The brief set by Elastic Creative ‘Me, Myself & I’ required me as young designer and soon to be new graduate, to delve into my own personality in order to then express that in my new brand identity and animation piece.
I found this brief very enjoyable and a great learning experience, which helped me expand my knowledge in motion graphics. Being able to consider my own hobbies, interests and influences for a project makes the whole process feel very effortless.
For this project I began by looking at the main influences in my design work which is music and film.
From those lines of work, two influential and iconic figures for me are the legend Elvis Presley and Quentin Tarantino from the film industry ,they have both had a major influence in my creative style in my career. I firstly began by considering what my narrative would be and came to the conclusion I wanted my brand story to be about taking a ‘journey’. This journey not only representing my own personal journey, but also as a designer, and the journey I can take my clients on during projects.
My logo was the first key to establishing a solid platform to build my brand.
Taking my initials and interlinking that with my brand narrative, as well as my musical and film influences, I arrived at a simple but tasteful logo formed by a continuous single line. It incorporated a clever nod to a musical note and a pathway.
Happy with my logo, I moved on to my 30-second animation piece. To further my message of a journey I felt having a hand drawn motion piece would reflect that more naturally.
My piece was narrated by the philosophical Alan Watts. He can be heard using the analogy of music to talk about the journey being more important than necessarily where you end up. I used this narrative as the base for creating my animation, bringing in the references to Elvis and Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction to display my influences. I also kept the whole animation in black and white which I felt created a strong atmospheric feel which may have been lost if I had used colour.
Reflecting back, I’m very happy with the final results and what I’ve accomplished in this brief. The few sleepless nights that I had to get all my hand drawn frames finished in time were completely worth it.
The simplicity of both the logo and motion piece really comes together to echo my message and create a striking partnership. I am happy with the pop culture references that I used within the animation, which portrayed my personality. Reflecting on the project, I would have liked to have added more of a similar nature to bring the animation more to life.
Other than that I really was delighted with my end product and the knowledge I have gained from this brief given to me and my classmates by Elastic.
