my name is matt johnson and i like being a human.
i dig art. i love the little things. i crave brain food.
i’m crazy about music and films. i nurture healthy living.
and i’m obsessed with the value design has to offer
to every aspect of life and living.
an insatiable hunger for a problem to solve.
and a visceral desire to create something compelling.
my work and play revolves around this principle and
this site is a showcase my journey in fulfilling it.
Boss 3D Work // Personal
Stranger than Fiction Quote // Personal
Low is a Height Interpretation // Personal
Adobe Open Screen Project // Luxurious Animals for Adobe
Reel Open-tag // Luxurious Animals
Faux Epiphone Promo // Personal
Illocution Animatic // Personal
Lightbulbs & Feathers // Personal
Crystal Ice // Personal Project
Intel Vision Piece
Body Cut from "Ask Your Friends" - Pretty Lights
Intro Cut from "Reintroduction" - Doomtree
This piece is centered around the investigation of typographic transition and how it evolves a message. Ramping up with a few animation studies, this project gave me an opportunity to explore the art of storytelling with a "one-shot" linear frame of mind. My major interest lied in pushing the relationship between typography and audio content while keeping an engaging and seamless balance between the two. I chose a dynamic audio clip from the film "Stranger than Fiction" for it's proper amount of range, tension, and humor. These three attributes allowed for a compelling direction and a well informed choreography of type in motion.
ProcessI began designing a basic poster layout to study color and spacial relationships between typefaces. After finalizing a design, I produced a rough pacing animation followed by focusing on the transitions between the elements. Aside from gaining valuable experience with new tools and technology, the entire process of concept to production taught me the value of bringing character to each element and the true power of the small details.
Inspired by this erie and gorgeous song, I set out to convey my interpretation as a sort of music video featurette. This project provided many learning opportunities being my first using film, talent, and minimal special effects. My intrigue sprung from the lyrics and how to relay the ambiguous poetry with an equally vague and interesting story.
StoryMy concept for this piece involved a vision of a nightmarish but potentially nearing future in which nature itself has been rendered harmful to humanity as a result of man's very own nature (pollution, over-consumption, genetic engineering, etc.). My objective was to tell as story that was open for audience interpretation but loosely told a story matching the mood and tone of the song. I walked away from this project with a very new appreciation for the power of preparedness when dealing with a multi-processed production including scouting, talent seeking, shooting, editing, and post-production.
A project for Adobe, created while working at Luxurious Animals, this was a vision piece used to show the potential for the flash platform in a variety of devices. This project gave me the opportunity to wear many hats from the role of designer/animator.
ProcessAlthough this was a collaborative project, I was tasked with much of the post-production / sfx work. Working from a very rough cut of an animatic done prior to filming, I began by designing nine device-specific and uniquely functioning interfaces that were purposed for each scene. From there I was in charge of compositing the GUIs into their respective scenes. This gave me a great opportunity to dive into motion tracking, animating, and visualizing the operation of fictitious futuristic devices.
CreditClient // Adobe
Creative Director // Garrett Nantz
Producer // Robert Bengraff
Music // Antfood
"Ideas are WingsÉ" This metaphor both intrigued and inspired me to present the basic process and structure of design. My concept told the story of how a well-structured design process yields the most unexpected but successful results. Stop-motion seemed like the most appropriate medium to convey the time that a quality design process takes. Experiencing, first-hand, the challenges of creating fluid and realistic movements without the "Hollywood" technology of onionskin animator rigs and such was the drive behind this.
ProcessAs I couldn't fill all the required roles, a good friend helped me from behind the camera while I proceeded to shout instructions and "direct" from the floor of the photography studio. I took over two memory cards worth of images to discover during post-production that in order to create a uniform motion, your frame rate has to be as low as your fastest two frames. So while I attempted to use many images for a more fluid look. Most of my time was spent cutting frames to present a consistent rate of change. Once I had a solid image sequence I moved into After Effects including music (Sparklehorse/David Lynch collaboration) and focused on pacing.
This animatic was created as an homage to a Hans Christian Anderson quote that has always spoken to me. The focus was on my general clumsiness with words and my aptitude towards music making, instrument playing, and rich taste in music listening. WIth the quote to string my scenes and action along, I also involved a literal play on the phrase "word-vomit" which involved the protagonist literally spewing heavy, metallic words from his mouth. I made it a point that I would not only tell this story and produce a compelling animatic, but I would also write and produce the score that accompanied the action. This was an important introduction to story-telling and motion design as we only delivered a paced image sequence but had to picture the entire project in motion.
The StoryAfter initial concepting, I moved towards story-boarding including a almost every frame seen in the animatic. Once a basic order was in place, I began shooting. There are 3 basic scenes throughout the story, each required a different set of talent, location, and equipment. Once the piece was shot, I compiled a good image sequence, produced a rough pacing of the story and began writing the music. Once I was convinced the story was told, I polished the audio, included sound effects, and created a uniform visual style.
