Rebecca Ruhlman Designs Welcome to the drafting table of RARDesigns. A full-service media design firm.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been trying to get my magazine developer’s brain around Adobe After Effects. As the web becomes more and more of a video-based platform, publishing has been abandoning well-researched written presentations for quick video tid-bits. Since I has a face for radio, it is time to leave journalism to just the pretty people.
Anyway, I’ve found a lot of cool uses of after effects to bring Illustrative design elements to title sequences.
A new show, Human Target, does a great low-budget Broccoli bond style opening. It mixes illustration, watercolor and action shilloettes to produce a movie quality experience that gets you all ready for some spy action.
Of course, there is the now famous into to Madmen that harkens back to the highstyle anxiety of the 1960s.
Much of these illustrated title sequences owe them selves to the work of the great designer Saul Bass. His dramatic Designs defined the Hitchcock era. Taking a look at the complex tower/web he constructed for North by Northwest or the fractured into to Psycho, which had its 50th anniversay last month, I am astonished by how he can convey so much with such minimal effort.
Speaking of Psycho, the movie made a mis-en-scene appearance in another beautifully designed and directed film – A Single Man.
Fashion designer Tom Ford meticulously crafted this story about a gay man dealing with the disintigration of his life while living his invisible life in the early 1960′s. Everything, including color, is lovingly understated to accentuate the nuanced acting of Colin Firth. So, many of these shows looking back at the hidden societys of the age seem to over dramatize of oversentimentalize the era. A Single Man doesn’t. It walks a finely hemmed line delivering a compelling story – not treacly oscar bait like Sandra Bollock in Blind Side.
Summary, spend some of that Pandoran blue people money and see this one too.
Designer Glasses by Tom Ford
Btw, Tom Ford also has an awesome line of eyewear that I think will be on my prescription list at my next exam.
Goodnight America!
Tags: a single man, after effects, Colin Firth, illustration, mad men, movies, oscar, saul bass, title sequences
