This week I wanted to cross into two foggy areas of illustration at the same time: typography and motion. There are many instances of incredible motion graphic work, which use type to dynamically illustrate a given idea. Often, these are wonderful examples of the many uses of Adobe After Effects, but not so here. This entire piece was created without any digital effects of any kind.
Created for the 5th annual Typophile Film Festival as part of the opening ceremony, this incredible work was created by BYU design students and faculty. View the full credits here. It was well recieved and has gained a lot of attention outside of its original screening from many design and typography publications.
The entire piece is meant to illustrate each of the five senses in dynamic and powerful ways. It utterly succeeds at this goal, with each section utilizing interesting materials and movement to create a visceral effect. They used a large variety of materials including, plexiglass, wood, aluminum, ham, squash, potatoes, jell-o, clay, and incense (around 150 cones).
Though some might lump this into a separate category like design, I can see the places where this piece overlaps disciplines. Each frame could easily be used as a spot illustration for an article on something related to the senses, and as a whole I have never seen a more dynamic representation of the given themes. In fact, because this piece utilizes the best of design principles, available technology, and particular attention to aesthetics, I think that this piece communicates to a greater extent than any drawn single illustration could accomplish.
The Font Feed has a wonderful write up about everything which went into this project, along with additional stills here.
This video was really engaging and I'm really glad that it was created without digital effects. I think this falls into a category of illustrating typography-the filmmakers have brought to life the words through illustrating their meaning.
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