This piece was a motion graphic showcase, done by frog design, for a visionary product featuring Intel's latest computing technology. The product focused on the customer shopping experience and making point-of-sales machines for retailers and customers more appealing, enjoyable, and environment friendly.
ProcessI was brought on to the project after the product was designed and three full-scale prototypes were being built in order to create the "sizzle" piece that would be the public and stakeholder contact point with the concept. Working with an industrial designer, visual designer, and design analyst, we worked many hours to tell the proper story and ensure the proper balance of excitement looking forward, rational need, and value for Intel's chip.
PressWorking with Juxt Interactive, this site was designed to showcase and promote the versatility of Adobe's Creative Suite. This project was my first exposure to the process and breadth of a full-scale interactive initiative. Adobe chose different artists/designers that used it's products to feature in an interactive 3D immersive environment.
ProcessAmong a wide variety of responsibilities, the majority of my work involved taking static environment concepts and bringing them to life within 3D space using a custom built Papervision 3D tool. Experimenting with this technology was a great learning opportunity, an incredible introduction to the versatility and power of Adobe Flash, and a good look at what the program would do in the future.
Press
Nominated for a 2009 Webby Award
I.D. Magazine Honorable Mention
Since there is a myriad of mindless video games out there today, I wanted to create a fun, but mentally constructive experience. I commonly find myself having to think entirely too hard about the easiest math problems due to lack of practice and exposure. Simple math when paying bills or basic unit conversions should be second nature by now but we occasionally struggle and wonder how we could be so dumb. This game combines simple math practice with timed tactile challenges to stimulate and amuse users.
ProcessAfter concepting the general mechanics of the game, I began by creating a quick visual comp for each stage of the game. Once I was satisfied with the overall look, I began building the game. This game was one of my first ventures into strictly interactive flash based pieces and is still one of my favorites.
The Hablamos Juntos initiative is an international collaborative of designers and schools aiming to eliminate barriers and improve the quality of the healthcare experience for people with limited english proficiency. Our role in the initiative, along with other design schools, was to provide a variety of unique iterations of icons for specific healthcare referents. These iterations will then be tested by elected healthcare professionals and researchers involved with the initiative.
ProcessEach student began with three referents, such as, "Health Education - Place to get information on health and healthy practices." We studied the existing symbol system and began to sketch representations of the referents that integrated into the family and language of established symbols. We then moved into a refining stage with digital forms and finally mounted the symbols at a similar size to how they might be displayed. This was a great excursive in considering audience and context. We had to take into account where these symbols would be located, who would be seeking them, and the condition of that person. It was also important to keep a "universal" mind-set throughout our development allowing for the symbols to be used anywhere in the world.
Press
NPR Health Blog
e! Science News
ScienceBlog
*Attached PDF was a 'warm-up' for the HJ initiative.
This project involved a full re-brand of a brand of our choosing. I chose to re-design and re-image a band called Enon for the unique style that could provide a clear direction and their lack consistent brand. Enon is not only a group with an eclectic sound, but their image, type use, color use, and web presence is always evolving and forming a new style. I saw this as a challenge to bring together this eclecticism into a cohesive design that showcased this attribute. The one design driver I wanted to introduce to the brand from the beginning (which is informed by their sound and can be seen in the final design) is the relationship of mechanical technology producing organic and seemingly random art.
ProcessThe project involved information architecture work, identity establishment analysis and establishment, and a visualization of the new image for the brand. I began with a wide sweeping brandscrape and collected all that I could find related to Enon. From here studied various elements such as type, color, scale, texture, imagery, and more. Using my observations I was then able to form a well informed concept for how these brand elements could coalesce and move forward. The final product was the design of five separate pages of a potential website for them. This would include how their music was displayed, how they introduced themselves, how they would update their fans, etc.
Centered around breaking down a complex system to its basic rules and elements, this project was essentially a reverse engineered design. The goal was to create a poster that informed, taught, and aided in the playing of a game. Our group chose the card game of Blackjack. We felt this was a challenging yet graspable game to present in a static poster. We focused on a few types of key elements within the game to provide different levels of learning including: gameplay, rules, strategy, outcomes, and environmental factors.
The StoryOur team began studying the game, playing it, observing the pace and abnormal nuances that occur. We then began to break the game down into a simple flow chart - what happens from beginning to end during the game. Arriving at a basic flow, we then began to brainstorm the decision points required by a play as well as all of the anomalies that can occur. Upon reaching a solid wire display of how the game works and how it's played, we began designing the poster and generating the appropriate copy to accompany the visuals. This project was an incredible exercise in "design-thinking" - observing a complex system, simplifying it, and developing a simple way of conveying the complexities in a cohesive manner.
