IBM’s Design ethos advocates for partnerships and embraces dualities: Mankind and machine. Fixed and flexible. Natural and engineered. And now... IBM and BUCK.
In a partnership that spans three years, I’ve worked as a core animator on the BUCK spots for IBM. Together with the IBM Design Team, we’ve produced an ongoing series of shorts that demonstrate the use, usefulness, and deeper thinking behind elements of their new design language. Some of us even had the honor to draft and inform new principles along the way.
IBM Design Language
2X Grid
Foundational to their system, the 2x Grid provides structure and guidance for all of their creative decision-making. The core concept of the 2x Grid is to divide or multiply by two, forming a visual rhythm and foundation on which to work. With something so fundamental to IBM’s identity, our challenge was to communicate the usefulness of the 2x Grid as a tool, but also as the expression of an essential idea.
CreditsExecutive Creative Director Orion Tait
Group Creative Director Thomas Schmid
Producer Anne Skopas
Head of Production Kitty Dillard
Design Chris Palazzo
2D Animation Andreas Bjørn Hansen, Chad Colby, Vero Gómez
3D Animation Alec Burns
ILLUSTRATION
IBM’s illustrations should always have a clear purpose, support content and guide a user to understand difficult concepts, products or services. Clear and simple illustrations help provide meaningful user engagement.
GUIDELINES
While developing the illustration film, we where also tasked with creating some guidelines and principles of animation for the IBM brand. Below are some use cases for flat, isometric and line designs.
CreditsExecutive Creative Director Orion Tait
Group Creative Director Jon Gorman
Executive Producer Joe Nash
Head of Production Kitty Dillard
Design Justin Cassano, Vero Gómez
Animation Nicolo Bianchino, Vero Gómez
Guidelines Animation Andreas Bjørn Hansen, Rasmus Bak, Vero Gómez