Creative design and production studio Brand New School (BNS, www.BrandNewSchool.com) is very proud to announce their role in designing and producing numerous elements debuting this evening at The 2010 AICP Show, The Art & Technique of the American Commercial, and the 2010 Next Awards, a featured presentation of the AICP Show which took place earlier today. The annual program, hosted by the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), premieres each year at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), before traveling on to high-profile venues in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, Boston, Miami, and Richmond over the weeks to come.
2010 AICP Show Sponsor Reel Sequence from Brand New School on Vimeo.
Original works created by BNS for 2010 include the Sponsor Reel Sequence for the AICP Show itself, and for the Next Awards, which honor and examine the best in marketing communications across all channels featuring moving image media, the visual identity system, presentation graphics, and (together with McCann Systems) a dynamic video installation. During this morning’s Next Awards program, BNS earned top honors in the Experiential category for their innovative project for Wieden+Kennedy promoting Monday Night Football on ESPN. Notably, one of several Jack Daniel’s commercials directed by BNS for Arnold Worldwide in Boston is shortlisted in both the Graphic Design and Animation categories of tonight’s AICP Show.
2009 ESPN Monday Night Football Interactive Storefronts from Brand New School on Vimeo.
“The Next Awards showcase the thought leadership of some of our industry’s best and brightest, and this evening’s program will offer opportunities for all Show attendees to experience the Next winners in an environment that highlights their cutting edge creativity,” said Matt Miller, AICP President and CEO. “We’re very grateful to the artists at Brand New School for their artistic contributions spanning design, filmmaking, presentation and technological excellence, which have added immense value to the Next Awards, and to this year’s Show. We also congratulate them for earning top Experiential honors in the Next Awards, and for having their commercial work shortlisted in the Show. Collaborating with them has been an amazing experience.”
The team from BNS was led on all fronts by art/design director Eric Adolfsen. Beginning with an open brief for the AICP Show Sponsor Reel, Adolfsen and his colleagues chose to artfully treat New York City as the canvas for the AICP Show’s sponsor logos through an old-school, stop-motion animation approach. Embracing the studio’s passions for animation, photography and filmmaking, the team first created logo animations and printed those frames on individual, brightly colored pieces of paper. Then, armed with a Canon 5D, tape, and a small fleet of bicycles for transportation, they spent 5 days traveling multiple boroughs capturing the footage. “For each company’s mark, we devised animations and then scoured neighborhoods in search of locations for them that would all work together,” said Adolfsen. “We tried never to repeat ourselves, each time trying to raise the bar. It was like a big game, played on the walls and streets of the city.” Citing the wind as the biggest production challenge, Adolfsen and his fellow artists used Final Cut Pro for editorial, Adobe After Effects for stabilizing the footage, and Autodesk Flame for final color and finishing. Music and mix credits for the Sponsor Reel go to the incredible talents at Stimmung.
Additionally, BNS embraced the multifaceted AICP Next support efforts with utter enthusiasm. "We are all big fans of AICP Next," added BNS managing director Danny Rosenbloom, who also chairs the Labor Committee for the new AICP Digital Chapter. "Given that Next is the benchmark for innovation in our industry, creating its identity, and translating that across all the different media channels, really brought out our best."
According to BNS founder and creative director Jonathan Notaro, the new AICP Next mark is abstractly based on the current AICP logo, which is contained within a square. “For Next,” he said, “we wanted to create letters from the existing shape, that read as marks and not just characters. Because everything tends to move at some point or another, we considered animation cues in tandem with the logo design. What you have is a series of characters based on folds in the square of the AICP logo. We then couldn’t help but instill some systematic thinking by outlining a brief style guide for the event and future usages. We now have a suitable framework for all the best design and direction to live in.”
The Next design elements showcased in print, as well as in the event’s display and on-screen presentation graphics featured throughout the Next Awards program, were designed by BNS’s Forest Young, and were created using Adobe Creative Suite, Final Cut Pro and Adobe After Effects.
Also attracting a great deal of attention is the dynamic installation BNS designed and produced with McCann Systems, which tonight will light up MoMA’s heart — the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden — with a one-of-a-kind showcase for the winners of the Next Awards. The installation, finished in HD in After Effects, leverages the award-winning Christie(R) MicroTiles(TM) from Christie Digital Systems USA.
About Brand New School
With offices in New York and Los Angeles, Brand New School is a bicoastal directing collective working in all fields of commercial art. Ever evolving, the studio continues to cultivate a sense of wonder and exploration. For its artists and clients alike, BNS represents an opportunity to play at work, to conduct experiments in image-making, and to feed the inspiration that drives the industry. For more information, please visit www.BrandNewSchool.com.
