If you asked Atlanta’s marketing leaders to name the metro area’s most-admired creative services company, answers would vary. Some might suggest Lorenc+Yoo Design, Wages Design, Grant Design Collaborative or Iconologic—all accomplished, to be sure. Knowledgeable sources even might suggest Turner Productions, a super choice, but one that does not service external clients. Agency fans might trumpet the talents of a local ad agency that’s still basking in the afterglow of a hot young creative director who’s already left for a place where advertising is actually taken seriously. The clueless would offer up the High Museum of Art because they like traveling exhibits from the Louvre and Hermitage with their Starbucks cup (kidding, OK?).
PBS KIDS: In 2006 PBS KIDS asked Primal Screen to give the characters Dot and Dash a handmade world to inhabit and explore. Primal obliged by building mountains,oceans, houses and farms out of felt, cotton balls, popsicle sticks and other craft elements. The top three rows here show Primal’s latest iteration of the look, employing the studio’s new “deep-.at” approach with real-world lighting and unusual camera angles. Bottom row: PBS KIDS Island is an aggregation website for PBS KIDS Raising Readers literacy programs. Visually, Primal used a streamlined version of the look developed for broadcast. See this work at www.pbskids.org/read/tour.
But few would mention Primal Screen, Atlanta’s masters of platform-independent, dynamic media and graphics … that is, few outside the broadcast, cable and animation worlds. Those observers had better start mentioning Primal, because its area of expertise—dynamic media—may well be taking over the graphic design world, where communication is rapidly migrating to PDAs and pliable handheld monitors.
THE MISSING LINK
I first met Doug Grimmett, founding partner and creative director of Primal Screen, in 2007 over dinner with friends. He spoke passionately about his efforts to make the Atlanta design community more aware of the potential of dynamic media. Grimmett has been putting his money where his mouth is, too, shelling out more than $10,000 between 2006 and 2007 to bring in notable dynamic-makers for AIGA Atlanta gatherings. In 2008 Grimmett is beginning to see a lot of progress and change in the design community. Dynamic-graphic designers now hold key positions on the local AIGA board. He’s gratified. To explore the changes, Grimmett invited me to drop by his office and learn more about his work and the media to which it is applied.
This is where my re-education began. At first I saw the work as TV, TV, TV. Then I began to see it in terms of new media that I apply to my life: phone, PDA, wireless laptop, camera. After that I began to see dynamic graphics as the future. Those who create and apply them will rule the communication universe, as PDAs and new monitor technologies become more prevalent. Wireless, foldable, lightweight media receivers will revolutionize what we read (view), when we read it and where we read it.
As for myself, I stopped my curbside subscription to The New York Times a year ago, a transition I once regarded as unthinkable. Now enjoyed from my wireless laptop, the online version brings me more content than I ever got from the print edition (especially video reports). Less waste, less costly, more dynamic information. What’s not to like? Even the Times will be glad to know I now spend more time viewing content and dynamic-motion ads than I did shuffling through print pages.
THE PROMISE
But Grimmett’s prophesy of a dynamic-media world carries an important and hopeful message for the design industry: He reminds me that every popular (successful!) device, product, service or company is entered and experienced through portals, hallways, rooms and tools created by graphic designers. Says Grimmett, “Think about it—from Google to YouTube, from iPods to Wii, it is designers who create the experience, build the interface and give it meaning. Design has never been as important as it is now.” Grimmett’s message has resonance in these troubled times.
FROM TALLAHASSEE TO TIBOR
Doug and his wife Jane met as design students in Tallahassee, Fla. After various internships and odd jobs in Tallahassee, they moved to New York in 1981. Doug took a job at CBS, while Jane took a position with Tibor Kalman at M&Co. Jane Grimmett recalls how they both eventually came to work for Tibor Kalman:
“When we moved to New York, Doug immediately went to M&Co with the hope of meeting Tibor and showing him his portfolio. Tibor was unavailable, so Doug handed his self-promotion piece to the receptionist. As Doug reached the elevator, Tibor came charging down the hall after him, inviting Doug back for a chat. After speaking and viewing his portfolio, Tibor told Doug he regretted that he had no designer jobs to offer him—but he did need a production artist. Tibor asked Doug if he knew anyone looking for that type of work. Doug recommended me, and I worked for Tibor for three years. Meanwhile, Doug worked for CBS for a year before leaving to freelance—including taking projects for M&Co.”
“He was my mentor, my greatest teacher,” says Doug of Kalman. “He was generous with information, time and life. He showered those around him with that generosity. He reminded me about the difference between experiential opportunity and financial opportunity. Tibor was right, of course. That was perhaps the greatest lesson he ever taught me.”
Doug worked a year or so freelancing for M&Co before moving on to Workman Publishing for a more lucrative opportunity. In 1989 the pair decided to leave New York for an ad agency in Chapel Hill, N.C. They remained there, reasonably content, for a few years, but the little Tibor that lives inside Doug’s head kept saying, “Doug, there is more for you than a comfortable check and an easy job. There are long, steep roads that lead to breathtaking views. But you must take the difficult path—waste not a moment.”
