This was a great mobile project I worked on with the team at Territory Studio for a classic science-fiction universe that should be recognisable to most people on the planet. I explored a range of visual directions inspired by the different films and the way their interface language evolved over time.
I was genuinely pleased that the final direction leaned towards the classic 1970s and 1980s aesthetic. It retained the distinctive, bold and minimal style of the original trilogy while modernising it just enough for a contemporary mobile experience.
The interfaces in the original films were created through a mixture of hand-drawn animation, analogue video techniques and pioneering early computer graphics. Each element had to be drawn, programmed, filmed or played back on set, giving the work a genuine sense of craft and a distinctive character.
Given how painstaking that original process must have been, I felt a slight sense of guilt about how quickly I was able to create these designs using modern tools. The real challenge was restraint, resisting the temptation to embellish them with too much graphical detail and lose the simplicity that made the originals so distinctive.
It was a fun project, and there is something particularly rewarding about contributing to a universe you loved and repeatedly watched on VHS as a kid.
I was genuinely pleased that the final direction leaned towards the classic 1970s and 1980s aesthetic. It retained the distinctive, bold and minimal style of the original trilogy while modernising it just enough for a contemporary mobile experience.
The interfaces in the original films were created through a mixture of hand-drawn animation, analogue video techniques and pioneering early computer graphics. Each element had to be drawn, programmed, filmed or played back on set, giving the work a genuine sense of craft and a distinctive character.
Given how painstaking that original process must have been, I felt a slight sense of guilt about how quickly I was able to create these designs using modern tools. The real challenge was restraint, resisting the temptation to embellish them with too much graphical detail and lose the simplicity that made the originals so distinctive.
It was a fun project, and there is something particularly rewarding about contributing to a universe you loved and repeatedly watched on VHS as a kid.
