The Project: adidas "Predator Vs. F50" webfilm
The Team: Nexus Productions, London - Simon Robson, director; 180 Amsterdam
The Deal: As part of its 2007 global football campaign, in which two "teams" featuring football's biggest stars represent Adidas' two football boots (the Predator and the F50 TUNIT), 180 Amsterdam called upon Nexus Productions director Simon Robson to helm a breathtaking animated film spotlighting each team. "We had a fair bit defined ourselves in terms of the different 'club' visual identities, logos, colors, etc.," says 180 ECD Andy Fackrell. "But he pushed us harder to give the piece its energy." Robson sought to create a visual representation of each team's set of values that, while different, could easily transition into each other. The F50 team, "all about skill, flamboyancy and individuality", was interpreted with slightly airy light green backgrounds and flowing key lines, while the Predator team, dealing in "team strength and coordination" was cast in reds, blacks, and hard, right angle shapes and graphics. Robson says his team took cues from Constructivist master Victor Vasarely for Predator and contemporary design duo We Work For Them for F50's fluidity.
www.180amsterdam.com
www.nexusproductions.com

The Project: NBC rebrand
The Team: Capacity, Culver City, CA.; NBC Magic Room, Burbank, CA
The Deal: Winning the pitch to rebrand NBC for its new season, the network's internal design department, the NBC Magic Room, set out to reposition NBC for the digital age. In an effort to, as CD Kendall Bowlin puts it, "bring an interactive feel on air", the concept of turning one of the famed NBC peacock's feathers into a mouse pointer clicked. "We used the feather as a cursor that would lead you all the way through [the work], and then at the end it docks at NBC.com," explains Brad Gensurowksy, VP, on air graphics. The NBC team then brought on Capacity to add its own design flair to the deliverables, including promos, bumpers, and other on-air branded elements. Capacity opted for a 2.5D approach - tweaking program stills and placing them in 3D space. "We didn't want them to feel there was any limitation to what they could control internally and what we were doing externally," says Capacity CD Ellerey Gave. "We wanted them to feel like it was as much theirs as it was ours."
www.capacity.tv

The Project: Reelz Channel branding package
The Team: Trollbäck + Company, New York
The Deal: Having worked on plenty of TV rebrands, creative studio Trollbäck + Company was offered a new challenge in branding film/entertainment channel Reelz. "In the past, all the other networks we'd worked with already existed so we could adjust things with that knowledge," says founder/CD Jakob Trollbäck. "This time, not only did we not know the vibe of the network, they didn't know." Over six months, a core team of between three to five designer/animators nailed down the visual aesthetic - and in some cases, the titles of the shows themselves - for the channel. Deriving what Trollbäck calls a "bold, graphic language" from film-based imagery such as the MPAA rating card or the Dolby logo, the team designed "modern, iconic" logotypes for the channel and its programs, evoking classic movie poster design and the work of at least one legendary film title designer for one of the three show packages. "With Leonard Maltin's show The Secret's Out, Saul Bass' name did come up as a bit of a reference," says art director Todd Neale. "But we still needed it to feel contemporary so we gave it a more modern feel with the fonts and the ways we animated."
www.trollback.com

The Project: TV Land channel IDs
The Team: Buck, New York and Los Angeles
The Deal: According to Buck CD Orion Tait, TV Land's latest IDs reflected the channel's research into its target demographic, the 40-somethings. "This is a generation for whom fun and whimsy, having a good time, is really important," says Tait. "These are people who grew up in the '70s." Thus, Buck's teams in New York and LA drew inspiration from sources as disparate as Milton Glazer and Jello Pudding Pops, marrying nostalgic imagery with fresh execution. Early iterations involving specific bands or entertainment figures of the era were vetoed - "They felt that they didn't want to represent anything specific; they wanted to be broader," says Buck CD Ryan Honey. Buck arrived at what Orion calls "a surreal slant", with some IDs ("Footwear", "Hairstyles", "The Hand") opting for psychedelic, morphing displays of iconic imagery, and with others ("TeeVee Land") utilizing every '70s-styled design trick up Buck's sleeves. "It was nice to have an opportunity where conceptually it made sense to directly reference some stuff that we really love and was part of our childhood as well," says Tait.
www.buckla.com

The Project: Madvillain "Monkey Suite"
The Team: Version 2, New York (design, editing, effects, post); Daniel Garcia, director
The Deal: Super-Fi director/CD Daniel Garcia and Version 2 designer/animator Federico Saenz-Recio had worked together on a previous project, and when Garcia was envisioning a "dark and moody 3D narrative" for his upcoming video for hip-hop heads Madvillain (MF Doom and Madlib), he knew Saenz-Recio could deliver. After Garcia presented Version 2 with a script, Saenz-Recio commenced Photoshopping storyboards, replete with worker droids shuffling through a smoky, murky sepia-tone world and MF Doom cast as a hulking masked observer of the monotony. "[Terry Gilliam's] Brazil was one of my inspirations," says Saenz-Reico of the piece's oppressively dark tone, which calls to mind both Depression-era footage and a post-apocalyptic nightmare. The boards were then taken to V2's 3D team, who brought them to life with Cinema 4D and Maya. An early plan to include live-action footage was vetoed by the client, making the timetable all the more tight. "[We had] about a month and a half to two months, which is very ambitious for what we were putting together," says V2 production head Lydia Holness.
www.version2.net

The Project: Real Life Divas show open for BET J
The Team: Newspeak, New York
The Deal: Commissioned to do fashion opens for three new shows (Real Life Divas, The Turn On and The J List) on BET's adult-oriented offshoot BET J, new design studio Newspeak went for suitably classy, mildly retro looks for each. For Real Life Divas, in order to mirror the show's concept that any woman can achieve diva-hood, Newspeak utilized an organic, illustrative approach. "They were looking for something to push the idea that a diva can be someone other than a singer or a star," says CD/founder Erik Montovano. "[These women] are at board meetings or with their families, but they're also in the spotlight too." The only other directive from BET J was to stick to its color palette - "pinks, purples and blues, with everything toned off of dark black most of the time, providing the contrast in color." A mix of computer-generated imagery, high-contrast photographs and hand-drawn illustration gives the open a unique textural feel. "A lot of the illustrations aren't super-rendered - they feel kind of rough," says Montovano, remarking on the project's "watercolor/ paper texture contrasted with pencil work and hard blacks".
www.newspeak.tv