Seeking to fill what it perceives as a void in the Midwest market, Bellevue, Wash.-headquartered broadcast design and production boutique Digital Kitchen (DK) is preparing to launch a Chicago office. The shop, slated to open for business in January, will be located in the River North area. President/executive producer Don McNeill heads the new DK branch, having come over after three years as senior partner/executive producer at Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago. Plans call for the shop to be staffed with designers, design editors, Flame artists, producers and engineers. At press time, DK was finalizing agreements with several soon-to-be-announced hires.
Since its inception in 1995, DK has offered broadcast design and production, including digital compositing, titling, graphics, live-action, and visual effects, as well as nonlinear audio and video editing. About 85 percent of its work is commercial driven, with 35 percent coming from Chicago, according to Washington-based DK founder/CEO/ CCO Paul Matthaeus.
Speaking from a business perspective, Matthaeus contended that Chicago lacks a company specializing in classical design and motion graphics. "It’s a big market," he said. "There’s a lot of terrific business there, and it seems there’s a real need for a company like ours."
"Plenty of places around the country do [what DK does] very well, mostly in New York and Los Angeles," added McNeill. "Design has become an important ingredient and a significant line item in every budget … people are starved [for that] in the Chicago market. Agencies see the value and the dividends that result from coming to a company like DK, but there is nowhere to go for that solution in Chicago. There are plenty of places to go if you’ve picked your type font and want traditional cookie-cutter graphics on your commercials."
McNeill commented that while working with an out-of-town design firm early on in the production process is a simple matter, it is a significant help to have in-person contact with artists when dealing with fine-tuning and minutiae in the later stages of a design project.
Among DK’s recent commercial credits is a spot for Artists Against Piracy, a group of recording artists opposed to musical piracy. Created by Los Angeles-based Dailey & Associates, the :30 spot "Circle C," which has recently aired on MTV, aims to create public awareness of Internet sites like Napster where music can be downloaded without authorization.
"Circle C" features typography of a series of words—"practice," "dedication," "sacrifice," "creation," "music" and ultimately "respect"–in each word, the letter "c" is circled. Accompanying the guitar-driven musical track performed by Beck guitarist Lyle Workman is a visual treatment that makes animated lines appear to be vibrating in synch with the music.
The project aptly reflects DK’s working philosophy, says Matthaeus. "The idea here was to have the spot be a metaphor for the creative process and, in so doing, establish an element of empathy between the public and artists that spend their time and energy creating this music. That really drove how we approached it."
"It isn’t just about the design, or just the effects, but the way they’re served up—how they relate to the music and the sound effects. We like to explore a lot, to get stuff up onscreen quickly and see what the general feel is onscreen. Then we go back and adjust and adjust until we’re hitting the right emotional note."
The DK culture will be carried over to the Chicago office, which will feature a central "moshpit" for designers, who will be surrounded by Flame artists and editors. McNeill said that his team will have all of the high-tech gadgets, but emphasized that, more importantly, they will be making a big investment in talent. "The people that will work at DK," he observed, "will have a clear point of view as to why the type should be the way it is and why the messages should look the way they do."
Among DK’s other commercial projects are spots for Nokia, Home Depot, Advil, Ford, Sears and Sony. Recent credits also include designing and producing graphics for the opening titles and several other sequences in Columbia Pictures’ sci-fi feature film The 6th Day, which stars Arnold Schwarzenegger.
DK is repped for spotwork in the Midwest by Chicago-based Tracy Bernard & Associates, on the East Coast by New York-based Single Bid, and on the West Coast by Los Angeles-based Toni Saarinen. Louise Krakhower, also in Los Angeles, will market DK for TV, film and entertainment-related projects.
