Grant Gilbert

www.doublegstudios.com

Grant Gilbert is a motion graphics designer who works under the name of double g studios in London. Grant was a guest lecturer at Stockport College last November and I found his talk very interesting and educational. Grant has built up a very impressive client base over the years including the re-brand of BBC One, More 4, Five and Big Brother.

Grant explained that he started of at Stockport College around 20 years ago studying a national diploma in graphic design before studying a degree course in Graphic design at UCE in Birmingham. Grant described the course as being 'too print based' and had always preferred motion graphics. From university he went on to work for Planet 24, a television production company who produced the Big Breakfast. Grant started of at the company making cups of tea's and holding up boards on the show, but after a while found himself working on title sequences, promo's and idents.

He explained that the success of working on Channel 4, led him to working at a design studio in New York called Attick. However, the time spent in New York was cut short in 2000 and headed back to the UK and set up his own freelance business and called in double g studios. Grant explained that by having a company name has its advantages as not many companies go to freelancers for their work to be produced.

One of the first projects he shown us was for the Channel 4 music channel called 4 Music, he described he had a very low budget, so the storyboards had to be spot on and were mocked up in photoshop. Having been inspired by music festivals and dancers he decided to use lots of neon lights that he had imported from Germany and use lots of tents and dancers wrapped in neon. I really liked the piece and especially because he edited his own music in sync with the visuals. The promo represented the channel as a brand new contemporary channel.

From this Grant explained he got given the chance to create the ident for another channel 4 spin off channel called More4. Grant had previously designed the logo but now they wanted him to animate this for the ident. He described how he wanted to create an abstract ident that involved shapes and colour. After deciding on the colour palette of different shades of green he use lots of rounded shapes to create the logo. He said he had created the ident in After Effects and Maya. As I am creating my channel ident in After Effects it has shown me that you have lots of different options when creating your ident.

Grant then described his collaboration with Red Bee to pitch on the rebrand of BBC One. Grant explained that getting the font correct was crucial and took months to choose the correct font for the channel. He described how slightly kerning the letters took so much time up but was worth it in the end. This is something I need to take time about when I come to my rebrand of E! Entertainment Television so that the font I choose represents the targe audience. Grant and Red Bee worked together and came up with lots of ideas and storyboards and took the idea of holding up boards to create the logo through to mock up level. They shown the BBC this and they rejected the idea straight away and were told to come up with something completely different as this different represent the channel.

From this set back, they decided to get back to basics and started to look at art deco from the 1950's, Grant noticed a theme throughout of lots of circles being used, which is sign of coming together and being united. He took this idea and created lots of different idents all forming a circle that morph into the logo. The include motorbikes going round in a circle that form the logo, children playing in the field in a circle and kites in the sky forming the logo. The project took 10 months to create and cost over 1.2 Million pound.

I thoroughly enjoyed Grant Gilberts lecture and he has inspired me to create my own channel ident for my final major project. I am constantly looking back at his work for inspiration. I hope to send my work to Grant, when I finish my degree to gain some feedback on my project.