Client

Vevo

Role

Creative director, Motion designer, Designer

Description

Vevo originals is the Original Content arm of Vevo, creating unique live performances, promo and editorial opportunities for artists. Sitting as almost a ‘skunk works’ operation within a wider corporate setting it is inherently more playful and begs for attention.

Aligned to the over-arching rebrand of Vevo I wanted Vevo originals aligned with the new brand but retained it’s hand crafted feel, so I thought about this as a scale of brand vs artist, and let that guide me in how custom (or not) each series is. Building in brand checkpoints along the way kept me checking in on my work to ensure I had dialed enough of the brand in/out on each series.

Starting with the animated end card which has echos of Vevo’s previous originals bumpers but now softer and more in-keeping with the brand and the content. Not intrusive, more of a hallmark of quality. The drag and drop asset has the functionality for creatives and editors to tailer the colors to match the pieces, always ending on black or white but pulling in colors from the preceding piece. This was the starting point for the branding work on the originals and sits at the end of everything we do.

Once all the creative work was done it was important to make sure that the team can efficiently execute on this creative week in, week out, with 400+ pieces of content going live in a year, not counting thousands of marketing assets working on these needs to be swift and allow minimal room for error. So every series is highly templated with just enough space for creatives to make decisions that enhance the content and the artists within.

Credits

Vevo originals, DSCVR, ctrl, video weekly formats created and developed by Sydney Emery, Ed Walker & Micah Bickham

DSCVR stage designed and developed by Micah Bickham, Sydney Emery, Tyler Jensen and more (sorry can’t remember as I write this)

Footnotes designed and developed by Sydney Emery, Austin Prahl and Justin Brown

Based around original creative developed by PORTO ROCHA & Sydney Emery

Client

Vevo (in-house)

Role

In-house project lead, In-house creative director, design, motion design

Description

In 2019 Vevo had only an 11 page PDF of loose brand guidelines, no color guidance and only 1 or 2 motion templates. This lead to ad-hoc choices and constant creative choices being made across the company. This meant there was no consistency across teams or end points. At that time the company was looking to expand across connected television so action was needed to improve and tighten up the branding.

The initial phase was presenting to the CEO and senior leadership the scale of the problem with Vevo’s present branding and what the solutions were. Once internal reviews were done I engaged PORTO ROCHA who did incredible work to bring some order to the chaos, they listened to internal parties and took everything on board and created a system which was perfectly fit for purpose.

The high level of collaboration and conversation with PORTO ROCHA over approximately 12 months meant the final brand guidelines are very deep, prescriptive but with just enough wiggle room to stay creative. My involvement in the process along the way meant when PORTO ROCHA’s work was complete I was fully immersed in the new brand and able to build Vevo’s new world around the brand system.

The work is never done but every improvement, iteration and update follows the basic brand guidance principles and never strays too far creating a unified brand voice but one that is alive with color and motion.

Awards

D&AD Pencil - Design/Motion Design

Credits

Agency - PORTO ROCHA

Video 1,2,3 - PORTO ROCHA

Client

Vevo (in-house)

Role

Creative Director, 3D Artist, Motion Design, Design

Description

Newfront sales event took place in May 2023 in front of a huge audience in Sony Hall New York and live streamed across the world. It featured 7 speakers and a live performance by J Balvin.

The 2023 event theme was 'The Home of Music Television' so after consulting with the sales teams to understand what exactly they wanted that message to portray, I built the idea of rooms of the home as the center points of the project. Each room is themed with color from the Vevo brand with a Television integrated into the rooms so Music Videos can be played across the TVs and be used in multiple creative ways. I wanted the rooms to have an abstract art directed beauty but still grounded and close to real life, balancing the simplicity of the rooms used as backdrops for speakers and the busier rooms we only see for a moment. Built in cinema 4d with a mix of modeling and off-the-shelf models all made to fit the screen dimensions perfectly.

The CG rooms, beautiful as they are were not ideal for marketing and for event assets. I needed to create something more simple to tie physical elements and marketing together. So I put together the 'Home' logo. Developed from an additional desire to have 'Home' built of sections of the home. However, during development it became too busy and lost the vision of a simple unifying logo which could go anywhere big or small. So I paired it back and came up with this simple isometric design. Initial drawn in Illustrator, eventually I also created a 3D version in cinema 4d to allow for more motion and quick manipulation. We used this logo throughout the venue, on screen, on physical assets and in our pre and post social content tying the colors to the artists, event themes and rooms.

