercials and shows. As a result, the local creatives have developed a practical mindset and the ability to work in almost any style.

“In New Zealand, you get a lot of generalists,” says Kofoed. “We do so many different jobs. As a barometer, when we bring people in from other countries, they often struggle with the diversity of the kinds of scripts we get. We get a joy out of working on different things because it’s the way you have to be.”

Assembly’s portfolio certainly proves the point. They do everything from live action and computer graphics to immersive web and flip-book animation. They can also knock out print collateral for campaigns if you need it.

And it all looks perfectly professional.

In addition, Kiwi creatives have to produce internationallevel work on budgets that might be better suited to a midsized metropolitan area. As a result, Assembly’s team has a long tradition of DIY. Among other things, they’re masters at cost-efficient, high-quality animation. And technical director Dippie is no stranger to building new, custom hardware if they need a particular kind of shot.

“They’re incredible problem solvers,” agrees Suzanne Molinaro, senior vice president and director of digital production for Deutsch NY, for which Assembly has become something of a go-to. “They take a lot of initiative—for example, they

Assembly provided the captions.

Right: “Musically speaking, Mr Hayday’s ‘Acker’ uses very few elements, but arranges them in an inventive way. The visual idea behind this music video was to create a literal, graphic link between the music and the screen. This clip for electronic artist James Hayday was made using just three colored blocks—yellow, blue and red. The animation was all driven by code generated from the song’s waveforms, which was then played back on a bank of LED screens. The video was filmed live in an abandoned Lysaght building in the Wynyard Quarter of Auckland.” Duncan Cole, photography director; Lakshman Anandanayagam/Matt von Trott/Scott Wilson, contributing artists; Jonny Kofoed, director; James Hayday, client.

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Typography Annual 2016

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Typography Annual 2016

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ENVIRONMENTAL 1 (series) Courtney Gooch/Sarah McKeen, designers Paula Scher, art director Pentagram (New York, NY), design firm Tyler School of Art, client “In her renowned typographic map paintings, Pentagram’s Paula Scher explores ideas of location and individual ways of seeing the world. Last summer, working in collaboration with students at her alma mater, the Tyler School of Art, she expanded this unique point of view to an immersive environment with Philadelphia Explained, a large-scale installation that details the city and its surrounding areas in a hand-painted map. Scher created the map with the help of 154 participants who were each given a portion of cartography to complete. The result is a one-of-a-kind portrait of Philadelphia that swarms with individual observations.”

2 (series) David Blumberg/Andrew Thomson, designers Roy Burns, design director Spencer Till, executive creative director Andrew Thomson/Spencer Till, illustrators Leigh Ann Motley, producer Lewis Communications (Birmingham, AL), ad agency Auto & Truck Services, client

© Jeffrey Williams

“Auto & Truck Services views what it does as an art form. As part of a branding effort built around ‘the art of repair,’ the garage signage features phrases inspired by the service-driven ad slang of the 1950s rendered playfully, artfully and iconically. Big, bold, hand-painted letterforms strategically placed throughout the building harken back to the golden age of auto repair while enlivening the characteristically gritty, utilitarian space for employees and patrons alike.”

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FRESH MONICA GARWOOD

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Awash with tenderness, Monica Garwood’s illustrations exude a feminine—and feminist—strength. Watercolor and ink combine to create irony and playful details, such as the spots of a Dalmatian matching its master’s dress. The San Francisco–based illustrator first fell in love with drawing through Albrecht Dürer’s life studies, and she began her practice with strict, realistic renderings. Then she discovered mid-century modern artists, such as Mary Blair and Miroslav Šašek, and her craft became looser and experimental.

She seeks to balance the “refined and chaotic,” she says. “I love art that is very simplistic and not gratuitous with detail, like Matisse’s paper collages.” After graduating in 2013 with a BFA in illustration, her career took a bolder direction through a solo show titled Girls You Can’t Have. In the artworks, women of all stripes taunt the viewer with their self-possession. Since then, work for feminist magazines BUST and Bitch—as well as illustrations, hand lettering and type design for Old Navy—have established her path. Her secret? “My ability to simplify extraneous detail while still nailing the very subtle, unique characteristics of an individual, emotion or mood.” monicagarwood.com

Typography Annual 2016

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1. “The Curated Attic,” for Garwood’s solo show, Girls You Can’t Have, at Rare Device boutique and gallery in San Francisco. 2. A painting for a group show—From the Wrist, Up—at Paxton Gate in San Francisco. Jess Suttner, curator. 3. A Dalmatian sitter for Girls You Can’t Have. 4. A woman tough enough to sit on a cactus and drink it for Girls You Can’t Have. 5. Also for Girls You Can’t Have, a woman floats among driftwood and plants. 6. An illustration for the article “What It’s Really Like Growing Up in San Francisco,” with the author’s keepsakes from 1990s Bay Area. Wendy Steiner, art director; The Bold Italic, client.

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“Typography is graphic design’s secret club.”

—James Victore, from a lecture at

—Alan Fletcher, via

Virginia Commonwealth University

The Designer Says

“I AM TOTALLY NOT A FONT PERSON, SO I JUST USE THE USUAL SUSPECTS —ARIAL, VERDANA. I’M SURE THAT’S LIKE FINGERNAILS ON CHALKBOARDS FOR SOME PEOPLE.” —R. MARIE COX, VIA SMASHING MAGAZINE

“Type designers: stop with the trend of adding your foundry’s initials to a font name. There are plenty of words left.”

—Tiffany Wardle, via Twitter

“Typographers are masons of the printed word.”

“I LOVE A SERIF WITH A LITTLE JUNK IN THE TRUNK.” —Evan Gaffney,

via Eye on Design

“ The story of Sisyphos’s brother Typiphos, who spent each day making his font better only to �nd the same amount of new mistakes the next day.”

—Nina Stössinger, via Twitter

“Make a font out of your own handwriting by simply writing everything on paper instead of using the computer.”

—Jennifer Daniel, via Medium

—Jody Barton, via Twitter