After Effects is turning out to be incredibly interesting. 

I've opened up the program in the past and have been daunted by all the effects and presets and menus and just all around huge variety of options, but after watching a few tutorials I began to feel like I've been using After Effects for years. I watched the entire basic training on Video CoPilot as well as many tutorials that I found on vimeo, and this set me up perfectly to begin working on my own. 

I've been very inspired with After Effects work in the past, but I've always been a bit confused (in terms of my own work) about what I would actually be capable of making within the program. After seeing videos like Above Everything Else my expectations were unreasonably high and were definitely not going to be met. I ended up learning that After Effects is as much of a program that you can create content in, as one that you can also edit and alter already made content within as well. 

This seems a lot more reasonable for me, and although I still have no real idea what I'm going to be doing for my teaser trailer, I find comfort in knowing that I can work with footage/Photoshop layers/and if I'm getting really crazy, 3D objects created in programs like Cinema 4D (I probably won't bother learning how to use yet another program yet though, haha). 

A video like Apache which is a music video for a song by Danger Beach, is simple yet incredibly effective. I'm sure whatever layers were used were created and edited within a program like Photoshop or Illustrator, and then the piece was animated in After Effects. It's amazing what kind of results you can get by simply integrating a few basic tools. 

I can't wait until that idea hits me and I begin actually working on my teaser, because I'm honestly so fascinated with this program. After discovering how uniquely versatile After Effects is I may even consider majoring in Digital Media so that I can work with it in the future. 

Maybe (: 

Typography is a huge deal - if you don't believe me check out Hoefler & Frere-Jones. You can purchase four font packages for only $499.00! What a steal. Holy crap when did letters get so expensive? Ever since they started looking so good, I guess.

“The brief was to go into the pound shop and pick out something that seemed dull and completely re think the packaging of it. The idea is that the elastic band in the middle squeezes in the box and the strong the band, the most the box is squeezed.”

I think that the typography used on the packaging of these boxes of elastic bands is extremely effective. It takes a boring idea of packaging elastic bands, which frankly I can't even think what that packaging would even look like, and made it interesting. The amount the box is squeezed in directly relates to how strong the elastic bands are, and the typography for each box gets more stretched as well. It's a very fun design that sticks to one colour and bold vintage style serifed fonts. Everyone needs elastic bands at some point, but the typography here is clearly aimed at a younger demographic that would choose something for its design rather than purpose. 

The concept is clever because the type of elastic band is advertised in the middle, and that is the word that is getting stretched to varying degrees. It is also a very clean design with all the words ending at the same points, and the different fonts are similar enough that they add variety but still look like they are a part of the same family. I would buy this product.


Designed by Ric Bixter

"The new label maintains a balance of filigree, iconography, and special typographic elements, in black and white with a touch of silver."

I'm a huge fan of typography associated with various kinds of alcohol - I think that it's incredibly classy and this redesigned Jack Daniels liquor label is no excuse. (It's a layed out version of what would regularly be wrapped around the bottle, click on the caption to get other views) The Jack Daniel's font is bold and recognizable and working with white against black for the centre of the bottle, frames against two sides with raised stripes. The typography coupled with the shape of the bottle achieves a distinctly chiseled and masculine feel and is absolutely perfect in representing the drink 140 years after its begining. 


By Behance Network

Unlike most of the typography that I usually post which is print based (I'm a sucker for anything print), this struck me  as very witty and interesting as well. To be fair it is also technically 'print' but it is an ad that is featured outdoors in Australia. I love that typography was used non-traditionally here, in that fon't were carved out of the ice to make the words for the ad. 

The ad is clever, has great coloring, and conveys the message very well to its audience. My only complain would be that I think this particular version of the ad (there are a few others as well) has a bit too much head room at the top. That's just my personal opinion though, and I am by no means a professional designer. 


By Clemenger BBDO

Fleet Foxes, Helpless Blues, The Shine/An Argument

This video is amazing in so many ways, I get excited just thinking about it. I guess it helps that I'm a huge Fleet Foxes enthusiast, own all their CDs, posters, and was in the 7th row of their concert this past summer, but there's something special about this After Effects Motion Graphics Video. 

The blurry/foggy effect that is present throughout the whole video as well as the darkened edges of the video are incredibly effective in setting a mood for the video. As well, the warm colours that are used in the first part of the song - The Shrine - embody a very warm, earthy feel. 

I loved the combination of textures and rough cutout shapes to make the characters, and the integration with them and the glowing eerie background. The visualizations and musical transitions flowed so well with the music that when watched full screen with headphones on it's like being in an actual cinematic experience, and the emotions that the songs brings out of the viewer are so genuine. 

I never would have imagined this to be the face behind this song, but after seeing it I can't imagine anything else. The characters, the way they move and shift so fluidly yet with a clear 'puppeteering effect' is both incredibly eerie and childlike all in one. The first impression that I got at 2:38 when the creatures are revealed was the children's book Where the Wild Things Are. The song seems to cross borders on all plains - being both modern yet medieval at the same time, and the video does the same thing in playing with our sense of being. Where are we when watching this video? Why is this happening? The song on it's own isn't this dramatic yet coupled with the video it reveals so much hidden meaning. 

I love this Motion Graphic exactly for that. Not only is it beautifully made but it evokes emotion and thought from the viewer. It's interesting, intriguing, and multi dimensional. 

I love to sketch. I primarily draw people but I also love experimenting with fluid designs, things that aren't really anything but become meaningful after I'm finished with them. After drawing the main design featured in my poster, I spent some time analyzing it, choosing what it looked like and could be used for. I finally decided that what it looked like was a stream of billowing smoke, as if it was coming out of a chimney somewhere. That's how I came up with the idea for my Contemporary Arts Festival of London poster. I used the 'contemporary' design to represent an every day thing in an interesting way. In a way it's almost as if it's an art piece in itself that it being showcasted via poster for the event.

I'm sure that there is an actual Contemporary Arts Festival that goes on in London, however for the sake of the project I made up the name, date and website. 

I began by scanning my drawing into Photoshop, where I had to adjust the levels so that the background was more white and there were no shadows and the design itself stood out a little more. I then opened the image in Illustrator and live traced it so that it got rid of the texture in the background and made the lines more uniform and fluid. I copied this new image back into Photoshop, and worked with it from there. The smaller designs I decided to add later because I felt that the poster was a little empty with just the design in the middle. I processed them the same way I did for the first design.

After deciding on a colour palette and filling in most of the free space within the design (I left some out to give it a 'do it yourself colouring book sort of feel', I chose a font that I thought fit the theme and added inner shadows to it. I also added a faint drop shadow to the main design. Lastly I added a gradient map to the entire image to give the project a more uniform blend of colours (and I just love how they look).

The overall process wasn't overly complicated for me, although it was definitely time consuming. My biggest issue came from the fact that after I was completely finished with the project, exported it and changed it to 100 dpi (I like working with 300) that I realized I had gotten the canvas size wrong. I had been working on an 8x11 image the entire time when it was supposed to be 8x10. I had to go back into Photoshop, resize and re-edit all my spacing, sizing and even skew the design a bit. I was afraid of losing quality so I had to take various steps to prevent it from degrading. In the end I think it turned out really well and I'm happy with the results. 

Contemporary Art, in my mind, is loud and bold and doesn't hide. I think I represented that well in my poster, and got the message across with well placed typography.