Imaginary Forces

Brian Mah from California's Imaginary Forces spoke last Thursday at an AIGA Event and it was a truly inspiring presentation.

Imaginary Forces is a Hollywood based company that does everything from film titles to broadcast. You might not know them by name, but you've seen their work. Be it the opening credits to Mad Men, the latest Pepsi commercials, USA Network title cards or even the Transformers they do everything.

So last Thursday one of the leading design directors came to visit our humble city with the help of Mode and spoke a little about some of the projects he's worked directly on and what some of the challenges were in the process.

He spoke about six different clients, but I got the most out of two particular ones, namely the USA Networks title cards and Time Warner commercials. They are both visual eye candy, but what I found interesting was that he approached both from a design angle.

Brian explained that USA Networks wanted to rebrand themselves and do away with the old and focus more on the idea that we are all one. So Brian and his team did a series of mockup promos in various exciting editing processes. They saw them and there answer was, make it simpler. So the team went back and tried again. Again they asked for it to be simpler. This went on for quite some time until they tried to treat the screen as a simple colored canvass. When this happened they fell in love with it. Take a look at the this link on the site to see what I mean, watch the type.

I appreciated this story because sometimes it's difficult to understand where the client is coming from. They want you to do something original, but at the same time do it that matches their vision. When this happens we sometimes go through seven to ten revisions and feel like the client is pulling our leg. But Brian and his team took deep breaths and worked hard to be patient with the client. It obviously paid off.

The next client, Time Warner, was a client that had a concept, but no idea how it could be done. IF is known for their brilliant 3D work so they figured IF could do it. Again Brian and his team went and did some comps to which the client loved. So the next step was to film it. They had to do three commercials, but each one at roughly fifty different pieces of moving footage. And a number of them had to be shot. So in the space of three days that shot nonstop in the studio. Again the client loved it. You can check it out one there website here, just click "play movie".

What I loved about this story was that Brian didn't have a ton of directing experience. But he knew exactly what he was looking for and with the right planning they figured it all out. We've all been in those circumstances where we have no idea how to do what needs to be done. But we do it and either come on top, or drown and walk away in disgrace. The end conclusion is always the same, plan it out, plan it out and plan it out.

A couple days later I was lucky enough to be able to email Brian and ask him if 3D was the future of design. The reason being that we are constantly trying to create 3D spaces in our 2D design. It seems like at some point technology will be at a point where we'll be able to do that without the help of Maya, After Effects and Cinema 4D. At some point it will be just another tool on Photoshop or Illustrator.

His answer back to me was a surprising one:

My personal view on the situation is that, despite it's recent popularity, it is just another look in the endless palette of visual languages. If you take the recent Pepsi campaigns, for instance, they intentionally pushed their material to be flat and graphic. It seems to me that this decision was made to stand out in the crowd of 3D rendered imagery. I think this will continue to be the way it works...as looks become popular, it seems to make a "trend" emerge, then someone pushes away from the trend to stand out, then a new "trend" begins etc.

Well I wish you could have been there. It was the type of AIGA meeting you want the most, a speaker that was both humble and inspiring, a great turn out and something to remember. Thanks to AIGA and Mode for making it happen and check more of IF's stuff out on the website, imaginaryforces.com.

Battlestar Galactica Propaganda Posters

Battlestar Galactica is unlike most tv shows. It is labeled as a SciFi show, but deals with topics that are more inline with most Dramas like The Wire or Lost. The SciFi is merely a vehicle to tell serious topics like genocide, warfare, love, betrayal and the religious beliefs. The tv show is on it's forth season and unfortunately last season so if you are looking for something surprisingly different, go get the first episode.

Last year at the San Diego ComiCon a series of posters came out. These posters, displayed below mimic the American propaganda of the 1940s. It's a fitting treatment since it's set in a very dismal time period where the people in the TV show are what remains of human kind with no hope of tomorrow. The American propaganda posters of the 1940s were created to unite the people against the common foe, the axis. The axis were seen by American's as evil monsters, almost like the evil Cylons of the tv show. As you can see in these posters, they each focus on Fear, Volunteering, A Unified Voice, and Doing Your Part. The same points you see in American propaganda Like "We Can Do It", "Man The Guns, Join the Navy", "Loose Lips Sink Ships" and my favorite, "Buy War Bonds".

Besides the content and the unified voice, the poster treatments are also in key with what you'd expect from the time period. They are all done on offset printers and the colors look worn and dated. The illustrations have that hand touch feel to them as though the whole thing were done by hand and not computers. Of course this isn't true and they were done by computer with various Photoshop effects. But the point is that they look authentic and that is what I love about them. If you like them you can get all of them on Amazon for only $29.95 which if you think about it is a steal.

So, whoever did these should give themselves a pat on the back. Well thought out and well executed.