21 Nov 2008
Article - 11.08.2006
Qube Konstrukt's Adam Gardiner likes to make his graphics move.
Adam Gardiner will be the first to tell you that he is a print designer. But like a growing number of graphic designers today, Gardiner found himself with a yearning to see his images move.
For me [motion graphics] were the next step my brain wanted to take, says Gardiner, the 30-year-old creative director of Qube Konstrukt, a Melbourne-based design studio with a multidisciplinary bent. They specialise in youth-oriented marketing (the company's name was Gardiner's graffiti alter ego) and all the designers continue to pursue other artistic endeavors as well. I've always had an interest in cinema so I wanted to take the things I had made that were static and to think about them in that fourth dimension of time as well as space.
Motion graphics refers to the design discipline that adds motion and sound to still graphics. Once the sole domain of broadcast post-production houses, the advent of relatively inexpensive software such as AfterEffects and Apple Motion has opened up the field and many print designers such as Gardiner have found themselves not only smitten, but head-over-heels in love. Qube Konstrukt's most recent efforts include a successful broadcast campaign for the Toyota Yaris, where the team managed to make airbags and storage appear clever and sexy with their slick moving design.
Gardiner first got a taste for motion graphics while working as a young print and new media designer at Spin Communications in Melbourne. I was looking for a new challenge, he says of his move into the field while at Spin. It was only natural then, that when he and partner Janine Wurfel founded Qube Konstrukt in 2002, they set out to create a studio specialising in print while also venturing into other disciplines like broadcast and new media design. Like many young designers, they didn't want to restrict themselves to a single medium, and in a multimedia world an interdisciplinary design studio just made sense. Today there are five senior designers at Qube Konstrukt working across disciplines, from identity and marketing campaigns to motion graphics. Their clients include the State of Design Festival in Victoria, Royal Elastic, David Jones and Toyota.
According to their design portfolio, experimentation, collaboration and research are the cornerstones of their design process. Gardiner's first experiment was the addition of motion graphics to their studio model. Drawing the print designers into such projects was his next.
I still have a very large passion for print design but I've always had an interest in the moving image and I get quite excited in the crossover between the two, he says. We try to rope our print designers into helping us with our motion work and they work quite intimately on these projects.
I think print designers who aren�t too befuddled with the technical aspects of being a motion designer often bring a really fresh perspective and sensibility to the discipline. After all, print specialties like typography, image and layout are still crucial to a successful motion graphic. When asked what makes a motion graphic work, Gardiner response is, What you really want is to create moments of visual intrigue. Moments where you think, I'm not sure what happened there. I want to see it again.
There also has to be a reason for the image to move, so that the addition of time and sound adds something of value. Gardiner says they follow the same philosophy regardless of the discipline. He is also committed to the idea that good design grows from cross-pollination and collaboration.
A design studio is also a social space, he explains. When you get these amazing people to talk to one another and collaborate It's exciting. [Whenever I work with someone else] both of us will stand back and say, Wow, I couldn't have done that on my own because whatever we end up is this hybrid of our sensibilities, not just aesthetically but conceptually.
You can see the campaign Qube Konstrukt created for Toyota in the new exhibition In your face: contemporary graphic design, 5 August-5 November at the Powerhouse Museum for Sydney Design 06.
Download Qube Konstrukt's portfolio(pdf)
Sydney Design 06
Qube Konstrukt
Motion Graphics
TAGS
+ Sydney Design 06
+ In your face: contemporary graphic design
For me [motion graphics] were the next step my brain wanted to take, says Gardiner, the 30-year-old creative director of Qube Konstrukt, a Melbourne-based design studio with a multidisciplinary bent. They specialise in youth-oriented marketing (the company's name was Gardiner's graffiti alter ego) and all the designers continue to pursue other artistic endeavors as well. I've always had an interest in cinema so I wanted to take the things I had made that were static and to think about them in that fourth dimension of time as well as space.
Motion graphics refers to the design discipline that adds motion and sound to still graphics. Once the sole domain of broadcast post-production houses, the advent of relatively inexpensive software such as AfterEffects and Apple Motion has opened up the field and many print designers such as Gardiner have found themselves not only smitten, but head-over-heels in love. Qube Konstrukt's most recent efforts include a successful broadcast campaign for the Toyota Yaris, where the team managed to make airbags and storage appear clever and sexy with their slick moving design.
Gardiner first got a taste for motion graphics while working as a young print and new media designer at Spin Communications in Melbourne. I was looking for a new challenge, he says of his move into the field while at Spin. It was only natural then, that when he and partner Janine Wurfel founded Qube Konstrukt in 2002, they set out to create a studio specialising in print while also venturing into other disciplines like broadcast and new media design. Like many young designers, they didn't want to restrict themselves to a single medium, and in a multimedia world an interdisciplinary design studio just made sense. Today there are five senior designers at Qube Konstrukt working across disciplines, from identity and marketing campaigns to motion graphics. Their clients include the State of Design Festival in Victoria, Royal Elastic, David Jones and Toyota.
According to their design portfolio, experimentation, collaboration and research are the cornerstones of their design process. Gardiner's first experiment was the addition of motion graphics to their studio model. Drawing the print designers into such projects was his next.
I still have a very large passion for print design but I've always had an interest in the moving image and I get quite excited in the crossover between the two, he says. We try to rope our print designers into helping us with our motion work and they work quite intimately on these projects.
I think print designers who aren�t too befuddled with the technical aspects of being a motion designer often bring a really fresh perspective and sensibility to the discipline. After all, print specialties like typography, image and layout are still crucial to a successful motion graphic. When asked what makes a motion graphic work, Gardiner response is, What you really want is to create moments of visual intrigue. Moments where you think, I'm not sure what happened there. I want to see it again.
There also has to be a reason for the image to move, so that the addition of time and sound adds something of value. Gardiner says they follow the same philosophy regardless of the discipline. He is also committed to the idea that good design grows from cross-pollination and collaboration.
A design studio is also a social space, he explains. When you get these amazing people to talk to one another and collaborate It's exciting. [Whenever I work with someone else] both of us will stand back and say, Wow, I couldn't have done that on my own because whatever we end up is this hybrid of our sensibilities, not just aesthetically but conceptually.
You can see the campaign Qube Konstrukt created for Toyota in the new exhibition In your face: contemporary graphic design, 5 August-5 November at the Powerhouse Museum for Sydney Design 06.
Download Qube Konstrukt's portfolio(pdf)Sydney Design 06Qube KonstruktMotion Graphics
TAGS
+ Sydney Design 06
+ In your face: contemporary graphic design