Event Graphics live today in London!

Quartz brought us on to design motion graphics to dress up the space for The Next Billion event today in London.

Live feed and pictures here.

We created animations based on the logo-mark for projection in the event space at One Marylebone including loops that played in the arches in the main hall, and that frame the presentation screen.

It was a pleasure working with the top-notch creatives at Quartz.

We’ll have more pictures of the event and perhaps some animations to show off shortly.

Photo by Gideon Litchfield.

Happy Holidays!

Wishing everyone Happy Holidays and all the best in 2015!

Photo (c) Declan Zimmermann

Madison Square Garden Holiday Card

Very excited to have had the pleasure of working on The Madison Square Garden Company’s Holiday Card, featuring greetings from the Knicks, the Rangers and the Radio City Rockettes, among others.

MSG’s video team did the shooting and editing, and we provided design and animation of graphics including a holiday card, flying ribbon and animated snowflake transitions and postcards bearing greetings from the many MSG venues.

Though we aren’t permitted to post it here, the video is playing on the big screen in The Garden throughout the 2014 holiday season. It is a personal thrill to me, having grown up in the NYC area, to have our work appearing in such an iconic (indeed the “World’s Most Famous”) arena!

Happy Holidays all!

Council on Foreign Relations: Model Diplomacy

This past year, we had the privilege of collaborating with Blue State Digital on a series of videos for the Council on Foreign Relations new Model Diplomacy program for students.

Of the many graphics we created, this is perhaps my favorite, the video “Tools of Diplomacy” in which CFR President Richard Haass explains that the tools of diplomacy are not solutions in themselves, but instruments used to shape outcomes.

We used the visual metaphor of a lightbulb illuminating a plan, and used After Effects with Plexus to create this animation.

End Client: Council on Foreign Relations
Producer and Creative Direction: Amelia Tovey, Blue State Digital
Art Direction, Design and Animation: Declan Zimmermann

Home for the Holidays Sweepstakes 30

Yes, it’s not yet Thanksgiving but the Holiday spots are on the air, and we made one of ’em.

Pureworks Studio’s Victoria Jordan hired us last month for a quick-turnaround, mograph-driven 30-second commercial for the Delta Airlines & Radio City Christmas Spectacular Sweepstakes.

We knocked this out in less than a week taking our inspiration from Vicky’s designs for the program and adding an airplane than makes snow.

Creative Direction: Victoria Jordan
Motion Design, Art Direction, Animation: Declan Zimmermann
Additional Animation: Haley Saner
Voice: Erin Setch
Software: After Effects with Element 3D and Trapcode Particular

Buttons: A 5-Second Project

Every couple months the folks over at Greyscale Gorilla do a little thing called The 5-Second Project.

The idea is simple: make a 5 second animation, explore some new techniques, interpret the theme literally, figuratively, loosely.

The current 5-Second Project’s theme is “Buttons” and here’s what we made.

The music was created in ButtonBass, which seemed theme-appropriate. Except for the sound effects, which are me dropping actual buttons on a plate.

You can check out the other entries here.