Semi-Permanent is an annual design conference in Sydney that brings together the world's leading designers. June saw its London debut, with such speakers as 'The Orphanage', the design team responsible for the visual effects on such films as SIN CITY. Designer and Editor, Chris Cordwell, of Beeping Bush Productions, went along.
Having seen many a good exhibition, film and theatre show at London's Barbican Centre I was looking forward with much anticipation to their hosting of the Semi-Permanent Design Conference that was held in June this year. The design event itself is still in its relative infancy, having been running for four years in Sydney . This was its debut year in London . However, the speakers invited are at the top of their respective fields, from various parts of the globe. Included in the line-up for Saturday's presentation were motion designers from Australia (TWiN) and Brazil (Lobo), a design collective from New York (Surface to Air), an advertising agency based in Amsterdam (Wieden+Kennedy) and, closer to home, a British online design portal (Pixelsurgeon).
Unlike most other design conferences, which tend to concentrate mainly on technology, Semi-Permanent explores the more creative aspect of design, focusing on the passion that creative people have for their work. Opening Saturday's feast of design work was motion designers Lobo and Cisma.
For those not familiar with Lobo, they are one of Brazil's leading design companies who focus on motion design for advertising, films and television animations alike. They also work on other digital media projects for the web and DVD and have worked for many prestigious clients such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Sony Music to name but a few. The speaker for Lobo was the laid-back Mateus de Paula Santos who, after showcasing a collection of sizzling motion graphics work, talked about their most recent promo animation project for Coco-Cola entitled Optimism. Santos detailed the project from initial concept to completion. Optimism is a stop-motion animation TV spot that centres around a number of characters completely made out of trash, reminding one of the broken toys in Toy Story 2. Although dark and comic in its execution, it still contained an uplifting feel in its climax. Another project that was shown was a 60-second animation entitled Acid Pigs Fly Over Me, commissioned by Diesel for its Diesel Dreams project. Diesel had an open brief; to produce a short film/animation inspired by a photo from a Diesel print campaign. For Lobo this allowed for a lot of creative freedom and the resulting animation was a continuous flow of hand drawn graphics referencing elements of popular culture and free association that one likens to dreams. Although the animation looked hand drawn it was rendered in 3D to allow the camera, and therefore the viewer, to revolve around and see from inside the animation.
CISMA, aka Denis Kamioka, started out as a graffiti artist interested in illustration and T-shirt design. He worked for Lobo for 4 years as a senior motion designer before moving on to working with at MTV Brazil and then the creative department of the clothing brand Diesel. Kamioka demonstrates a great passion for animation, the fusion of live action with illustration steeped in his native culture makes the work surreal yet comical.
Lobo and Cisma was going to be a hard act to follow and the challenge was met adeptly by Jason Arber, Richard May and Sam Gilbey of Pixelsurgeon. May and Arber discussed the beginnings of Pixelsurgeon which was launched in Spring 2001, along with third founder member Rina Cheung, with its main aim to create an online design community site that had a wider scope and broader appeal than other design portals. Influenced in the beginning by Design is Kinky and Surfstation, Pixelsurgeon's unique mix of "creative, strange and interesting" from the internet has seen the site evolve over the past four years, complete with global recognition and hindered occasionally by hosting and content management difficulties, to become a daily destination for thousands around the globe. The online portal has reviews for all types of movies, games and music, with a collection of interviews from designers, musicians, moviemakers and artists alike. It also hosts exclusive competitions and online exhibitions of artwork from all over the world. All three speakers came from a variety of backgrounds; Arber a studio photographer, Gilbey a web designer and May an Illustrator. They treated the audience to a dynamic and eclectic showcase of their work. Indeed, it was a surprise to see an illustration of Shaun of the Dead, which Gilbey states is now hanging on the wall of director, Edgar Wright's office which came about by chance through an interview with him for Pixelsurgeon.
