+
FITC 2021
This was a dream project. The FITC Toronto crew hit up Laundry's ECD PJ Richardson and Alex Liou about creating a design look and system as well as the title sequence for this year's FITC design conference. It was a special year because it was FITC's 20th anniversary. On top of that, an even more unique one because of the worldwide pandemic that has affected all of our lives in so many different ways.
-
The approach
The concept of the conference was 'Intersections'. The intersections of ideas, of technologies and most importantly, people and their ideas. But there was an added layer to us. Design conferences are about being students wether literally, or in spirit from a place of learning and opening minds creativity.
To us as makers, that meant approaching the look and feel as students in spirit mainly from the place of being experimental. Alex and PJ hand been throwing around 3d simulation ideas and inspirations for months. So the concept became about trying out these different experiments and finding a visual language from there. Everything from c4d design layouts, to houdini fluid simulations, basically anything our clients hadn't trusted us to try. Add in a little bit of color and design elements to glue it together, and an idea started to take form.
-
+
Poster art
To attempt to find the look, we first started with some poster art based on a few references the FITC team sent. We honed in on shapes, 3d glass, and unusual intersections of both. Rather quickly, a beautiful and energetic aesthetic and color palette started to take form.
Title design
Our first go at this was to try and create a narrative thread that became the journey of this story visually that paralleled the creative process. Simple at first, confusing and more complex, then ending in a moment of exciting visual clarity.
What we discovered was that it was a little too linear once we got into it. And we just found cooler things the more we experimented that we wanted to try.
+
Typography animations
Once we dialed in the sequence, another element that felt a little too standard were the titles themselves. With legends like Beeple, Gmunk and Joshua Davis with their names on this, we needed to go a little bigger. This is when Alex called on Cisco Torres, a typography and animation master to give this some extra unique thunder. He didn't disappoint.
What came of it, by design, was a glitchy pattern based approach to the type animations that was meant to be every bit of a contrast visually and energetically to the fluid and almost calming feeling of the overall visuals. Again a nice way to create a fresh take on intersections.
+
Animation experiments
Once we established a look, we did quickly discover it was a little too steady and calming. Plus, by design the whole concept was to experiment with some of the most challenging art and technical intersections we could think of. It brought us to Alex passion for houdini particle and fluid experiments that became the magic sauce for many of our more boring sections in the sequence.
+
Conclusion
We were delighted with the end result and so was the FITC team. Some key findings we learned were, that while a traditional storyboard, previs and refined animation workflow was a great place to start, being open to adding and changing from a place of experimentation, innovation, and simply making the overall visual more compelling really won out. We learned to get comfortable about breaking our own rules to make things cooler.
