Motion design corporate presentation

In my quest to master motion design, I started a personal project inspired by the title sequence of the miniseries The Pacific and The Borgias. Since I already worked for them in the past, I decided to use the Caisse Populaire Desjardins Rideau d’Ottawa 100th anniversary as the subject of this project. The one minute sequence is a corporate presentation of the origin and milestones on this financial institution’s history. The video is available in 720p on Youtube.

 Copyright Dany Pepin 2012

A Time-lapse Experiment

There are many beautiful and inspiring Time-lapse videos on the web. Because of my interest in every visual art form, I decided to try and make one myself as an experiment. Since I don’t own a DSLR camera, the shots don’t look as professional as I liked. The intervals (30s) in between the shots was a bit too long and made the final video fast and a bit choppy. Nonetheless, the combination of the animated photography with the music by Chris Blackwell offers quite a view of by bedroom window.

 Copyright Dany Pepin 2012

School project S5 – Event posters

For this project we had to design 3 large format posters of variable sizes for a fictional event. Being somewhat of a geek, I chose an event I would like to see: Ottawa Comic-Con. It is a convention for fans of all kind (comics, sci-fi, horror, movies, TV, video games, etc).

Ottawa is a city with a rich architectural history, so going back in time graphically was an interesting idea. The overall look of the three types of posters is the “Art Nouveau” movement and the Vintage 40s with a touch of “propaganda” style. There’s a little “futurism” on the horizontal banner and triptych. These artistic styles feature many diagonal lines, perspective, movement and color desaturation. The chosen typography is the most representative elements of the time period illustrated in this poster. Although a vintage style is used, the mixture of minimalism and retro is very trendy nowadays. So this is a good marriage between the old and the new.

The parliament building has been used to identify the city of Ottawa. It is the architectural element most identifiable to Ottawa and is easily recognizable for Canadians and potential visitors of the convention. The new convention center is also represented more or less subtly on the three posters. The superhero representation is generic. It could be any superheros from Captain America to Batman

The poster

The title highly visible and the Peace Tower serves as a guideline to the bilingual information at the bottom right. The Superheros is transparent, otherwise we would have conflicted with the tower. It would also look as if it was ultraman or godzilla wanting to destroy the parliament while standing in the Ottawa river. The radiation effect brings attention to the parliament building and the fact that something is happening in Ottawa. The ground triangular texture is reminiscent of the new convention center.

The bus sign

Here, the big splash of color catches your attention and the direction of the superhero points to the title and the parliament. The irradiation is still a focus point on the parliament signifying the event in the capital. The motion effect of the flying superhero is reminiscent of the futurism style (repetitions) and the convention center is represented with its oval shape and triangular texture.

The triptych

The triptych was a good challenge especially if when you want to keep continuity between the posters but also for each part to convey its message. The title banner placed on the left draws attention and the eye follow the flying superhero (with the splash of yellow) and then goes to the convention center and the information. Then the eye goes back up to the silhouette who is looking at the parliament building closing the loop. It is a story from right to left. The hero first sees a threat, then it activates his powers and flies away.

copyright 2011

School project S4 – Annual Report

For their 100th anniversary, the Caisse Populaire Desjardins Rideau asked the graphic design (GD) and public relations (PR) students to help them get ready for this benchmark year by preparing a marketing campaign (PR) and by creating a logo and an annual report layout (GD). The annual report was to include a section about the history of the financial institution along side the usual numbers, budgets and tables. The student who’s design will be chosen will have the opportunity to do the official 2011 annual report and his historic section will be included in the local french newspaper.

Since this is a financial institution, I decided that most of the report would be very simple and straight forward with the exception of the cover and the historic section which would contain more visual elements. The cover is the “pièce de résistance” where a black and white mosaic of the different buildings and locations of this institutions are included along side the founder Alphonse Desjardins and the peace tower of the canadian parliament. The backdrop gives the effect of charcoal particles flowing in the wind toward the future. Small transparent hexagons flow along with the particle going from black and white to color.

The historic section inside the report mimics the cover and include a timeline that goes from 1912 to 2012. Again, a transition from black and white to color includes monochromatic images of the different buildings through out the years.

Below are some pictures of the annual report. The latter can be seen in its entirety through this flash book. Drag the lower-right corner to flip through the pages.

 copyright 2011

School project S4 – LAFF poster

For this illustration project, we had to create a poster for a real client, The Latin American Film Festival in Ottawa (March 17-27 2011). My poster won the competition and will be posted all over the city.

My concept behind the poster was to feature Latin America and its culture. I chose a hot pepper as the focus of this piece because it symbolizes the strength and the warmth of it people and because its shape can resemble the South-American continent. From a good distance you only see a pepper with text wrapped around it, but those who will look closely will be able to see all the culture elements (art, history, entertainment, etc.) surrounding it. Since the Latin American culture is colorful and festive, I added some ribbons on a bright yellow background, which creates contrast. The left image below is the original illustration while the right image is the edited version has with the client modifications.

 copyright 2011

School project S1 – City of Ottawa Magazine spread

For this design project we had to create two fictional magazine spreads promoting the City of Ottawa and its new website.

 copyright 2009