Design processes vary according to designer and the demands of each project. Some processes are linear and predictable. Other processes are like detective work: Research, get clues, go down unknown paths to feel one’s way to the happy accident. The more technologies change, the more designers are required to do detective work as they design.
For the Acura ZDX site launches, I found myself doing exactly this.
The challenge: Provide photographic art direction for the vehicle and the 360 spin of the photographic backplates. The 360 spin served as the primary interactive experience of the Acura ZDX.
The backplates had to convey sophistication and design innovation in the ZDX. The vehicle is a hybrid: In form, it reflects the fluid, beautiful lines of nature. In performance, it bursts with the raw power of Acura engineering. To this end, I concepted a backplate scene that is exactly both: The beauty of nature and man in one panorama. The ZDX would sit on aloft on a hillside. In one direction is a glowing metropolis pulsing with human and machine life. In the other direction is a sunset-drenched view of the Pacific Ocean, nature at her most glorious.
For location scouting, I had a ball using Google Earth as a tool to get elevated views of Los Angeles. After that, I found photos with approximations of those views and stitched them together to create the landscape that would serve as a backdrop for the car in the 360 spin.
For the scene’s foreground, I channeled architect DNA — my dad is an architect — to sketch the landscaping of the immediate foreground of the scene, sure to show shrubbery, driveway flooring and lighting details. These files were passed on to our backplate photographer and 3d renderers for production.
Of course, there was also the process of shooting the backplates in freezing rain at Griffith Observatory during a particularly cold winter day when what we really had in mind was splendid sunshine. Unexpected things will come up, but you roll with it and that’s all part of the process too. In the end, the rain that day gave us dramatic skies that worked better than what we had imagined.
Champion a detective mindset when you sit down to a design problem. Often it will give you the best, and most unexpected, results.
I just launched a website featuring a brand video for Love This Planet, an eco-chic sustainable lifestyle brand with a product line that includes re-usable tote bags, glass bottles and jewelry. The inspiration for the video came from stop motion animation. With art direction and styling that recalls rock n’ roll bohemian chic, we took the production to Point Dume for a day of shooting — it couldn’t have been a more perfect California day! The site utilizes Flash 10 video encoding that allows for high-resolution streaming.
