TED Countdown – Johan Rockström

We felt humbled by the request to direct this important talk for such a big event. Being a pretty lengthy script, packed with information and data that all felt equally important to communicate, it was almost like having a seven and a half minute script with only headlines that deserved and screamed for the same attention. There’s not a dead second in this talk, therefore it was with both excitement and a healthy amount of intimidation we took on the task.

Directing a collaborative project isn’t always easy. You need to put a lot of trust in your partners, not only to deliver in time but also that what they do deliver will match with all the other parts. In many ways, it can be compared to laying a 10’000 piece jig-saw puzzle. There’s so many different elements that need to fit together: colors, textures, patterns, stroke thickness, timing, etc. We solved that, both by doing a good chunk of the animation in-house, but also by handling all the compositing, to be able to have control over the final look.

The aesthetics we landed were a strong, gritty collage-style to portray the seriousness of the speech. It is still colorful, but with a dominant fiery signal orange and yellow on top of a dark cold gray. The textures work as a manifest of tactility and creativity and brings a kind of guerrilla-style feel to the communication. It’s packed with paper cut-outs and rips, grainy Xerox photocopies, silkscreen prints, and expressive charcoal and pen sketches.