What's he Building in There?

Lambie Nairn

Lambie Nairn have been since the late 1970's, originally starting out as a design agency. Highlights of their early career include the D&AD black pencil winning Channel 4 identity (1982), and much of the BBC's successful idents in the 1990's including the classic BBC3 "THREE" characters, CBBC, CBeebies, BBC2, the transformation of mobile phone business Cellnet into the now uber-successful 02 and many more.

During their lifetime they have grown into a big branding agency, and much of their production work is handled by production houses such as Studio aka, and are now a part of the global marketing giant wpp

Last Years Professional Studies file

During my 1st year at NWSAD i extensively researched my chosen area of study. This was time-intensive (and continues to be), therefore I am making a concentrated effort to cut back on this and prefer to spend my limited and very precious time learning by doing.


IF you wish to read my blog from last year it here - replete with interviews and professional practice stuff.

422 TV (Manchester)

422 are based in Manchester and one place I'd really like to work. In their own words:

422 is a creative hotshop on the post-production scene. Big enough to offer the full spectrum of cutting-edge techniques, small enough to still be fun, it's becoming increasingly sought out by high-profile clients in the commercials and broadcast industry.

422 are specialists in visual effects, motion graphics, animation and sound design, we provide everything you'd expect from a leading post-production company. And because we're also a medium-sized independent, we're able to work together as a close-knit team and give all our clients the individual attention they deserve.

This creative collaboration with each other as well as with clients is what our growing reputation stands on. Every member of our team has skills they excel in, and a constant enthusiastic exchanging of new ideas means that clients often come away with results above and beyond their expectations. The happy atmosphere, comfortable surroundings and great hospitality don't go amiss either.

I saw 422's Glastonbury trailer on the TV last year (for BBC Music), and was very keen find out who did it. The really great news is they are relatively close to home, in Manchester. I also spent a week working with one of their former staff whilst I was at BDA Sydney, who said they were a great firm. I am deadly keen to get a work placement with 422 ASAP.

View the 422 Portfolio

Skins Opening Credits

I have been a big fan of these opening credits for Channel 4's "Skins" program for some time. They begin with a psychedelic montage (quite kaleidoscopic) before chopping into various small snippets from the entire series. These snippets are constantly changing, heavily treated with various effects, mattes made from spliff-smoke, all blended together and also synced perfectly to the theme tune. The sum of these parts is its strength.

The whole piece is only 28 seconds long, and I am particularly keen on the masking they use, which eventually reveals the type logo 'skins' towards the end, and am keen to learn many of these techniques asap. I am loosely referring to this for my Observer Brief.

I am also keen to know who did them. I have looked, but haven't sussed it yet.

Brian Gossett

I have pretty much decided that the next 12 months needs to be mainly about learning how to design and illustrate. At the moment these skills are a million miles from where I'd like them to be, and the only way to get work is to get good.

I am not so concerned about the motion until my artwork improves, as there isn't much point if it looks shit. I think it is important to get some ideas together then just work out the techniques needed to make it happen. I can only imagine this is in itself more then enough to fill the next 12 months.

This Guy is awesome - and his site shows his pitch boards and also some of the pieces that were animated later by other people.

Trollback and Co

Trollback and Co is a NYC based creative studio producing expressive and purposeful graphics, design and live action for advertising, broadcast and entertainment.

Led by creative directors Jakob Trollback and Joe Wright, the collaborative group of

designers and writers launches and rebrands TV networks, creates motion graphics , live action, print, environmental design, and film titles. T&Co's trademark approach relies on unorthodox thinking and immersive storytelling, and the belief that a compelling and focused message is essential for any communication to be successful.

There's some finely tuned blah blah from the Trollback site, which has loads of examples of thier great work. What really interests me about Trollback & Co is their fresh style compared to many of their American counterparts. This is party due to the NYC based office being primarily staffed by Europeans and Trollback's roots in Sweden. The other thing that really excites me is

There's a great interview here with Jakob Trollback on Apple's site (although as expected it is full of plugs for Apple).

















Learning to work with moving images was initially a challenge, Trollbäck admits. “But then I started to realize that it’s all about rhythm — it’s a choreography of images through time. Suddenly it all came together with my lifelong love for music, and I became fascinated by working in motion.”

