Massimo Vignelli: Short Video

Communication Studio II

Overview

After creating the poster, booklet, and mobile experience, I will be creating a 1-minute video about Massimo Vignelli. Considering time, motion, and sound, I hope to create an engaging animation that gives a quick insight into who Massimo Vignelli was. Using Massimo’s voice as the “spine” of my video, I hope to capture the essence of his life and philosophy and intrigue viewers so that they want to learn more about him.

Writing the Script & Making the Audio

April 6, 2021

I began by gathering videos of Massimo’s interviews. Two of the interviews that I found very interesting were from the documentary Helvetica by Gary Hustwit and the interview done by Big Think.

In the first video, Massimo talked about the responsibility of a designer and his view on typography. In the second interview, Massimo answered questions regarding his career and design decisions. From that video, I was most drawn to the sections where Massimo shared his view on greed, mass production, trends, and fashion. These excerpts from the two interviews could be effective for a 1-min introduction video as they both touch upon interesting topics regarding design that everyone can understand. They also give insights into the mind of Massimo rather than summarizing his life, which might seem too shallow.

The process of scripting involved going back and forth between listening and writing, crossing outlines, and inserting new ones before coming to the storyline that has a captivating introduction, an informative and intriguing middle, and a satisfying ending.

After having somewhat of a direction for the script, I then started editing the interveiws in different combining different sections to see what works best. I created 4 version of the audio in iMovie.

All of them were too long––roughly around 2 minutes––so I had to cut it down.

Here is the transcript of the audio after editing:

Life of a designer is a life of fight, fight against the ugliness. Just like doctor fight against disease. For us visual disease is what we have around and what we try to do is to cure it somehow with design. Good typographer always had sensitivity about the distances between letters. Within typography is black and white. Typography is really white. You know its not even black. It is the spaces between the blacks that really make it. In a sense it’s like music. It’s not the notes. It’s the spaces between the notes that make the music. There are people who think type should be expressive. They have a different point of view from my end. I don’t think type should be expressive at all. I mean Ican write the word dog with any typeface and it doesn’t have to look like a dog. But there are people when they write dog it should bark.

Choosing Music

After having the interview edited, I then moved on to choosing the music that would accompany the script. I wanted a song that is energetic yet wouldn’t overpower what Massimo is saying. I also wanted something that feels a bit light-hearted since the interviews were very casual and candid.

Here were the 3 music options I found:

1. “Grievance Day”:
   https://composerly.com/bromeliadmusic?t=1016871235
2. “Summer Melt”:
   https://composerly.com/bromeliadmusic?t=907056646
3. “Winkel Triple”:
   https://composerly.com/bromeliadmusic?t=999189973

After testing out the different soundtracks with the interview, I decided to go with “Summer Melt.” The tone of the song is energetic but not too playful, which suited the overall feel of the video.

Storyboarding

April 13, 2021

With the audio in place, I started thinking about the visuals of the video through storyboarding.

For this first storyboard I drew, I wanted to take a hand-drawn animation approach. Opening with a scene of a designer drawing at a table, I then would move to the “fight against the ugliness” scene with the pencil morphing into a sword. Reflecting on the storyboard after finishing, I realized that the process would require a lot of frame-by-frame drawings and is very involved. I wasn’t sure if I would be able to finish this on time.

Before finalizing this idea, I came across one of these videos and the other was suggested by Brett.

I really enjoyed the manipulation of still images in the first one. The smooth movements of objects in and out of frames were also intriguing and inspiring.

For the second video, the use of kinetic type is very effective in capturing my attention. Although most compositions in the video are pretty simple, the transition between each frame was logical but also felt magical at the same time.

From these two videos, I realized I could do something similar with still images and kinetic type. This might be more appropriate for Massimo’s work as most of his work was based on images and type. Realizing this, I created a new storyboard with the new direction in mind.

Animating Scene 1

March 15, 2021

Following the storyboard I drew, I created some frames in Illustrator before transferring them to After Effects. In scene 1, Massimo talked about “the life of a designer. ” I wanted to illustrate this with pictures of Massimo throughout his life. I also wanted to use spot colors from the MTA map to make the scene more engaging.