Once everything is locked with the script it's time to create the show - over 40 minutes of seamless content running on a 30ft wide screen to a live audience plus a streaming feed, moving in and out of rooms, playing music videos, showing app experiences and illustrating stats and research. All of this has to feel purposeful, connected and move perfectly on cue to the speaker, to achieve this, I split the event creative into around 100 short video assets all with hidden cut-points with additional padding in sneaky places, allowing the show-caller to hit the cues perfectly when the speaker is going slower or faster but without the audience noticing. It feels for all the world like they are speaking over 1 long asset and they have rehearsed perfectly.

Credits

Motion & Design - Sydney Emery

3D Rooms - Sydney Emery & Ashley Tao

Editing - Austin Prahl

Client

Vevo (in-house)

Role

Creative director, Designer, occasional painter and decorator

Description

Vevo Studios are based in London, New York and Los Angeles and offer musicians opportunities to do multiple performances and promotional formats in controlled, cohesive and professional environments.

Working off the notion offered up by EP Micah Bickham that an artist filming in any of our locations should have the same experience visual or otherwise. I built a version of the brand pattern system, using a more simple color language which is visually striking in low light whilst being cost effective. Coupled to that large branded graphics add a sense of gravity to the space.

This simple approach means the soft furnishings of the locations can speak to the location and be customized while the shell feels on brand and clean.

While doing this I wanted to build in give-away items to artist and crew and for these I wanted to push the brand to breaking point only holding onto a few touch points and really make these the fun expression of the creative team sitting within a corporate space. Making different designs each time when we have returning artists and crew the feeling of creativity and variety mirrors the exciting variety of artists we see through the doors of the studios.

Client

Amazon Music

Role

Design and Motion Design

Description

Working closely with directors, editors and artist teams - creating a look and feel for the design elements around The Weeknd’s Dawn FM experience a long-form album experience.

Taking the typefaces and cues from the design assets from the Dawn FM album creative I recreated and redrew elements to allow for stacking layers, gradients and effects, so all the elements can be individually controlled and the reveal could be timed slowly and carefully and with beautiful subtlety.

Credits

Full credits on Amazon

Client

Vevo (in-house)

Role

VFX Supervisor, VFX Artist, Motion Designer, Design Lead

Description

Hugely ambitious project to replace background signage and add additional elements to Los Angeles skyline to elevate the 3 live performances and a longform piece by the artist Giveon.

Initial work was to rip a 3d version of the city of Los Angeles from google maps and then plot out where the new buildings would go to optimally sit in sync with the real Los Angeles skyline, plot where the shoot was and align the 3d city to the original plate.

Taking inspiration from somewhere between Bladerunner, Hong Kong and older turn of the century US city architecture. I wanted to build this city that felt rooted in the depression era but had been added to over time to the point where now it could be 20-30 years from today. I built some buildings myself, purchased others and kit-bashed greebles and other elements to quickly add futuristic geometry. We illustrated elements based off the artists star signs and song lyrics which I then translated into neon elements.

Initial plan was a full 3d camera track, but as the piece progressed fog elements caused the track to not be ideal, so myself and Austin Prahl - Senior editor 2d tracked, often manually the whole piece and removed the background before putting the new city and replacing the cut buildings.

This was a huge challenge, and having to work in 2D with only a couple of weeks to turn this around means there are moments where the additional buildings don’t move technically correctly but we smoothed everything out and with some slight of hand, most viewers shouldn’t (and looking at comments) didn’t notice the city was even added in post. A big learning opportunity and one I’m very proud of working with the time and tech constraints, good planning and good teamwork.

Credits

Full credits on YouTube

Client

TENDER

Role

Creative Director, Designer, Motion Designer

Description

TENDER and team came to me to creative direct their album 'Fear of Falling Asleep'.

A large project scope - creative shift for the band with usable assets across the campaign, album artwork, 3 digital singles and 6 music video visualizers.

Beginning by listening to the album on repeat, taking my notes and feelings then cross-checking that with the band. From there I built the vision - a close, sweaty uncomfortable, perma-night. Trapped in a motel without air-conditioning, tossing and turning. The TV is left on to help you sleep but its light is keeping you awake, cigarette smoke hangs in the air and the room has a musty lived-in smell.

I worked up this idea of seeing the room from top down and being really smart with assets to keep everything consistent but also on a really reasonable budget. Shooting album artwork and the video visualizers and singles all in one go. With a running narrative that the room continuously gets more messy and chaotic with the lighting shifts as the night drags on. The band had a photographer in mind - Hollie Fernando who did an incredible job and came up with a great remote camera set-up, setting a soft-box and a camera with a remote shutter over the scene, with another light acting as the TV. Running bursts of movement of the model over and over again to build out the world.

