case study : design, animation

Google Small Business - Record Store Day 2020

Overview

Fivespace is a black-owned record store with a curated collection of music and collectibles in San Diego, California. To celebrate National Record Store Day in 2020, Google Small Business featured Fivespace in their Instagram stories. It introduces the record store and its owner, Sir Froderick, and an album he recommended - Daily Operation by Gang Starr.

Team

Art Direction - Pitu Sanchez
Design - Diana Liu
Animation - Diana Liu

Task

The series included 6 short animations in sequence. Our task was to storyboard, design, and animate the series.

Process

To create the retro look of vinyl days and to reflect hiphop’s grass roots origins, we chose a collage style with elements and textures that look hand-made. We also added a low-res xerox style to the photos, reflecting the grittiness of early 90s New York. Although everything was done digitally, we emulated a DIY aesthetic with the ripped edges, adding layers to create a more organic look. We also introduced various paper textures, natural shades and shadows, halftone dots and hand-made print textures, and sprinkled in 90s inspired shape designs to add vibrancy and movement to the composition. It was also important to make sure that the text is clear and legible in the complex layout, so we used a bold sans serif on a white background, with some hand written elements.

For the design phase, we sketched the full set of storyboards with text laid in. The first 2 frames were designed in their final style for client review, and the rest were sketched in detail. Due to the amount of information we wanted to include in these animations, some include complex scene transitions which were designed in the storyboard phase.