Pepsi. Doritos. Target. MTV. They’re some of the world’s biggest brands, and in recent months, they’ve all turned to VFS grad Mark Miller’s Dark Igloo.
Since graduating from the one-year Digital Design program in 2005 – as part of its very first graduating class, in fact – Mark hasn’t had much in the way of downtime. He headed straight to New York and signed on with Firstborn Multimedia, where he spent a year creating Flash interfaces. From there, thehappycorp global.
Now, with momentum on his side, he’s slingshotted into a new challenge altogether – running the Brooklyn-based Dark Igloo with co-founder Dave Franzese. And in less than a year, they’ve worked with an all-star roster of clients. All the while, Mark’s somehow managed to continue his daily design exercise, stretch daily.
We’ve written about Mark before – notably to touch base on his work with thehappycorp. But we were craving an update on his new projects, and caught up with Mark to talk Dark Igloo, the bliss of MTV-fed nostalgia, and what the future holds for this designer on the rise.
Can you tell us a bit about your career trajectory since graduating from VFS?
VFS instructed us to forward our final project brief to companies we were interested in working for with information about ourselves. When my final project was complete, I followed up with my end result, and Firstborn Multimedia was one of several interviews I set up in NYC as a result of that.
I quickly discovered that as much as I love interaction design, I needed to find a place that would allow me to experiment with different technologies and take on all types of work. This lead me to thehappycorp global, a creative services company that creates websites but also video production, print, branding, 2.0 design, events, and creative consulting, where I served as Senior Art Director for two years. I now run a studio called Dark Igloo in Brooklyn.
What kind of work did your role at thehappycorp entail?
As Senior Art Director, I wore a lot of hats, and those hats would change style each season. Some of the hats were actually limited edition and I had to get the knock-off versions just to fit in. My job was to lead small teams in creating brands, websites of all sorts, posters, books, cards, underground events, animation sequences, t-shirts, and taglines.
So, what can you tell us about Dark Igloo?
Dark Igloo is a company that specializes. We work with two clients each month in order to focus on quality service and create things we care about. We bring in amazing vendors as needed to fit a project. The rest of the time we spend developing our own dreams and ideas.
For the layperson, could you describe your thoughts on what branding is, and why it’s important?
Your brand is someone’s reaction to you. For example, If you miss a friend’s birthday party, they are not going to be pleased and it will affect your relationship. Pepsi has a hell of a lot of friends.
Humans desire understanding. Relationships are about communication. Without these things, the world falls apart. We help others communicate that understanding.
Why does branding excite you?
I grew up on a small farm around all sorts of animals. I named each and every one of them, and the ones that lived long enough got taglines.
I’ve always been interested in personal image. In 5th grade I lied to the optometrist – and my mother – so I could get glasses because I thought they looked cool.
Creating images that resonate with people is addicting. I made my first logo when I was 12. It’s invigorating to create a symbol and have someone not only recognize it but understand it and feel something.
Personally I use brands to tell stories and flesh out ideas. Dark Igloo creates communication systems that serve as guides but more importantly as constraints. Nothing can be everything. Everything can be nothing.
Tell us about the goals for MTVMusic.com.
If you’ve ever thought about working with sound for film, TV, or video games, come on out! VFS Sound Design Open House Register for this Open House at vfs.com/openhouse or call 604.631.3591.
Case in point: Ken Ashdown, the music exec turned EBM Head of Department, has contributed a section in Marketing: An Introduction, 3rd Canadian Edition, which came out earlier this month. Ken’s section is called “How do you compete with free?” and touches on pricing in the music industry – drawing heavily, of course, on his own expertise and experience. Check it out!
