Last Sep­tem­ber 19th – at ATypI’08 - The Old and The New in Saint Peters­burg – the fourth instal­ment of the Typophile Film Fest was pre­sented. A selec­tion of short typo­graphic films was shown, hail­ing from Por­tu­gal, the Nether­lands, Aus­tria, Canada, and the US. Those films cre­ated a visual mash-​up of motion design, typo­graphic ani­ma­tion and short sto­ries. It included  broad­cast motion design and typo­graphic eye candy from Trollbäck + Com­pany, Strange Attrac­tors, Heebok Lee, Nick Shinn, Juan Leguizamón as well as exclu­sive inter­views and cuts from the acclaimed doc­u­men­tary film Hel­vetica.

Just to give those who couldn’t attend a gen­eral idea – and hope­fully to con­vince some of you to submit your typo­graphic shorts for the fifth edi­tion –, here’s the full pro­gram. I linked to movies when­ever they are avail­able online and added the odd comment.

Typophile Film Fest 4: Open­ing Sequence
Brent Barson, Eric Gillett and BYU stu­dents | USA
Titles (3:29)

The One Show Silver Pencil win­ning open­ing titles to the fourth Typophile Film Fest are gor­geous and very touch­ing – they lit­er­ally have moved view­ers to tears. I con­ducted an inter­view with its cre­ators over at Unzipped.

Typo­graph­ics
Marcos Cer­avolo, Ryan Uhrich | Canada
Stu­dent film (1:47)
Van­cou­ver Film School

Typo­graph­ics – an infor­ma­tive motion graph­ics piece on typog­ra­phy – is a stu­dent project done by Boca (aka Marcos Cer­avolo) and Ryan Uhrich for the Motion Design Class in the Dig­i­tal Design Pro­gram at the Van­cou­ver Film School. I dis­cussed it on Unzipped.

Hel­vetica Extra: Michael Bierut “On Hel­vetica and Brand­ing”
Gary Huswit | USA
Doc­u­men­tary film extra (2:11)

The Hel­vetica out­takes offer addi­tional insights into the doc­u­men­tary. Although it’s under­stand­able that they were left out for brevity and to improve the flow of the movie, having the oppor­tu­nity to see them was great.

MetLife IF
Trollbäck + Com­pany | USA
Broad­cast adver­tise­ment (1:03)

For this entirely graphic 60-second MetLife com­mer­cial Trollbäck + Com­pany cre­ated a nar­ra­tive fol­low­ing the word “if” through many incar­na­tions, includ­ing hand­writ­ten chicken scratch, sweep­ing cur­sive char­ac­ters, and a bleed­ing inkblot. The film fea­tures let­ter­ing only; no type except some char­ac­ters that were redrawn. Although I do like the com­mer­cial I always find it bizarre when hand drawn graph­ics sud­denly morph into three-​dimensional graph­ics, like the bal­loon and the “i” that lifts off like a space rocket. I have noth­ing against the tech­nique in itself, but some­how it dis­rupts my sus­pen­sion of disbelief.

PopJam Inter­sti­tials
Strange Attrac­tors | The Nether­lands
Broad­cast video (0:55)

The inter­sti­tials for W+K Tokyo Lab / NHK PopJam Deluxe look very rest­less, very elec­tric and very Strange Attrac­tors. But that’s not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing. ;)

Let’s see you laugh at my… Arms of Hel­vetica! …in extra bold!

Enter The Serif
Johann Pas­cual | USA
Student film (1:54)
Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts

Enter The Serif com­bines typog­ra­phy with frag­ments from the clas­sic Drunken Master – a mix of mar­tial arts and slap­stick comedy from 1978 which pro­pelled Jackie Chan to main­stream suc­cess. The short film pits Univers Chang of the Sans Serif Clan against Sabon Huang of the Serif Clan. Excerpts of Drunken Master are alter­nated with dia­logue screens that are inspired by the work of Jan Tschi­chold: his clas­sic, cen­tered serif period and his assy­met­ri­cal neue Typogra­phie period. Some bits are laugh-out-loud funny.

