Failures #2

Sione’s Wedding: Marc Smith

This was a lesson in briefing and sign off—hard learned.

Following a briefing from both the director and the producer, I was commissioned to produce animated titles for an upcoming NZ feature. Like any good graphic intro sequence—it was to not only represent the film’s credits and title in a legible manner, it was also to in some way convey themes or tones in keeping with the upcoming story. The brief included several references to the film’s urban- Auckland setting, and contemporary Samoan visual culture. It was to be colourful, youthful, and upbeat like the characters, and reflect the film’s comedy genre.

Following early draft options, and discussions with the director and producer, it was decided that a ‘graff-art’ inspired type solution was the best fit. Production started. The title plates were animated ‘spraying on’ over top of the cityscape, while a thumping hip-hop soundtrack by Dawn Raid provided further clues to the film’s cultural influences.

Following weeks of production, the final sequence was complete and approved by all involved.

That was until a new boss (the guy with the cheque book) was introduced at the last minute. So too was his aversion to what he described as ‘vandalism’. Despite efforts by those involved in the initial briefing, his position was unshakable. Graff-art gave way to BOLD SANS SERIF. Colour gave way to monotones. Movement gave way to static. Variety gave way to homogeneity. Flavour gave way to bland. As a designer intending to ‘value-add’ to the basic type requirement of readability, I failed.

Jet Jaguar: Tana Mitchell

This album cover was designed a few years back now, but I can still clearly remember the Radio Active DJ who cursed the design and the ‘illegibility’ of the footnotes live to air.

Of course he was right, I was aware of the challenge of reading it. In fact I willingly compromised legibility for the purity of the whole. I was under the spell of the absolute—I simply couldn’t introduce a second type style, I had hand-drawn the type, and there was to be no compromise. It was a case of all or nothing.

I was genuinely surprised that the DJ wasn’t willing to make the effort, the effort to engage... but he wasn’t the only one.

Propoganda Tea Towel Project: Nicola Farquhar

Oh dear what do I say about this? You know this story. I think it falls in the ‘abandonment’ category... Mostly it makes me realise how quickly the time has gone as I retrieved this from the 2005 archive. Ralph1 has even made a brand new person since then. It was a nice project to work on, it doesn’t seem to matter that there never was an outcome now :)