Music and motion have a lot in common, he notes: “When people ask me how to become a great motion designer or filmmaker, I always say, ‘Be a DJ for a while.’ It’s very much about communication. Whenever you put on the next record, you’re thinking, ‘Are they with me or not?’ It’s been very helpful when it comes to working with motion, which is essentially storytelling.”

This is of course music to my ears! I have so far been trying to not do much synchronisation to music, as I need to be able to design to some point, but I hope that once I get stuck into the after effects stuff and music synchronisation, it'll be easier and a lot of fun.

More Work Placements

Since my visit to Sydney in the summer I have kept in touch with the company and some of the designers there such as Jason French and my old school friend Andy Olley. The advice these guys gave me helped me work out which pathway to take, what things to prioritise, and even which order to learn them in.

This means learning a lot of basic, flat 2d design skills and techniques, developing higb quality story-boards in Photoshop and Illustrator, idea generation and logos (pretty much doing all the design work). These are all things I feel are fairly universal, transferable skills that should supply a great basis for any future design speciality.

I hope to also start looking at the motion graphics (After Effects) side of things too, with a view to revisting any storyboards created during the academic year and producing them for a portfolio/showreel in future. To help usher this progress I have asked BDA's London office if they would help me out and give me another work placement in early 2008. I am awaiting confirmation and a date, and hopefully this will happen. I am hoping that now having a clear direction to work towards, I should be able to see a big improvment since the August 2007 placement.

In addition to this I would also very much like to do more placements elsewhere during the summer in 2008, and have emailed a few companies that look suitable in Manchester, such as 422.tv. Unfortunately because I don't know anyone there, I have ahd no replies or even any idea if they looked at the emails (they may have even been filtered out by a junk mail filter). I know that I should call them, but I don't really have a portfiolio yet! In addition to companies that specialise in bradcast design, I am keen to try other design places, especially ones who work on brand identities.

I need to create some good looking work as soon as possible, so I can get more experience and open more doors. This is top priority for this year.

ARDF 214 - Career Development - Work Placement

During the summer of 2007 I set up my own work placement at BDA Sydney (Formerly known as Bruce Dunlop Sydney). BDA are a broadcast design group with offices in London, Sydney, Dubai, Singapore and Munich. I wasn’t sure exactly what I would be doing, but decided that if I simply made cups of tea and hung out I’d still benefit.

BDA covers idents, interstitials, branding, identity (conceptual/creation/production), title sequences, general graphic work used in-between and with TV programming and post-production primarily for broadcast networks across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, India and Australia and New Zealand. The Sydney office is less than a quarter of the size of their London office, and the company consists of a Business Director Jill Munt, Creative Director Jens Hertzum (on vacation whilst I was there), several designers, a couple of compositors/editors, a couple of office/production manager and staff and an IT specialist. The staff were from all over the world, with only 2 Australians there, amongst 5 British, 2 German interns, a Bulgarian designer etc (Sydney is multicultural!).

Whilst I was there, the company were working on a number of projects, some of which had been underway for some time and of which I had limited knowledge of (a huge project for Indian TV which was taking place on the other side of the floor I was working on), as well as a new identity and graphics for Channel 7’s breakfast news program ‘Sunrise’ (similar to BBC Breakfast), and they were just starting on re-branding Sky TV’s main channels for New Zealand (amongst other jobs being juggled).

I was ‘apprenticed’ mainly to designers Jason French and Will Skinner (two British guys), and was brought in on the New Zealand Sky job. The main channel was going to be split into different demographics, so they would be doing a male orientated channel and a female one, for the age groups of 18-30. This job was unusual as there was no real brief, just a copy of an email between the creative director Jens and the Sky TV guy (these had worked together many times before). Another unusual aspect was that they hadn’t yet decided on a name; several were mooted both by Sky and Jens. Sky’s choices were a ‘bit naff’ (the box, XS, unleashed etc), and Jens’ names were better – Dog (man’s best friend etc) or Dog TV, and Chief.

My week at BDA from here was spent almost entirely on research and logo design to explore these concepts further. The name issue wasn’t easily rectified, so many option were tried, with all the designers spending a day or two having a go at a name each (this isn’t something that always happens as it is more work than is the norm, but this client puts a lot of work their way so they needed to show them some ‘love’). The entire team of designers worked on simple black and white shapes in Illustrator, as this is the process (these things need to work in black and white as a basis, then later worked into colour, 3d, put into motion etc). The idea was that by thinking visually and exploring the graphic possibilities of each name and presenting the best ones to Sky, it might help them decide on a the name and the project can move forward, and get made and paid for.

