Computer Arts 231

WORK WITH

ISSUE

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SEPTEMBER 2014 DIGITAL EDITION produced in the uk

TOP GLOBAL BRANDS

How to get on the radar of creative powerhouses Nike, MTV and Google

Take our quiz!

WHAT TYPE OF DESIGNER ARE YOU? Studio Dumbar’s Liza Enebeis introduces her 11 design tribes

Play to the strengths of your personality and promote your design skills more effectively EXCLUSIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan on their latest vibrant collaboration

ANIMATE a typeface

Behind the scenes: how 110 designers joined forces to bring a font to life

DESIGN STRIKING PATTERNS

Combine abstract elements to create a collage-inspired design in Illustrator

SEPTEMBER 2014

ISSUE 23 1 SEP T EMBER 20 14

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Culture

Trends: German projection mapping collective Urban Screen transforms a disused industrial space into a cathedral of evolving light

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Showcase

P laces: Check out the best hangouts for creative types in the central neighbourhood of Chile’s historical and cultural capital, Santiago

Our selection of the world’s best new graphic design, illustration and motion graphics work 28

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P eople: The co-founders of Duo D Uo explain how they turned a workaday back-road studio into an ecology of plants, pottery and spirit animals

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vents: Following Liverpool’s Designival 2014, E Well Made Studio’s Gemma Germains considers how the event has impacted the city’s creative scene

Insight

20 an open letter to the design industry: James Greenfield relates the craziest week of his career following DesignStudio’s Airbnb rebrand 24

which type of designer are you? Studio Dumbar’s Liza Enebeis offers up the results of her anthropological research on the designer species

one step back, two forward: Digital 26 designer Jeremy Lim argues from experience how growth in your career isn’t necessarily linear

workflow

82 design an abstract pattern: Illustrator Matt Lyon shares his advice for designing and colouring an abstract pattern composition 88

m anage your motion assets: Thiago Maia reveals how to prepare your assets in Photoshop

need to know

94 MONITORS: THE WIDER THE BETTER? ManvsMachine’s Simon Holmedal puts the world’s biggest monitor through its paces

Project diaries

Behind the scenes on how 110 designers joined forces to put a font in motion, plus fresh nightclub flyers and a life-sized festival poster 75

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C O N TE N TS

SEPTEMBER 2014

video insight: supergroup london We chat to Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan outside their vibrant Temple of Agape at Southbank Centre 50

Morag Myerscough talks at the temple

Luke Morgan describes his vision of art

S p eci a l R ep ort: Ni ke • M T V • G OOGLE

Get on their radar

Julia Sagar goes behind the iconic logos to find out what it takes to get on the creative radars of three of the planet’s most powerful brands 54

Subscribe TO COMPUTER ARTS • UK READERS: Four issues free! 27 • US READERS: Five issues free! 81 More: computerarts.creativebloq.com

In co nv e rs ati on

Felix Pfäffli

The Swiss designer discusses his enduring love of posters, and why he feels the format can thrive in any medium 68

In dus t ry i s s ue s

PERSONAL PROMO

Whatever your quirks, your personality could be the key to carving out a creative niche. Anne Wollenberg investigates 42

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try our award-winning iPad edition for free! page 41

I n si gh t l i z a e n eb e i s

September 2014

Take LIZA’S quiz!

Discover which tribe you belong TO http://bit.ly/DesignerQuiz

About the writer Liza Enebeis is creative director at Rotterdam-based design agency Studio Dumbar and a host of Typeradio, the radio channel exclusively dedicated to type and design. She also pens tongue-in-cheek advice to designers under the moniker LoveLiza. www.loveliza.nl

Which designer type are you?

It’s the kind of question that can be answered only with the help of serious anthropological fieldwork conducted in studio habitats the world over. Liza Enebeis exclusively reveals her findings

e all know how to recognise another designer. Let’s face it, we can spot our own kind from a mile away. But can you distinguish between the multitude of design tribes out there these days? And do you know which one you belong to? Most importantly, are you hanging out with the right designer crowd? (What if you think you’re a Critical Designer when in truth you’re a Brand Expert, for instance?) Keep reading as we reveal the most common designer types and see if you can recognise which one you are.

First up, and perhaps the most transparent of the lot, the Designer’s Designer. This one’s all about show, the type who’s more concerned about how a project looks on their website than whether it’s actually real or not. Lacking substance, they’re forced to fake it til they make it. Nathan Barley, eat your heart out.