Gordon Hull, Daniel Jackson and Rajan Mehta of Surface to Air then gave one of the most entertaining presentations of the day. Hull, dancing acrobatically around in a red adidas tracksuit to Elvis's Viva Las Vegas was as memorable an intro to a company as I have ever seen. The reason soon become clear. Surface to Air were scheduled to present on Friday but due to a malfunctioning harddrive they were unable to do so. After spending many hours trying to revive it with no success, spent many more hours trying to patch a presentation together. It's a relief that this happens to top professions and not only to us mere mortals and the main message to begin with was that you should "back your shit up, back everything up". What then proceeded was a photo narrative of their day, mostly at the computer doctor, providing an interesting, quirky presentation. Surface to Air started around 1997 making art and having fun and were based in a run down old Loft in Union Square, New York, having shows and collaborating with other artists. The three then went their separate ways working in advertisement, on websites and gaining a Masters in Industrial Design and teamed up again to see if they could make a living working in Fine Art in a commercial realm. They talked about recent projects that they have completed in relation to their background as artists that included sculpture, painting, writing and filmmaking. Indeed, their current project was a publicity campaign for Adidas and their classic Samoa brand. Adidas gave Surface to Air 180 pairs of Samoa shoes, to do with as they wish with the only condition that it needed to be documented. Surface to Air obliged by shredding the 180 pairs of brand new Samoa trainers and rebuilt them as classic design chairs (Grand Confort Chair by Le Corbusier and Barcelona chair by Mies van der Rohe). The concept, explained Hull, was "you take a classic like Adidas, you take a classic like those pieces of industrial design and you make an original, which are these chairs that we manufactured". The shredded shoes were repackaged in vacuum-sealed cushions, and should be displayed in main Adidas outlets in London very soon, accompanied by the documentary. Taking the Adidas displays still further, through branding, the display will also feature "prints" of the Samoa trainers which were created by two members running along a strip of wallpaper with painted soles. The message here was that sport and art come together; The sport of art and the art of sport. Its all about "having fun, and like, having ideas and manifesting ideas in so many different ways and being able to do that is what Surface to Air is really about", explained Hull.
Next up were TWiN, an aptly named motion design duo consisting of identical twins, Jon and Josh Baker. The fabulous Baker boys explained how they have been designers for about four years at different design agencies in Perth and Sidney and have worked on various motion graphics and titles for both shows and films. Each began shooting bits of live action in their respective design careers and decided to team up to do music videos and photographic shoots. However, unlike most companies presenting, TWiN only work together about 30% of the time, working out of Jon's lounge room. Both explained their love for motion design and, to their surprise, they found that there were a lot of similarities between design and directing live action based on framing, shape and colour, "and some of the best directors out there are ex designers" added Jon Baker. In the beginning to get work they started putting together their own commercials from their own pocket or working on the back of another shoot that they were being paid for. However, what wowed the audience most was some of their personal experimentation with a producer friend and his development of some ground breaking camera technology, which could shoot video at amazing high speeds, peaking at 120000 frames a second. TWiN showcased some of their experiments with this technology, of a runner's foot hitting the ground in slow motion on different surfaces, from running track, to the beach, to mud. The footage was shot at a lower rate of about 500 frames a second, but the resulting slow motion highlighted an amazing amount of detail and beauty within the shots that it left the audience drawing their breath.
Following TWiN we had the chaps from the Amsterdam office of Wieden+Kennedy who spoke about their independent, creatively led advertising agency that has offices in Portland, New York, Amsterdam, London, Tokyo and Shanghai. They exist to create strong and provocative relationships between brands and their consumer. Indeed, the company nurtured itself, amongst other things, on Nike advertising and today the Amsterdam office employs 150 people covering 35 nationalities. Wieden+Kennedy showcased a wide assortment of multi-award winning adverts and TV spots from the likes of Nike, ESPN and Honda. They also presented a specially made three-minute witty and sly mockumentary shot a couple of days before the conference of a typical day in their office, with the time sequence backwards. "We got into this because we love being creative and we love coming up with ideas" beamed co-director John Shepherd. He added that "What is great is being able to see the joy of the idea coming to fruition and getting people to enjoy it with you".