Hel­vetica Extra: Hoe­fler and Frere-​Jones “Font Sto­ries”
Gary Huswit | USA
Doc­u­men­tary film extra (1:58)

This out­take from Hel­vetica left me with mixed feel­ings. On the one hand it was com­fort­ing to see that, yes, there are other people that are just as enam­oured with type and obsess over it as I do. Yet on the other hand it made me realise how non-​type people must look at us when we get started. We can be such geeks. :P

Moon­light in Glory
Trollbäck + Com­pany | USA
Short film (2:38)

A visual exper­i­ment where the graph­ics become the cre­ator of the sounds rather than a reac­tive after­thought. Set to “Moon­light in Glory” from My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, the ground­break­ing, sample-​driven col­lab­o­ra­tion between David Byrne and Brian Eno. Beguil­ing and utterly fas­ci­nat­ing; one of the better appli­ca­tions of all caps ITC Avant Garde Gothic.

I Can’t Wait for Spring
Arthur Layzer | USA
Short film (2:39)

Hel­vetica Extra: Bruno Stein­ert “On Hel­vetica and the Mac­in­tosh”
Gary Huswit | USA
Doc­u­men­tary film extra (3:27)

Soft­ma­chine
Nick Shinn, Breck Camp­bell, Eric Shinn | Canada
Type promo (0:48)

The type promo for Soft­ma­chine is a very nice little con­cep­tual piece. Words slide in and out of the screen, replac­ing each other and cre­at­ing word asso­ci­a­tions over a back­ground of con­tin­u­ously shift­ing ice cream colours. The del­i­cate repet­i­tive music which accom­pa­nies this gentle, almost hyp­no­tis­ing move­ment is by Nick Shinn’s son Eric, and is gen­er­ated directly from the text. I think this is a per­fect visu­al­i­sa­tion for this spe­cific kind of type design. You can view the type promo on Breck Campbell’s web­site Typog​ra​phy.tv (the “S” in the square second column from the right, six rows down).

Tread Softly
Heebok Lee | USA
Short film (2:26)

Tread Softly sees Heebok Lee visu­al­is­ing the William Butler Yeates poem He Wishes for the Clothes of Heaven on music by Hajime Mizoguchi and Yoko Kanno from the Escaflowne movie sound­track. The movie uses Zuzana Licko’s Mrs Eaves and Le Vengeur Agaçant by Jean Jacques Tachd­jian, with cal­lig­ra­phy by Xin Xiangyan. Let­ters and words dis­in­te­grate into gos­samer fil­a­ments, two female models stand in dream-​like envi­ron­ments while the camera effort­lessly shifts from macro to micro pho­tog­ra­phy and back again. A sophis­ti­cated and lush movie which verges on the bombastic.

Thèse Sur La Typogra­phie
Julien Vallée | Canada
Short film (2:01)

While he was study­ing graphic design at UQÀM Julien Vallée pro­duced the Thèse Sur La Typogra­phie short film at ÉSAG Pen­ninghen de Paris. Based on Kurt Schwit­ters’ Thesis on Typog­ra­phy, this stop-​motion and motion-​graphic typog­ra­phy piece melds influ­ences pour­ing in from the Dada move­ment. It exam­ines the under­ly­ing idea that the over­abun­dance of graph­i­cal ele­ments in a typo­graph­i­cal piece may cause the con­tent to become unread­able. Intri­cate, seem­ingly random pat­terns of strips of type and text peel them­selves free and del­i­cately rearrange them­selves on micro-​bleep music by exper­i­men­tal elec­tronic artist Alva Noto (Carsten Nico­lai). For all its degraded, rough imagery and grainy image qual­ity this is a sur­pris­ingly poetic and mes­mer­iz­ing film. FF DIN caps and con­structed techno dis­play type are used throughout.

Hel­vetica Extra: Mas­simo Vignelli “Post-​Modernism and the Flower Chil­dren”
Gary Huswit | USA
Doc­u­men­tary film extra (2:32)

I don’t know, Mas­simo Vignelli may be a living legend and design giant and bona fide celebrity and all, but when he talks about typog­ra­phy I trust his advice as much as I would my gen­eral prac­ti­tioner when it comes to brain surgery. There, I said it.

a font
JP Kelly | USA
Stu­dent film (1:14)
Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts

Foral
Rui Abreu | Por­tu­gal
Type promo (1:21)

The type promo for Rui Abreu’s is sur­pris­ingly sophis­ti­cated. A number of seem­ingly random white bars lying on a desk start moving and mutate into char­ac­ters, making a thou­sand images on a wall dis­ap­pear. Com­pletely cre­ated in CGI, it is directed and ani­mated by Rui Abreu him­self, and fea­tures scenic design by Cata­rina Vaz and sound design by Nuno Martino.

Pre­dict
Ian Mitchel | UK
Type promo (1:30)

The type promo for Ian Mitchel’s mono­spaced tech face Pre­dict clev­erly plays with let­ters to shift from one word to another.

Hel­vetica Extra: Stefan Sag­meis­ter “One Type­face Is Not Enough” and “On Design­ing for an Audi­ence”
Gary Huswit | USA
Doc­u­men­tary film extra (2:24)

This Type of World
Juan Leguiza­mon | USA
Stu­dent film (9:53)
Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts

Juan Leguiza­mon proves that all it takes is some good to great ideas, some half-​decent acting and a crew of very enthu­si­as­tic co-​students to deliver a delight­ful short. Arche­typ­i­cal type­faces are thrust into the “real world” and a number of type-​related con­cepts are explained through metaphors rang­ing from cute to out­right hilar­i­ous. It starts a bit slow – for­tu­nately the begin­ning part was edited in the ver­sion we saw in Saint Peters­burg – but once it catches steam it pro­vides guf­faws galore, like the frag­ment with the self-​help group where Myriad com­plains about being the default font, and Arial about con­stantly being mis­taken for Helvetica.

Toky­oChat
Strange Attrac­tors | The Nether­lands
Broad­cast video (1:25)

Toky­oChat looks wildly imag­i­na­tive, deli­ciously eclec­tic and very Strange Attrac­tors. But that’s not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing. ;)

Hel­vetica Extra: Erik Spiek­er­mann “Typo­ma­niac” and “His Approach to Design”
Gary Huswit | USA
Doc­u­men­tary film extra (2:24)

AH
Joris Bac­quet, Bastien Dubois, Simon Moreau | France
Short film (7:23)

Although it was orig­i­nally sched­uled I don’t remem­ber seeing the dreamy sur­real CGI short by Joris Bac­quet, Bastien Dubois and Simon Moreau in Saint Peters­burg. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t doze off. :P Anyhow, it can also be viewed here.

Le Grand Con­tent
Clemens Kogler | Aus­tria
Short film (3:58)

I’d never have expected to crack up from watch­ing ani­mated graphs, but I did.

Le Grand Con­tent exam­ines the omnipresent Powerpoint-​culture in search for its philo­soph­i­cal poten­tial. Inter­sec­tions and dia­grams are assem­bled to form a grand “association-chain-massacre” which chal­lenges itself to answer all ques­tions of the uni­verse and some more. Of course, it totally fails this assign­ment, but in its fail­ure it still man­ages to pro­duce some mag­i­cal nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable tv, emo­tions and hamsters.

This one is gen­uinely funny and had most of the audi­ence in stitches. Using dia­grams inspired by the site indexed.​blogspot.com cre­ated by Jes­sica Hagy, the film plays a game of marabout d’ficelle, string­ing together barely related topics to create hilar­i­ous jux­ta­po­si­tions. And another very nice use of ITC Avant Garde Gothic I must add.

Wait, did I just approve the use of ITC Avant Garde Gothic? For the second time in one single post!? I must be hal­lu­ci­nat­ing! Who’d have thought…

Tags: credit titles, documentary, film, motion graphics, music video, opening sequence, opening titles, promotional piece, student film, studio reel, typographic animation