Next is the Brand Expert. Their stated aim is to build bigger and better brands, where design is just a small part of it. Let’s be honest though, they’re just a designer who changed their title to get better paid.

The Online Geek Designer is Borg-like, a walking plural. They’re never alone, forever seeing themselves as part of a bigger network. All of their friends secretly hope they invent the Next Big Thing in social media so they’re no longer embarrassed to know them.

Then there’s the Strategic Designer, whose pre-fabricated one-word utterances apparently say more than a thousand images. It was probably their childhood dream to become a designer, but their

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parents convinced them it was a lost cause, so they ended up being a strategist instead.

Have you ever met a Type Freak Designer, the sort who treats themselves to the entire font collection from their favourite Swiss foundry for their own birthday? They stay single for far too long. If you’re one of them, I advise you to hang out at plenty of type conferences to meet your perfect match.

Meanwhile, the Grid Designer aims for perfection and winces whenever they catch a glimpse of the imperfect world around them. The sad truth is nobody notices the results of their purism, but if it helps for them to line up their facial creams on their dressing table at home, they should probably carry on doing it.

Are we being too harsh? “Stereotyping is a form of pseudo-narcissistic self-doubt in the greater spectrum of design.” That’s the Critical Designer speaking. It’s English, just not the sort the rest of us understand.

Especially the I’m Just Doing This For The Money Designer. They couldn’t care less.

Lastly, how could we forget the Trend Generator Designer? They’re part of the elite, always innovating, constantly blazing the trails that others meekly follow.

One day they’re designing a limited edition flag, the next it’s a pop-up shop, the day after that it’s an animation for their favourite fashion designer. Sound familiar? Then everyone wants to be you.

Has Liza captured your creative characteristics – or is she way off? Tweet @ComputerArts using #DesignMatters

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S ho w c a s e

SePT E MB E R 2014

all aboard year of the bus

by Outline Editions www.outline-editions.co.uk

Working with Transport for London (TfL) and Designjunction, Outline Editions commissioned 10 artists to create Oyster card holders to mark the Year of the Bus (YotB). “We worked closely with TfL to create a brief that explained the various celebratory touch points of YotB,” explains Outline Editions director Camilla Parsons. The artists had a few weeks to create their design, and were given access to the London Transport Museum to take a closer look at the history of the city’s buses.

“It’s important that each design is different in terms of style and content,” says Parsons. “So we used a diverse group of designers who are not only stylistically different, but also have different thought processes and approaches to a brief.”

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Video Insight

september 2014

video content watch the videos at bit.ly/ca231-supergroup or in our ipad edition See page 41

S U P E RG RO U P LO N DO N Lo n d o n , u K supergrouplondon.co.uk

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Video insight

EXCLUSIVE VIDEO

SUPERGROUP LONDON: activating spaces When Southbank Centre sought a creative team to design an ambitious temple installation for its Festival of Love, Supergroup London got the call. Co-founders Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan tell us more

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getting people to enjoy and experience them. Perhaps it’s in the same way that I would sometimes go busking and people would get something out of it that wasn’t necessarily arranged, but it would become an experience that we could all share. I think Morag does that through the way she changes spaces.

When did you meet and what was the first project that you both worked on?

MM: It was 2002 when we met. I’d been running my own studio for 10 years and I’d grown bored. That’s when the two of us started doing projects together.

The first big project we did was the Her House gallery.

It was actually in my house and was a collection of things that we’d both done even before we’d met.

I remember I’d made a lampshade out of surgical tubing and Luke had made birdhouses. We just did what we wanted to do – and everybody loved it.

LM: ‘Curation’ sounds like a posh word to describe it but we chose things to build this collection that we thought would work together and that had some sort of direction. This also inspired us to create new things at the time. We did it as an experiment for ourselves, but it took on a life of its own and it was a really interesting experience.

Tell us about how Supergroup was formed. What was the idea behind this creative ‘A-Team’?

MM: Supergroup was founded by Luke, myself, and one of our friends called Gerrard, who sadly passed away. We were involved in some projects that required lots of different people to come together and it was getting hard to credit all of them. So we thought the best thing to do was to come up with a collective name. Also, when you work on different projects, different sets of people are involved. So it’s always been about creating a cohesive team – who are not necessarily all creatives – and combining different people for different projects. For example, neither I nor Luke are digital artists, but one of us might have an idea that needs to be digitally realised, so we’ll bring someone in who has that expertise.