However, it isn't just the big projects that excite the team at Wieden+Kennedy - they also relish smaller projects as they believe that more people pay attention to them. " It puts you into a smaller box but allows you to be more creative" enthused Shepherd. To highlight this they presented a clip from their 21-minute MTV documentary of Nike's Panna Knockout campaign. Panna, for those not in the know, is a one-on-one knockout competition, played in small cages with even smaller goals, with roots in street football played in the Netherlands . Although, after three minutes, whoever scores the most goals wins, the ultimate goal is to try and nutmeg your opponent (and the resulting humiliation the opponent feels is panna) and if successful, the player wins outright. In fact, Wieden+Kennedy's documentary, which was only made for 20,000 euros, is a witty and comical take on not only the growth of Panna but the resulting psychological repercussions of those kids who have been traumatised by the shame of being nutmegged. The premise of the clip shown is that the humiliated boys have been sent to a self-image improvement center. W e see a specialist roll a ball between the legs of a group of boys standing in a line saying "Let the ball pass through your legs and try and feel good".
Next came French couple Scien and Klor of 123Klan who are graffiti artists who have played a significant role on the graffiti scene since 1989. In 1994 they fell in love with a program called Illustrator, a vector based drawing software, and were the first to blend graffiti writing and graphic art on the web, making it not just an exhibition tool but a new creative medium. Indeed, they proceeded to give a graffiti-styled drawing demonstration in Illustrator to the sounds of Barry White whereby they swapped their spray cans for a mouse but used it in a very similar way. They have a very strong belief that style is message. Scien explains "you have to be different coz there's heavy competition between each other, you know, so the only thing to be different [is] your own style. That's why we say the style is message, because it's the only message that you can find in a piece". Scien and Klor showcased a varied and exhaustive portfolio of graphic works in which they re-use elements over and over again. Indeed, they liken it to how a DJ scratches. A DJ would have a selection of favourite vinyls but could produce a myriad of possibilities to lay out something different each time. 123Klan are very much inspired by music and all types of culture to "improvise, adapt and dominate!" Their approach is the same whether graphic design or graffiti on the wall using a fanatical freestyle that is full of energy, powerful colours and compositions. 123Klan proceeded to show and talk about their various graphic designs projects and exhibition work, including motion graphics and 3D work, which has given life to their vector styled drawings.
The final presentation of the day was by Scott Stewart, one of the co-founders of The Orphanage set up in 1999, whose offices are located in Los Angeles and San Francisco . The company consists of four divisions including high-end visual effects and animation services, motion picture and broadcast production, and filmmaking technology development and licensing. In fact, it was interesting to see a company who, in the process of making visual effects and having to overcome certain visual technological problems, create solutions that the resulting software is productised to others.
Scott highlighted his background as a visual effects artist at Industrial Light and Magic for four years and along with Jonathan Rothbart left ILM and formed The Orphanage to have more control over the type of work they do and to develop and produce their own films. Consequently the emphasis at The Orphanage is on artistic vision as opposed to what technology could produce. "We always try to keep our eyeballs squarely in front of our brains, its not about Maths, its about making pictures look cool" explains Stewart. He then show-cased a selection of their visual effects work in commercial spots and feature films concentrating on Sin City. He explained that Sin City was like doing a fully animated movie and discussed the steps in creating the environment, driving systems and the yellow bastard character played by Nick Stahl. What was especially interesting was the overall aesthetic of the film and how important it was to The Orphanage, being big fans of Frank Miller, to recreate those incredibly high contrast images that may be seen in his books. Stuart explained that they took a similar approach when trying to translate that into 3D shots for the movie. One of the requirements was that they emulated the style photography of the forties and the visual effects artists used lights that were very similar to the lights used in film in that period. "We wanted it to look like the real world but shot on a set back in that time and there is a certain theatricality to that and that shows in the final images" informed Stuart. He closed his presentation by discussing the challenges that lay in creating a company, keeping it in business and keeping it going.
With that, the crowd gave a rapturous applause that brought the first London Semi-Permanent Design Conference to an end. It was a real privilege to see a vast array of dynamic, insightful and creative talent sharing their ideas and ethos with the audience. It was also interesting to note how hybrid the background disciplines were and the prominence of motion design in all their work. The conference also highlighted how stimulating, vibrant and unique commercial work can be borne out of experimental projects and artistic tendencies.
Chris Cordwell
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