SPIKE: For this reface concept, Primal Screen distilled Spike TV’s core values—”girls, machines, girls with machines, all fast,” says Primal’s Doug Grimmett. The spots used a combination of live action, 3D and manipulated stills, all delivered in high-contrast black and yellow ... “like a power tool,” in Grimmett’s words.
ADVANCED SCREENING
In 1995 Doug and Jane incorporated Primal Screen, a name suggested by Steve Mank, its first employee and now a principal. At the beginning, the firm’s work was all for broadcast and cable television, starting with an on-air identity for Nickelodeon. The Primal team created a ton of movie promotions for Turner Network Television (which aired much of the MGM library that now appears on Turner Classic Movies). “We carried nothing over from the other agency,” says Doug, reflecting on the launch of Primal Screen, “and that was fine with us. I had plenty of contacts from my New York days as an animation designer, so I used them to get us traction.”
And traction they made. The company grew quickly, and by the end of 1996 it had six full-timers. Steve Mank’s role as a writer, composer and sound designer was instrumental to the group’s rapid success. Says Mank, “Traditionally, sound and motion were created separately and then wed later. Back in the ’80s it took an army of people to do this kind of stuff—some for sound, others for animation and others for post. Worse, it was all done in a very linear fashion—you could not create the image and sound simultaneously.” But by the mid-’90s, he says, “desktop technology was improving so rapidly that we began creating sound and graphics side by side. Today the technology is even better.”
In 1996 Primal Screen’s growing client, Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta, kept loading on the work. Steve, Doug and Jane made an important decision: To keep pace with Turner’s needs, they had to get close to the client and the growing pool of talent Turner was attracting. They relocated the company to Atlanta.
MOVING AHEAD
On the strength of Turner projects, Primal Screen grew into a stable and successful dynamic-graphics company. The work that accompanies this article speaks for itself, but it is the scope of Primal Screen’s reach that is extraordinary for Atlanta.
First, Doug and his team know that to remain innovative in dynamic media you have to remain versant in new technology. That does not equate to fads or trends—it means “smarts.” It is a given that design technology can change while you are out getting your hair done. When you get back, you might look good, but your business is as dated as a beehive. Primal Screen keeps current. Says Pat Giles, associate creative director at Saatchi & Saatchi/NYC, “Primal Screen can do it all: cel animation, CGI, Flash, live-action combinations. It has attention to detail and design that rivals other world-class animation studios in London, New York and Los Angeles.”
But staying on top of tech isn’t the end-all, either. Client Michael Ouweleen, vice president and creative director at Cartoon Network, has been working with Primal Screen since 1996—an awfully long time to maintain a client relationship in a business as fickle as broadcast and cable design. Ouweleen explains why:
“A lot of the work we do involves putting a character out there in a certain way—and Primal Screen gets that. We try to do stuff that is idea- rather than fad-driven, so decisions about creative partners are less about ‘who’s hot now’ or ‘what technique is big now’ and more about ‘who can nail this idea with us?’”
Pete Johnson, an ex-Cartoon Network executive now with Nickelodeon, agrees. “Primal Screen consistently innovates and improves upon what it—and the various industries it creates for—has done. It is a living, creative company ... not a logo, and certainly not the ‘hot shop’ of the moment.”
MONKEY DO
They call themselves “primates,” and, as is the case in any successful creative business, there are plenty of monkeys in their tree. I’ve mentioned Doug, Jane and Steve. Partner Rick Newcomb, the most senior director on staff, provides the vision for the Primal Screen “look.” Partner Susan Shipsky is the company “locomotive”—she is the company’s public face and the monkey who brings in much of the work and supervises the talented production staff.
Bottom row: Tell Us Your Story is a series of web cartoons created for the Hallmark Channel online. Viewers phone in kooky, sweet or just interesting stories from their lives; the best submissions are animated by various studios. Primal Screen contributed two, including this one about a big cat with a bigger appetite.
There are those who wonder, wide-eyed and wistful, “Can I be a dynamic-media maker too?” The answer is yes. Witness the widely variant educational tracks and work experiences of the other primates: Shane McGee, Teresa Cloud, Dale Bradshaw, Jeremy Seymour, Giulia Bundesmann, Donald Emerson, Rob Shepps, Fumi Yozawa, Rob Shetler, Jim Threlkeld, Hunter Matheson and Brandon Bentley. Among them are letters in computer science, computer animation, graphic design, filmmaking, film production and English. There are code writers and storytellers. There are prop builders and seamstresses, lighting designers and mascot makers. And did I mention how jaw-droppingly beautiful the studio is? I’d volunteer as the sandwich boy once a week to be there.
OK, enough praise and posturing for the sink job. There are some things wrong with Primal Screen: Its front parking lot needs a tree, and anyone in the studio can see your business if you forget to lock the bathroom door. Oh, and Doug is too nice to assholes. Other than that, they’re good—very good—and positioned to lead the next design revolution. Now, sit back, log on and enjoy the show.
www.primalscreen.com
[TOP]: ANIMATION STYLES employed for Animania run the gamut from Punch and Judy to classic cartoon drawing to modern 3D styles.
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