LM: When we start a project we look at how we’re going to tackle it, and it often begins with a pitch, so we’ll put a scheme together between us and work out who’s doing what and what times we have available, and who has certain specific elements they want to put into it. For example, with this [Temple of Agape] project, you can clearly see Morag’s visual influence.

Does working collaboratively bring something out in you that you might not get working individually?

MM: When we work on complex projects I think it’s definitely better that we work together, as there’s so much layering in big projects, I don’t think you could do it on your own, or at least I don’t think that would be the best way to go about it, because there’s so many different elements that you have to think of.

LM: I think it’s a performance for the both of us, but in slightly differing ways. Morag comes from a performing family and I’ve always had this urge to – in the most basic way – get attention. And maybe where I might have sought attention through the music I was playing [Morgan is the frontman of his own band, The Highliners], Morag has always been getting attention through activating spaces and

Do you see yourselves primarily as artists?

MM: I wouldn’t call myself an artist, but if someone wants to call me that, it would be different to how I’d describe myself. Also the boxes that existed within design and art (and architecture, although it’s really its own thing) are fusing together and the boundaries are less defined. That’s the feeling I’m getting anyway.

LM: I find calling myself an artist the easiest way to explain what I do to people. If I called myself a musician then I’d have a lot of people question that! [Laughs] But people understand when I say I’m an artist or a performer. At the same time, I enjoy working privately, I like having space to do my own thing rather than being totally public the whole time, because if I’m put on the spot I find it hard to come up with anything marvelously artistic.

PHOTOGRAPHY: ADAM GASSON, www.adamgasson.com

easuring over eight metres high and twelve metres wide, the ‘Temple of Agape’ stands on the South Bank of the Thames like a welcome beacon, inviting all who pass to enter the scaffold structure and decode its compassionate message, set in an explosion of colourful typography. Artists Morag Myerscough and Luke Morgan were commissioned to create the installation as part of a summer Festival of Love.

We caught up with them at Southbank Centre to find out why they so love working together…

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S p e c i a l Re p o r t : N I K E M T V G O O G L E

GET ON their

Radar

Times are changing. The creative needs of the world’s superbrands are no longer solely the preserve of huge agencies with an international reach. Julia Sagar goes behind the iconic logos to find out what it takes to get on the creative radars of three of the planet’s most powerful brands: Nike, MTV and Google

September 2014

Left: One of a series of images designed by Berlin-based Hort for the Nike FC brand book Below: Environmental graphics by SouthSouthWest for the Nike All Star Weekend in New Orleans

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studio Korb, Berlin-based Hort and talented 3D designer Rizon Parein, who’s based in Belgium. “We’re very busy but we’re not a very big team, so we have to work with people with specific skillsets to give us what we want,” he explains. “There’s no set formula though. I’ve worked with a variety of agencies: some, like Hort, I’ve worked with consistently and then there’s somebody like Rizon, who I only started working with a year ago. Sometimes you have to grab these people on the outside. I look at myself almost like the puppet master: I take someone’s skillset and just connect the dots.”

The dots, for Spoljaric, often involve a very clear idea of the final creative right from the start of a new project – and he isn’t afraid to work closely with a collaborator to realise his vision. He knew, for example, that his Nike Air Max 90 Sneakerboot campaign with 3D artist Chris Labrooy would feature a series of oversized shoes set in miniature cityscapes [see opening image]. “I pick people that can add something to it,” he explains, “where it’s a little bit of a surprise to me. The endgame isn’t necessarily 100 per cent what I pictured – but it pretty much is.”

oised at the cutting-edge of design and technology, Nike, MTV and Google are responsible for some of the most powerful campaigns of recent times. With expert in-house marketing teams and a reputation for game-changing creative, it’s little wonder the three are continually voted among the world’s most desirable clients by the planet’s biggest agencies.

Building trust But times are changing. These days, Nike’s known for demanding the very best global clients are increasingly choosing from its partners. Creative freedom varies to work directly with smaller studios depending on the product, brief, department and freelancers. And while the world’s and level of trust a partner studio has built. superbrands continue to collaborate closely “We began working with Nike in North with internationally established agencies, America via an introduction from an art their in-house design teams are just as director I worked with a few years earlier, likely to commission a creative directly. here in Melbourne,” says Andy Sargent, “It’s a different business model,” creative director at Australian branding reflects Michael Spoljaric, design director, M i c ha e l Sp o l j ari c , N i ke and design studio SouthSouthWest.