All three chose the one-year Digital Design program at VFS, and two of them - Jorge R. Canedo Estrada and Stefan Ramirez Pérez – have already begun their studies. (The third, Christopher Harrell, is set to join us in May.) You can bet we’ll be following up with these three soon. In the meantime, YouTube itself has blogged a bit of an update, featuring some of the work Jorge and Stefan have accomplished already at VFS. Well worth a look. Here’s a taste, courtesy of Jorge: Also, it was made last year (and so pre-VFS), but take a look at this amazing Joanna Newsom video Stefan and his brother Benjamin made for a video contest run by the music blog Said the Gramophone! Edit: By popular demand, here’s Stefan’s video:
“Many people in Poland don’t have access to good education,” Bart explains. “The internet is now getting more and more accessible. I came to the conclusion that e-learning is not yet delivered in the right way to consumers. It’s not collaborative or open enough. Education needs to be engaging to keep one’s attention and encourage self-learning. I believe that when a student or teacher becomes engaged and inspired, that’s when education starts working the way it should.” To that end, Bart credits his own teachers – particularly Digital Design Head of Department Sebastien de Castell, Eric Torin, and Jacob Tran – for their help, advice, and encouragement in getting the project’s original incarnation off the ground. You can check MEPI out at mepi.pl. (It’s in Polish.)
Midnight Ballet, the final project of 3D Animation & Visual Effects grad Jin Xie, is one of the final nominees at the 2009 Elan Awards. The film’s one of three contenders in the Best Student Animated Production category. Congrats, Jin!
The December '07 issue of Soldier, the official magazine of the British Army, featured C2i's handiwork on the cover. Yuris Mangolds, who graduated from both Foundation Visual Art & Design and 3D Animation & Visual Effects at VFS, carved out his own kind of professional niche by founding C2i Studios. C2i’s primary market is the military, animating state-of-the-art robotic machines, and it also provides services to the architectural and medical sectors, among others. Yuris entered the Foundation program with a purpose – he knew he’d be pursuing the 3D program afterward – but it also formed the very beginnings of an impressive professional and personal network. Through C2i, he’s worked with six other VFS grads at various times, hailing from Foundation and 3D alike. We asked Yuris about C2i’s origins, some of the highs and low of the work he’s doing, and how a two-year VFS experience has bolstered his business. What was your background before going into 3D? What first drew you to the industry? My background prior to VFS was in architecture, mechanical engineering, and CAD in general. I also worked on level design for video games as well as traditional art, video editing, and graphic design. I was fortunate to learn that 3D would be my career path at a very early age, and have dedicated most of my life to pursuing it. Like many students, you began your VFS in the Foundation program. A few years on now, what do you think that experience offered you? The experience in the Foundation program gave me time away from the computer to focus on traditional art. I also learned valuable concepts about composition and visual storytelling for photography and film. Let’s skip ahead past VFS here. How did C2i Studios come about? C2i really found me. I was offered a job making a short concept of operations animation which turned out very well. Soon after, I became in high demand and needed to bring in more people to work on the projects as they increased in scale. C2i mainly creates concept of operations animations dealing with new and emerging unmanned vehicle technology for the US Army. We’ve also done concept art and product visualization for military robotics firms as well as a variety of classified projects. While the projects and content we do can be extremely “cool,” the biggest disadvantage is that I’m unable to show people our best work. Apart from its hush-hush nature, what are some of the challenges specific to that kind of work?
Our friends over at Stuttering Is Cool have posted up a lengthy audio interview with Ssstutter director Bruce Oothout and producer Youssef El-Khoury, both grads of the Film Production program – where they made the film. You can also read the text interview we did with Youssef and Bruce here.