In After Effects, I mainly used the camera tool, allowing for the pictures to move in one-point perspective, simulating the experience of going through time, seeing Massimo at the different stages of life.

Animating Scene 1 Part 2

March 20, 2021

At this point in the process, my main goal was to complete the video, having all the elements in as quickly as possible before starting the refinement process. With this in mind, I began working on the second part of the first scene. Taking a similar approach, I began making video elements in Photoshop and Illustrator before moving them into After Effects.

For the part “fight against the ugliness,” I had trouble coming up with a visual representation since a lot of the time “ugly” is often subjective. I also had a part later in the video where I show badly kerned type or uncommunicative visual hierarchy as the representation of what Massimo referred to as “visual disease.” I decided to represent this with something that is universally accepted as ugly: monsters and demons. I also thought that this would complement the playfulness of the video in an appropriate way.

During this process, I also got some advice from Danny Cho on how to use the graph editor to create smooth camera or object movements. Essentially, I would want to transition at the peak of the graphs. This would allow for a fast, almost-snap-like movement that goes well with the melody in the background music. He also showed me how to organize components through the use of pre-compositions, which are really helpful when you have more than 50 assets within a composition.

Here is the second iteration:

Before the next class, I met with Jaclyn and Hannah to show them my progress.

Feedback

1. Not sure if the creatures make sense for this part when Massimo was probably referring to design.
2. Too much going for the “visual disease” part. Not sure what is going on. Could also be the pace. Maybe too fast.
3. For visual disease, consider using real images to keep it consistent with the rest of the video.
4. Maybe use Helvetica instead of Bodoni for the “Fight Against the Ugliness” part since Helvetica is more neutral and Bodoni is often associated with beauty.
5. The order of texts is confusing. “The” shouldn’t be below “Ugliness.”
6. Having the lines come in in the background seems a bit random. Not consistent with the rest of the video.

Animating Scene 2

Moving on to the “typography,” I followed the same process of creating still frames first then moving into After Effects. For this scene, I wanted to keep the composition simple and really highlight what Massimo talked about with motion. This was also reflective of his design style, which was often straightforward and clear.

In After Effects, unlike the previous scene, this scene required the use of switching back and forth between a 2D composition with a 3D composition. Although working with 3D objects was pretty new to me, I was satisfied with the effects I was able to achieve.

Feedback

1. The transition from subway map to “typographer” can be adjusted so it looks smooth.
2. When Massimo says, “really white,” have lines disappear and just show the white background.
3. The word “fight” can come in earlier in the first scene since when Massimo said it, it was not too clear.

Animating Scene 3

March 27, 2021

For this next scene about expressive type, I drew inspiration from David Carson’s work. In Massimo’s mind, Carson’s work is an example of type becoming more like an art piece rather than a communicative designed visual. Therefore, it was appropriate to create something in a similar style.

In terms of animation, this scene was pretty straightforward, dealing mostly with changing source text according to the beat of the song.

At this point, as I was almost done with the video, I also started refining certain parts of the video, mainly the “visual disease” section. I upload real pictures and tweaked the movement of Massimo’s work.

Finishing the Video and Refining

April 4, 2021

Having almost finished the video, I now reflected back on the feedback from each crit and started refining. One part that needed refinement was the “fight against the ugliness.” The word “fight” came in faster, I used ugly typefaces with bad color combo to show the “ugliness” instead.

Besides this, I also worked on the “expressive” section. Instead of just changing the opacity when the letters come up, I also changed the scale, making them pop up more, and, ultimately, more expressive.

Final Video

Reflection

Overall, although there are still parts that could still be more resolved, I enjoyed this project a lot. I am glad I got more familiar with After Effects and learned how to use Audition. Besides the technical skills I gained, I also developed a better understanding of the video/animation making process. I realized that I great video doesn’t have to be super complex. It’s about doing the little transitions well. Things that appear on the screen have to make sense to the audience going from one frame to the next. Developing a strong storyline is also as important as the visuals. Both skills to create engaging visuals and communicate well verbally or in written language are the main two ingredients to an impactful story.