Nike Art Department. “Nike has evolved over Over time, the company has the past five years to be very self-sufficient developed an intricate understanding of when and where it can from a marketing, advertising and communication standpoint,” best innovate with Nike. “The best advice from a briefing session a he continues. “The world is small so it’s easier to connect dots.” year or so ago was: ‘Just make it amazing’,” says Sargent, highlighting Over the past decade, hundreds of Spoljaric’s ideas have been two recent NBA All Star environmental design projects among his realised through close-knit collaborations with some of the industry’s favourite commissions. “It was the first time we were able to push most exciting creative talent, including boutique Lithuanian VFX

“ Ni ke ha s evo l ve d ove r th e past five years to be very se lf-s uffic ient from a c ommu nic ation sta ndpoi nt . The world i s small, so it’ s easi er to conne ct dots ”

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Nik e • M T V • G oo g le

September 2014

Nike Air Max l u na r 1 Rizon Parein www.rizon.be Rizon Parein’s relationship with Nike first started with a phone call. In early 2012, the Belgium-based 3D designer caught the attention of the international design press with a striking self-initiated CGI series of pink neon posters for Nicolas Winding Refn’s noir thriller Drive. Two years later, when Nike design director Michael Spoljaric needed some intricate 3D neon lighting for Nike Brazil’s Sejamax campaign, he remembered Parein and invited him onto the project. It went well, and this summer Spoljaric and Parein joined forces again – this time on Nike’s latest Air Max Lunar 1 campaign.

Briefed to communicate the lightness of the hyper-fused Air Max 1, Rizon approached the visual like an installation. “Michael proposed to do something with the Air Max air unit, and I came up with the perforated spheres,” he explains. “Next I transformed parts of the Air Max silhouette into lunar shaped objects, modelled some little shoe details, added the ‘Möbius’ ring and so on, until we had a dynamic, well-balanced piece.”

The project evolved organically. “I created several images along the way that were close to finished and then changed direction. This could be very frustrating with other jobs, but with Nike every piece you make is good portfolio work,” Rizon explains.

“It’s a creative ping-pong process – the work gets better and better.”

As the deadline approached, Spoljaric admits he became momentarily nervous. “It was getting to the point where I had to deliver something,” he confides. “But I trust people’s abilities and their commercial experience.”

He continues: “It’s very rare I’ll just approach somebody who doesn’t have professional experience. There’s a lot of fantastic work on Behance, but if people don’t get timelines, deliverables, resolution size and so on, you can’t honestly expect to get something back.”

For Rizon, having Nike on his client list has opened doors. “People click on my work more. It’s like a Cannes Lion for designers.”

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poster child Swiss graphic designer Felix Pfäffli discusses his enduring love of posters, and why he feels the format can thrive in any medium

F e l i x P f ä ff l i Swiss designer Felix Pfäffli set up his own studio, Feixen, on graduating from his hometown university in Lucerne in 2010. The following year he was appointed as teacher at the Lucerne School of Graphic Design to teach typography, narrative design, and poster design. www.feixen.ch

Words: Gavin Lucas Photography: Marco Sieber Fotografie www.marcosieber.ch

I NT R O P RO J E C TS

september 2014

Computer Arts goes behind the scenes with world-leading designers as they reveal their working processes…

INCLUDES PRO WORKFLOW ADVICE Plus: the latest tools and tech for designers

Franchise Animated: Setting Type in Motion Discover how over 100 different designers joined forces to animate a typeface for Animography 76

Good Block Poster: Growing Strange Fruit

Malmö Festival Poster: Lofty ambitions

How Bunker London vibrantly airbrushed the collateral for club night Good Block 85

Behind the scenes on Snask’s massive typographic poster 90 for Malmö Festival

WORKFLOW TIPS

DESIGN AN ABSTRACT PATTERN

manage your motion assets

Pro advice for designing and colouring an abstract 82 pattern composition that bursts off the page

Save time by preparing and organising assets for 88 your motion projects in Photoshop first

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THE FUTURE OF DESIGN EDUCATION STUDIO PROJECT

Under the guidance of Wolff Olins, five talented Shillington graduates develop an exciting new brand EDUCATION THROUGH DESIGN

Tap a lucrative new market: how great design can be used to teach everything from new tech to languages Plus: inspiring work, current issues and expert analysis from the global design scene

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