Design Bridge Project Feedback

On the 23rd march i visited Design Bridge Studios in london and met up Art Director John Sherwood.
Design Bridge is an independent brand design agency and have studios in London, Amsterdam, Singapore, and New York, too.

The studio mostly works with graphic design and prints for clients such as cadburys in which they have an ongoing contract with and design the branding and marketing schemes for. However i was shown around the studio and introduced to the motion team who worked with the likes of after effects and cinema 4D. Cinema 4d was used mostly for the 3D modelling of stills for their advertisements such as modelling the product and packaging for bottles or foods that they have clients for.

I was shown a a piece that had been put together by their motion team that was used for their show reel that was made on after effects and was told that the transitions are what makes a show reel flow when i come to thinking about doing mine, and also that it is best to try and use the sharpest quality pieces all the time to make things look professional. 

The studio was a very big size and had lots of inspiration all over the walls of each floor and lots of product references such as Smirnoff bottles and  prototype models. 

John explained that there were about 250 designers working at the studio and so they had different sectors that work on different projects and they have a large number of projects that are running at each given time so they all have seclude time tables to keep on top of their work. 

Dogs Bollocks awards:

He also explained that they are quite active in the creative industry and social networking and that they often make competition brief for students and amateur designers to get involved with, and also use this to seek new talent and create a creative community. 

After being shown around the work space and find out a bit more about the company and what they do i went into one of the offices to show John and his colleague some of the work i have been working on so far for some feedback.

As They are actually graphic designers he explained that he would try and give me feedback as best he could based on design aesthetics. 

So i showed him my silhouette animation:

He explained that the aesthetics are really great and from a graphic design point of view are very interesting. He said however it could be interesting to even further amplify the strange shapes to make the parts of the forest out of such as curling the branches of trees more or exaggerating parts of the landscapes in abstract ways.
I thought this was quite an interesting viewpoint on this piece as on of my inspirations for style;e was tim burtons nightmare before christmas and corpse bride for the landscape design and it was interesting that John was kind of picking up on this region of the style as tim burtons landscapes have exaggerated symbolic shapes to make up they landscapes in an abstract manner.

He said that he really liked the use of sound as well as the subtlety of it added to the tension and overall atmospheric feeling making the piece feel more ethereal and solemn yet intriguing.
For my show reel he mentioned that my introductory logo was really nice but felt it could reflect my style slightly better after seeing my work that i had made he explained that it was probably not bold enough to really show my style and nature of working although he thought it was creative and looked visually very pleasing and had been done well, just as to reflect myself as a designer maybe to make something else or edit it to reflect this.

My show reel logo:

i thought this was an interesting and very good point as i had not considered this i had made the short logo animation of just a means of introducing my showreel however he makes a very good point and i think it would be a lot more effective to use a design that does amplify the bolder darker style of my work.