Sex and the Socket – a fictional ad for compact fluorescent light bulbs that was his final project in the program – might sound dry. In practice, it’s a clever concept flawlessly executed, and Cesar was rewarded for his efforts when the project took Gold at the MI6 Advertising Awards for Best Student Marketing as well as a Davey Award. When we caught up with Cesar after the MI6 win, we asked him what future accomplishments he’d set his sights on. His reply? “I would love to work at a place like Pixar, DreamWorks, or ILM, since they care about storytelling. I will do whatever is necessary to get there.” Last year, in the animation equivalent of Babe Ruth’s called shot, he made good, signing on with DreamWorks Animation in Los Angeles to work as a Surfacing Artist on Shrek Goes Fourth. “I get to apply textures and surface properties to anything that appears on screen,” he explains. We’ll let Cesar tell the story of what he’s been up to since graduating from VFS in 2006 and how he landed at his dream company. We know that DreamWorks has been your ‘dream job’ for quite a while. What is it about the company and its work that you love so much? Everything inside it is in balance. The life inside the company is as great as their movies. I wanted to belong to a family and not only another workplace. I like to make a person’s life better with my work. Making someone smile is worth a lot to me. I’ll say that it helped me focus my creativity and artistic talents into attaining a specific goal. VFS helps you be a professional and not only a hobbyist. I remember that one teacher told me once, “Being a professional means more than being just great at what you do. It means you can be great under the direction of someone else. A professional musician knows to play any style that their public asks and not only the style he likes to play.” VFS helped me be more confident with myself. It helped me realize dreams can come true! What made you choose Digital Design rather than, say, 3D Animation & Visual Effects?
Introducing the 2009 VFS Summer Intensive Programs – 9 five-day programs beginning July 2009 that will allow you to experience our acclaimed one-year programs in a week of learning, doing, and having fun. The curriculum will be delivered by VFS’s faculty of respected entertainment industry pros, and participants in each program will come away from their week with hands-on experience and real insight into what a one-year program at VFS can offer. VFS Summer Intensive Programs include: Experience VFS (a week sampling all of VFS’s programs) – July 20-24 Also, after completing a VFS Summer Intensive Program, students enrolling in a full-time VFS program will have the cost of their Intensive Program applied toward their tuition. Summer Intensive Programs are open to anyone 17 years of age or older. Spaces are extremely limited and are expected to fill quickly. For full details and to register, visit vfs.com/summer2009. Hope to see you in July!
Reminder: Sound Design Open House
Just a reminder that our Sound Design Open House is this week. Join us on Wednesday, March 18 for a hands-on evening where you’ll be able to meet Head of Department Robert Grieve (Zoolander, The Big Chill and many other classic films) and other faculty, learn about the Sound Design for Visual Media program, and participate in an interactive recording session.
Wednesday, March 18, 6pm
Sound Design Campus
1380 Burrard St. (3rd floor)Head of EBM Contributes to Marketing Book
It’s what you get when your faculty are connected to industry. And our one-year Entertainment Business Management program is no exception: its instructors have something to say about film producing or accounting or music publishing because they’ve been there and are still there.YouTube Winners Make the Scene
It was about nine months ago that we announced the three winners of the VFS/YouTube Scholarship Competition – three incredible creative minds and aspiring designers who won full-tuition scholarships on the strength of YouTube video submissions on the theme “What Matters to You?”Seedcamp Lauds Grad’s E-Learning Site
Digital Design grad Bartosz Barlowski has been busy since graduating from VFS about a year ago. His latest project: MEPI, a Polish e-learning platform and social networking environment. It’s actually an outgrowth of his final project in Digital Design, amepi video tutorials. Most recently, MEPI was recognized by Seedcamp as one of the 20 most interesting internet startups in the Central European region.Midnight Ballet Up for Elan
Grad Concentrates on Firepower
I understand you have clients in the architectural and military sectors. Could you elaborate on the kind of work you’ve been doing under the C2i banner?Ssstutter Director and Producer Podcasted
Chasing the DreamWorks Dream
What more can we say about Cesar Alejandro Montero Orozco? The Digital Design grad has parlayed a talent for clear, effective storytelling and great animation – to say nothing of boundless enthusiasm – into his dream career.
You went through the Digital Design program, rather than an animation program — can you speak a bit about how DD gave you the tools and experience that helped you get where you are?
There are so many things that Digital Design has helped me with that it’s difficult to be fair and select a few.Introducing VFS Summer Intensives!
Wondering about what it’s like to take a full-time one-year VFS program, but want to try it out before making a big decision about your educational future?
Acting for Film & Television – July 6-10
Animation & Visual Effects – July 13-17
Digital Design – July 6-10
Film Production – July 13-17
Game Design – July 13-17
Makeup Design for Film & Television – July 13-17
Sound Design for Visual Media – July 6-10
Writing for Film & Television – July 6-10