A few years after finishing college, I found myself working at Sony’s Team Soho studio in London, one of its leading first-party development teams at the time.
As part of the interview process, candidates were asked to create two front-end UI concepts, effectively art tests, for The Getaway and This Is Football, both then in development for the upcoming PlayStation 2. I built two animated prototypes using Macromedia Director, an early multimedia authoring tool and programming environment widely used to create interactive CD-ROMs and applications.
For The Getaway, I designed a custom logo using Alternative, a free typeface that had come with a typography magazine during my time at Design One, the agency where I was working when I applied for the role. To my surprise, the logo was later adopted as the final identity for the game. After I left, Andy Hamilton refined it further, adding the more distressed finish seen in the final version.
The Getaway was positioned as a cinematic open-world action game inspired by British gangster films such as Get Carter and Snatch. My design and art direction drew heavily from mid-century poster art, particularly the bold compositions and typography of the 1950s and 1960s, with the 1969 Easy Rider campaign providing a key reference.
Shown here are some of the original concepts and explorations from my time at Team Soho, when we were helping to define the visual identity and tone of one of Sony’s most ambitious projects of that era
As part of the interview process, candidates were asked to create two front-end UI concepts, effectively art tests, for The Getaway and This Is Football, both then in development for the upcoming PlayStation 2. I built two animated prototypes using Macromedia Director, an early multimedia authoring tool and programming environment widely used to create interactive CD-ROMs and applications.
For The Getaway, I designed a custom logo using Alternative, a free typeface that had come with a typography magazine during my time at Design One, the agency where I was working when I applied for the role. To my surprise, the logo was later adopted as the final identity for the game. After I left, Andy Hamilton refined it further, adding the more distressed finish seen in the final version.
The Getaway was positioned as a cinematic open-world action game inspired by British gangster films such as Get Carter and Snatch. My design and art direction drew heavily from mid-century poster art, particularly the bold compositions and typography of the 1950s and 1960s, with the 1969 Easy Rider campaign providing a key reference.
Shown here are some of the original concepts and explorations from my time at Team Soho, when we were helping to define the visual identity and tone of one of Sony’s most ambitious projects of that era
