Framestore

How it began, Framestore 1986

I had a conversation with someone I hadn't seen for a long time last evening. We talked about who was doing what and where and the changes we'd seen and experienced in the 30-odd years since we last met. One of the biggest strands of conversation was, inevitably, technology and the way it has transformed not just design but everything else, which brings me to the above.

 

My best friend on Central's MA Information Design course was a chap called, Mike McGee. His area of study was this new fangled thing called computer graphics. I had no idea what he was going on about most of the time, but, like a kindly uncle indulging a toddling niece, he never once threw me a pitying stare or called me a dullard. (Would you have dared, Mike?) He was evangelical in his belief in 'this' technology and he 'knew' that it would change everything.

 

A year or so after Central, Mike called me to tell me that he was part of a group who were setting up something called, Framestore, and would I like to design their corporate identity? (We didn't talk about brand identities at that time.) So I did. It was a literal representation. A low-tech foil to the new and cutting-edge tech nature of it. A kit of parts, which could be used together (above) or separately. It was bold, in-your-face, unapologetic and very different to anything else at the time. Just like them.

 

Back to the conversation.

My friend hadn't heard of Framestore, so I reeled-off the list of films they've worked on and won Oscars for and his jaw dropped a little. And it made me think. It's not often that you get to play a very small part in history. Get to see something grow and move from a couple of rooms in Earlham Street to Hollywood and beyond. It pulled the passage of time and change of pace into sharp focus. And it made me think about how Mike framed the future for me all those years ago, but I was looking out of a different window.