Manvsmachine

0:03[Applause]

0:09hello my name is Ellie and this evening I will be your representatives from man versus machine so in case anybody isn't familiar with our work. Basically we're design and motion branding studio we have offices here in hagas in just over the road and also in Los Angeles going on two years we say designer motion in that order intentionally because as far into the wilds of crazy Houdini technology and hyper photo realism as we might go we always hue back to fundamental attention paid to design principles and we don't believe that the two are mutually exclusive motion and design ♪

1:07that's the last ten years in ten seconds case you're curious I'm going to talk today about Nike specifically our work with our max J but just to give you a bit of context we do a hell of a lot with Nike we've been working with them since we were three years old and so over the last seven years I don't even know how many campaigns we might have produced it's probably a lot and there's some of the work over the last seven years or so and we work in two global sports we're running global football skateboarding we've done a few projects for golf young athletes as little brand design and our processes Nike is always very collaborative you know we give we get briefed super early on.

1:55And we help do our D and creative development work to get an idea ready for internal sign off before it goes even into production.

2:04So I suppose it's as if you think that you know Nike has an internal that we work into so we have creative directors there that we're really familiar with and they know our process and know our work today I'm going to talk to you about our next day because this is our third year 2017 with our max day and it's the third year that era max day has ever existed in 2015 we launched the first era max day the one before the one the year max one came out in 1987 obviously hugely revolutionary in the sneaker design world and for the first era max day in 2015 we went back into Tinker Hatfield studio and delved into the the design heritage of the air max when going back in time sort of looking at all of the air maxes that had come in the interim and eventually landing on the air max zero the one before the one so this is the launch film for the first air max day ♪

4:13so that's the work that you can clap for every video 0 night so that's the the first piece that we did for airmax legs going back to the 0 and obviously we couldn't help but take a crack at the Air Max logo the bubble types ♪

4:45oh so that's how you sort of see the origins the germ of this relationship with us and Nike as regards our max day and of course with all our Nike campaigns we have to think about what's going to happen in terms of Nike towns retail out-of-home everything else when we begin the project it's a it's a part of our pipeline now setting our direction that then is created in real 3d space using whatever OBJ's or assets for production that we've created and we determined sort of how those might be put into play in the in the physical retail space 2016 since 2015 was successful as is the nature they wanted us to really up the ante and deliver Suites of films and assets to go along with three new seeker sneaker releases instead of just one so each of the seminal nike designers you know Hiroshi Fujiwara Marc Parker and to perhaps filled all of them designed a new sneaker and we created films to launch each of those and these are sort of like a glimpse into the fantasy factory of the designers mind so this is Russia [Applause]

6:43and again updating the the airmax logo and the bubble types that we've created the first time around was a super priority for us and [Applause]

7:08yet again obviously huge outputs in terms of what is physically required for the Mikey Town globally what they need for out of home all of that kind of goes into the mix these days and this campaign I suppose is the classic sort of man versus machine Nike partnership gorgeous textures super glossy pacing that allows you to luxurious kind of for a long time had been our Nike vibe so 2017 comes along and suddenly there's even more ambition which I don't know why anyone would be surprised at this point but we needed to launch seven new Air Max trainers so Nike plan to drop all of these on a staggered release schedule leading up to air max day in March of 2017 so that's number of deliverables probably safe to say at this point I'm going to go over my time limit.

8:04So it won't be offended if you have to go catch a dinner reservation or something.