Credits

Photography - Hollie Fernando

Client

Vevo (in-house)

Role

3d Design, Motion design, Design lead, VFX

Description

2 Live performances and a short film

In early 2020 Doja Cat was in her ascendancy and coming out of the internet meme portion of her career.

The live performance design is very slick and speaks to the performances, the text bubbling up from the milk, the furry text mirroring the clothing and the set. Everything feels considered and slick. Using Cinema 4d I tracked the scenes and had fun texturing and lighting to match the scenes.

When it got to the short film the story was more about that history and the unreel nature of being at the end of a computer screen. So playing with dreamy green screen moments that see themselves collapsing to show us behind the curtain.

Mixing this with non specific retro computer graphics to hit those zeitgeist endorphin hits and lots of 3d and motion graphics we ended with some visually stunning pieces.

The narrative piece is one of my first green screen projects I learned a lot about keying and setting up a green screen scene, as well as time managing a render pipeline. I feel there are many individual successes in the project and I’m supremely proud of it but I see many moments where it went possible too far and maybe distracts from the narrative.

Credits

Full credits on YouTube

Client

Vevo (in-house)

Role

Lead designer, VFX artist, Motion designer

Description

The original content team at Vevo in 2020 under the eye of Ed Walker and Micah Bickham created this world for The Weeknd for 3 performances and a longform piece of content. Practical sets oozing blood with theatrical set moves created a unique set of performances.

We only had around 2 weeks in post after the shoot and although the shoot was nearly perfect there were a few moments in the practical moves and the set that would just be heightened even more by some light VFX. So myself and collaborator Austin Prahl over many late nights, replaced backgrounds, moved feet, split the scenes into layers and just tidied everything up. This was incredibly effective as when watching the pieces there is no hint of manipulation and everything feels natural and as planned.

With this I created some really special graphic and motion moments like the titles working around Kenny G’s silhouetted saxophone performance and had a lot of fun with the marketing assets to bring the weird and wonderful world to life.

Credits

Full credits on youtube

Client Vevo (in-house)

Role Creative Director, Type Designer, Motion Designer

Custom typefaces and motion design for Naill Horan’s ‘Extended Play’ series.

Capturing the feeling of the west with a nod to Niall’s sign-written style of his album ‘The Show’ I created two main faces - one for headings and one for body to create a legible and hand-made look and feel. The custom scripts to give the pieces more life and feel playful and sensitive. I wanted to not be too precious around the final forms rather finding beauty in mistakes and misalignments. Finishing the pieces with some displacement on the type to add to the crafted feel when creating the motion moments.

For the long-form piece including light motion illustrations to deepen the connection to time and place and the overall form of the piece, tracking the time of day through the sun and letting everything move slowly like a deep breath in and out.

Credits

Full credits on YouTube

Client

A$AP ROCKY

Role

Stage Designer

Description

For A$AP ROCKY’s rolling loud stage I was tasked with creating something with depth, multiple levels but on a small budget, very quickly.

So the EP and I came up with this simple system of flats when built up added layers of depth and felt like a silhouetted city with places for A$AP to climb and interact with. The window cut-outs and height and depth changes gave ample room for dynamic lighting changes, fundamentally altering the look of the stage.

From a sketch to an vector illustration to the initial beauty renders this project came together really quickly and Mike Smiths team created an end result that remained very faithful to that initial vision.

Credits

EP - Ed Walker

Director - Kyle Goldberg

Producer - Maura Scully

Production Manager - Chris Booth

Technical Director - Mike Smith

Scenic Supervisor - Peter Squires

Lighting Designer - Dom Adams

Video Director - Joe Lott

Stage Design - Sydney Emery

Screen Content - Green Wall Designs

Client

Vevo (in-house)

Role

Creative director, design, motion design

Description

Vevo Halloween was a huge live music and interactive experience event running for multiple years in the US and UK.

An old project and one that I see endless opportunities for improvement looking at it with fresh eyes and new knowledge, but I like to share this project as an example of what can be done with a very small budget and clever techniques. Closing the pallet down to black and white not only made it easier to stay on theme, it also saved time color matching and hid any 3d sins along the way. And running at 12 fps meant everything ran much quicker and everything could be edited on site on an old laptop while retaining a spooky feel.

The theme of the event was phobias so I illustrated out 10 phobias and lightly animated them before projecting them onto cards loosely based around tarot cards before shining a single simple light on them in cinema 4d and running a few basic camera moved around. I continued this theme through to the treatment of artists- allowing on screen content, in-venue assets and marketing all to continue this same look and feel.

Working with the project lead and on site partners the stages and the experience areas were designed collaboratively with the overarching creative in mind so the end result feels incredibly connected.

Credits

Project Lead - Ed Walker

Photography - WMA