This is Our Youth

Display Ads, Motion Design, Web Design04.20.2019

The young and the restless

This is Our Youth is about three young white kids living their bohemian life in the upper west side of Manhattan in the 80’s; all of which I have zero life relevance to, but as a designer, it’s our job to communicate that vibe.

More importantly, it was a Scott Rudin production, and the man loves his big, justified copy. The team produced a grunge inspired key-art, with weathered paper textures and tape, staples, and pins “hanging” it up. It was up to me to carry the motif into the pixel realm…

Role:: Art Director + Design

Client:: Scott Rudin Productions

Team:

Paper pixels

The website was a great opportunity to really lean into the key art look, complete with paper backgrounds, tape & pins holding up divs and containers, and all the fun photo-real flourishes before the whole “flat look” took over web design.

Another fun addition I added that the CD let me get away with was adding surprise cinemagraph gifs throughout the site. AT THE TIME (2014), cinemagraphs were only starting to take off, and I really wanted to take a crack at it. It’s something I wish was incorporated more into websites, but with the decline of destination sites, I’ll leave that as a dream deferred.

A literal wall of quotes

When it comes to theater shows and display ads, the modus operandi is to have a bunch of critic quotes praising the show, the cast, the director, and then the end card with Get Tickets CTA. But instead of just blinking critic quotes on and off, we decided to bring more of the 80’s bohemian vibe of the play into the digital ads.

So what you have are strips of paper with critic endorsements printed on them, getting taped & pinned onto this infinite white door. Young adults don’t know the value of putting things in frames and hanging them, so the vibe is right. The camera moves across the door as more of these critic praises stack up, and we finally land on the end frame.

And yes, I can do static banners, but those aren’t fun to look at; so here’s a 970×90 & 300×600 tandem progressive unit to check out: