I worked on a number of projects in 2006-2007 with friend, Brent Watts of Axiom. He is super-talented (I don't throw words like that around lightly) and has a pretty well established clientele in the entertainment industry. So, I was delighted when he asked me to collaborate on a few of his studio projects.
He does a lot of style guide development so the first project was for DreamWorks' KungFu Panda. This film was a candy store of beautiful imagery and was to be a rather large style guide. My challenge was to create all the branding/packaging guidelines.
Before the commencement of the project we met with co-director John Stevenson who told us the story. That sounds so simple, but when someone is really good at storytelling it really is more of a transcendence. To further enhance the experience, the room was wall-to-wall with amazing artwork; character studies, maquettes, drawings and paintings in various Asian styles of architecture and breath-taking landscapes. It was a real privilege to be soaking in it.
In the same way that the film visuals were explored, I went about my own explorations in packaging and graphic design. I had a lot of familiarity with the more classical Chinese art forms but focused in on the KungFu film poster genre.
I experimented by creating a number of posters mimicking some classic Bruce Lee KungFu film posters (shown at top). The posters were then boiled down to a variety of branding formats (shown here). A new logo from film marketing department, multiple graphic styles and packaging structure explorations later, we had arrived at the look shown below... Strong red, dynamic angles, and flexible pattern blocking.
-rm