8:10This is a slide actually from the original brief that Nike sent to us ♪

8:19you know it's original ♪

8:25video monitor and there's the Beatles track revolution obviously so the original idea was let's make a suite of live-action films with you know VFX and 3d interpolations of the new vibe but kind of also incorporating this super revolutionary appeal and we were really excited about that bear in mind this is like spring/summer 2016 the idea of being able to get you know for each sneaker you have maybe adapt hungry mixing a bit over you have you know whoever they could get an update quick like they have all these amazing ideas and we were fully on board aside get a bunch of directors treatments work into a really hard and here you have another slide from our original Nike brief this is one of our original mood boards so as you can see there's some pretty on-the-nose revolutionary imagery in the spring summer of 2016 that got a little too real in the autumn of 2016 and the direction for the films you know remix in revolution rebellion in the street blah blah blah all of that has to obviously get can because if you pursue that line then you end up with a kendall Jenner Pepsi ad so the tonight here fully aware of this and and dialed it right back.

9:50And we thought you know what the the original vision that we had for the art direction of these living skills that we were going to produce alongside that our direction is capacious its generous enough to incorporate and build out into actual films so we don't really need any of this gritty reality surely we can talk about the the revolution that Nike is affected in design without leaning too heavily into that arena so we decided to focus on the remix of the airmax heritage and push that out into old DAV pieces that we needed to create so you know you come back to the graphic forms that are available to us in all of the airmax heritage and on the trainers themselves and there's an insane amount of heritage to mine I mean none of these decisions that go into the design of a Nike trainer taken lightly like it's all coming from somewhere.

10:41So we had this huge amazing history you know we go right we're going to pair both graphics with our heritage photography we'll take in all of the air Max's past the imagery will be able to vary from product to product you know taking in everybody gets it's each each trainer gets its own respective color palette texture patterns you know.

11:01And we can have overarching cymatics on the collection so even though we maintain this kind of like fists in the air and as you can see we're not cavalier about how the grip even on the sneaker is decided everything is is pretty well thought-out you know even though the grip on the sneaker is always still in a raised hand and sort of referencing the spirit of the revolution that Nike kind of wanted from the beginning the position of each hand stays consistent but the styling can really vary from shoe to shoe from history to history and from the get-go we were pushing way out our stylistic comfort zones I mean if you're familiar with man versus machine you don't necessarily see this illustrative 2d style but obviously that's an incredible opportunity for us.

11:55So I'm just going to power through a shitload of the first development work just initial explorations that we did on the brief you know there's a lot of stuff about fauna real animal skin textures greenery a lot of leaves and vines natural terrain desert foliage dunes grass dirt camouflage as forms as patterns there's a huge amount that we could draw on that all we already had formed the basis for the design of these trainers in the first place so when it comes to you know incorporating stone slabs geodes crystals whatever.

12:37And then of course we have the variation in the hand models as well like are they you know covered in 3d patterns are they you know obviously we need varying genders ages races get it all into the mix so when you're starting to talk about you know the remix of of Nike Air Max is a concept you have a really second territory in which to get started and granted like this.

13:04And I suppose in the final product it does seem a little bit like a bit of a visual overload but we embrace it and really relished in being able to show our range because it whilst we're known for our style and we love being them for our incredible 3d styles and of course people come to us for great executions in that style we don't always get the opportunity to do this sort of work.

13:29But we have indescribable talents in house who are incredible with 2d and illustration and everything else so it was a really nice opportunity to flex our muscles in that regard and it's a great team at the moment it's eclecticism it's kind of you know. And it's starting to emerge as as something that speaks to a lot of people. And I think that's kind of a factor of the deluge of the information that we live with nowadays and the quantity you know the amount that we had to actually put out it was a mixed blessing for us it's great that we're allowed to stretch I mean our own directors were even shocked at the amount that we outputted during this phase it was organizationally crazy you know to make up for the loss of all these other films that we had kind of planned out and worked through there are huge teams working in almost like what I would call a creative telepathy organized around our daily so our dailies folder is is probably the unsung hero of airmax a17 in a way because it allows everybody in the team to dig in see what their counterparts are doing and rather than have a 20-minute conversation or build out into storyboards you just work right in to whatever needs doing and there's no room if something doesn't work.

14:50And in this instance we managed to flip a coin and it landed on its edge so we were lucky but at the end of the day the end product and the process are linked you know they're they're both about creative chaos it's about tapping into that ability to drag every you know reference and historical period in airmax into the scene with us and make it work so granted it's not rebellion. And it's not gas masks and overturned police cars but there is a chaotic rebellious spirit in terms of the art direction and you know nike aren't a literal brand anyway. That's not really their Esau so it works in the context of aeramax Jersey but here is next Deb reel to show you kind of the processes that take place behind the scenes ♪

16:35so you've got a really nice limps into some of the pattern work that we did there.

16:38But I want to pause a moment on pattern specifically because from a technical standpoint what we did here was super interesting we use 2d knee for the 2d that you'll see a lot more of this.

16:49Now it's a bit of a trend emerging we think and once we determine what we wanted we were able to build a script to determine you know where does it go crazy is where is it not so so these 2d patterns with 2d then exported them back and the SUNY pattern to bring it into our 3d environment as an accent and I find this very rapid African value so then it just adds to our palette of what we're able to bring to the table and have a kind of automated within parameters to achieve the goals that we wanted and obviously typography is it is part of what we do for our max in our max day every year we build out the bubble type logo and we animate it. And we make it better and more beautiful but this year we had the opportunity to build out the entire font which was super amazing everything that goes alongside our max day has to be done in Futura so that was the base but these letter forms because they have to exist in 2d in 3d they have to live inside of this super chaotic and complicated design world we had to really strip back the letter forms and make sure that they they were able to be covered in patterns and textures they were able to be covered in different lighting surfaces and yet they were still going to be legible and the the typography process that we have normally is super organic anyway you know it's it's trial and error to see what looks good running alongside whoever is developing the teams that are developing the the films and the stove but the collaborative approach in this way I think in the compressed timeline allowed us to again iterate super quickly in a way that man versus machine is not necessarily known for let's see here is a type real that's sort of like a type animation vignette like in previous years but with the new letter form ♪

19:26so you know the having the the full set of characters meant that we could start pushing the airmax a font in two different environments and also become sort of a recursive thread that allows you to recognize you know whether we're saying nike air is not a shoe whether we're saying kiss my hairs or whether we're saying our max days you get this visual truline which is really nice the final film I wouldn't dare show you them all we'd that'd be crazy but here's a few just to give you a sense of the range ♪

21:05so each of the seven sneakers that we built films forgot their own graphic world their own visual language and this is the remix that just matches them all together. And I think really encompasses the spirit of chaos that was alive in the studio at the time ♪

21:54so that's era x8 2017 in a bit of a nutshell but you know it never stops with babies it never stops with the stills we always have to consider what's happening and where we need to be in the real world so again Nike towns out of home everything else and that's all as per usual but what is not as per usual is when we get to have our work presented on to the Centre Pompidou in Paris which revolution. And is one of the original inspiration pieces for the creation of the airmax in the first place you know it the out the insides on the outside and really important that sorry we were able to project onto that with the help of unit 9 and also obviously a number of other designers who are working in two different departments at Nikes you know sportswear and I suppose you know learnings from this campaigner that there's a way to do things.

22:55That's a little bit more mashed up and quicker like we were really surprised at ourselves even how much we could achieve in the time that we had one the the original a V concept had been can and I wouldn't dare leave you without shouting out our audio partners on this day leg like the turnaround times as those guides guys had to deal with were absolutely insane they were working across seven films and we always say that you know audio can elevate a visual but it doesn't really work the other way around so a big impressive what their legs managed to do in the time finally we have a little hang on treat for someone we make these posters from time to time to give away to our Nike clients as like thank you for being the best clients in the world patrons of our particular art. And I have a couple of extras with me here we did a limited run of these there were only a hundred and there was enough that I was allowed to bring to here today. So if Andrea davana and Chloe Alexander could come find me after then you can pick up your airmax a17 limited edition prints and that's it for me [Applause]