DECONSTRUCTING AVENIR

Brief
You are to create Kinetic Typographic movie using Adobe After Effects. You will tell a short story about a renowned type designer named Adrian Frutiger. You may choose any part of Adrian Frutiger’s story to narrate, e.g. his works, his font creation, his biography etc. Plan and write out the story outline in a short write up that suits the duration needed. Choose only one of his popular fonts, Univers or Avenir and translate it into a kinetic typography animation.

Specifications
  • Movie Composition Size is at HD 1280 x 720 with frame rate 30 or 29.97
  • Duration, minimum 30 sec, max 1 min
  • Only vector graphics from Illustrator and text created from After Effects are allowed
  • No jpeg or imported images 
  • Movie to be submitted in MP4 with H264 compression, and After Effects file (ae) and all its link

Concept
I wanted my video to be about branding Adrian Frutiger, for in this way, it captures the essence of him and his work. The video will deconstruct his life and his works. In summary, it will portray Adrian as Avenir, that he is his masterpiece.
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The art direction for the kinetic typography video is inspired by Swiss design: simple and clean. As the video talks about Adrian Frutiger’s life, the main information conveyed were:
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  • The country he was born in
  • The year he was born
  • His occupation
  • His typeface designs
  • Introduction to Avenir
  • His impact on design

In order to make the animation more interesting, I broke down the information into three chapters, used illustration and narration, making it more digestible for viewers while retaining their attention.

Narration/Voice-Over
Adrian Frutiger. Born Switzerland, 1928. Aspiring sculptor, typesetter apprentice, and eventually, creator of celebrated typefaces.

Frutiger designed one of his most enduring typeface – Avenir. While Frutiger worked alone, at age sixty, quietly contemplating human nature, Avenir emerged. Geometric and sans-serif, it is a more organic and humanist interpretation amongst his other work. Released in three weights, Frutiger considers Avenir his masterpiece, saying, “My personality is stamped upon it.”
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For more than 50 years, Adrian Frutiger made the world legible. For as long as his type shall live, so does he.
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This is Adrian. This is Avenir.