I learned that all the designers there had done graphic design degrees, and many had worked in print prior to learning After Effects. A motion graphics designer (or ‘broadcast designer’) generally needs to be a great graphic designer as a base skill, then also be able to work in After Effects from there. It is normal for these guys to start form nothing, maybe a simple 2 sheet brief and be able to work from concept, to initial design, make the logo, then design a load of other stuff from colours, type, formatting, screen layout to the array of motion pieces needed for a particular job (the ‘Sunrise’ job required about 50 separate movies to be created for the various backdrops, interstitials, idents etc). It is also common for the designers to be required to provide print versions of these things, which can be made onto huge posters or huge physical images to be used at presentations, installations, conferences, launch parties etc. It would be fair to say that by only being there for 5 days, I was only able to witness a few aspects of what they do, but much of the After Effects stuff is beyond my current understanding, so it was probably no bad thing.

To conclude here, I felt that this work placement was extremely valuable to me, and answered many of the questions and doubts I had over the past few months. I saw what goes on in the basic field I want to go in, and this has in turn helped me work out what’s important, and where I need to be in 12 months time. I plan to do another work placement next summer, for as long as possible, as I feel without this, my development will be too slow, and possibly misdirected.

The course I have been on (Digital Media), whilst good, covers (too) many aspects. Whilst it has been good that I have been able to get a small taste of all these, I don’t think it’s possible to do loads of separate specialities. I have many friends in the design business and these along with the designers I befriended at BDA Sydney, they all said whilst it is good to have more skills, it isn’t possible to do everything well: what I mean here is that for example, a broadcast designer will have to be a very good designer/illustrator/image maker, then also have to know something like After Effects (which is a huge and very ‘deep’ program). It would also be desirable to know 3d. Other areas of speciality could be 3d (BDA Sydney had a 3d guy who did solely 3d all day every day), editing (Final Cut or Avid). Other specialties (not related to this placement, but related to my college course) from this point could be web design and development, Flash Designer, film, illustration etc. Most of these would require more then one skill, and to be any good and worth something to a future employer, you would need to be good at your thing. A specialist.

My plan next year is this: to work as hard as I can on graphic design, and make a start on After Effects. The plan is to get my design skills up to scratch, get very good and very fast on Photoshop and Illustrator, work on concepts and storyboards (These were a big thing at BDA – a job might be worked up as roughs on paper, but the storyboards were often required to win pitches. The storyboards were then developed on Photoshop and Illustrator showing what are basically stills from the final job, keyframes, with the design, colour, everything that will be in the final piece all done to the highest standard. When these are given the green light, the production work is done from there. (in many ways 75% of the work is now done). Whilst I am working on this, I will be looking at as many tutorials and Lynda.com movies on After Effects, to try and get my head around the concepts and what can be done in this package. Many of the components of After Effects are in PS and AI, such as transparency, masking, effects and filters, so these need to be learned. I hope to get a working knowledge of AE by the end of the 2007/8 college year. Jason French at BDA recommended I take a 1 week intensive AE training course to really get to grips with the program. (These cost a few hundred pounds, and are only any good if you already know the basics. They are usually a group of 8-10 students of a similar standard, all spending intense 9 hour days going through everything – then Jason said in the evenings you have to make yourself practice all the things you learned that day to make sure you understood). The idea behind this is after this 1 week course, you should be able to basically do it, and you can start doing little jobs, working on little freelance things, and start building a motion portfolio.

If I can achieve this, plus do a work placement for longer next summer (at least 4 weeks is desirable) – this means that in my 3rd year, my BA year, I will know what I am doing a bit more, and can work towards getting a good grade and portfolio and be ready to get a real job in Summer 2009 (I will be 38 years old then, so it’s about time!). This for me has to happen, as I am currently juggling DJ work with studies, and I NEED to get a regular job and move forward. I need to be home at weekends, and be a proper Dad!

NB - I made a good impression with BDA, and was offered a return placement if I was ever around Sydney again, and I reckon I could get a placement sorted their London office in future.