The Future is Not the Past: 20 Year Retrospective
Justin Cone:
I didn’t realize Blind was founded in 1995. What was Blind doing back then?
Chris Do:
At our inception, we were mostly print based designers dabbling in motion design (it wasn’t even a term back then). My introduction to motion came by two key events.
A classmate of mine at Art Center recommended that I take the Cosa After Effects class, seeing my interest in animation. My teacher was Lynda Weinman (pre Lynda.com and author) and the class blew my mind. I immediately fell in love with the ability to manipulate and control “characters” over time. This was far more intuitive than working in Alias Power Animator, which I was learning at the time.
The other event came by introduction to Kyle Cooper who was the creative director at RG/A LA. He had just finished the titles to Seven and was blazing a trail in main title design. My good friend, Kimberly Jue (who is now married to Kyle and co-founder of Prologue), introduced us. I remember waiting in the lobby of RG/A to show Kyle my portfolio. This was in 1995 and I was sitting there for over an hour waiting for him. As the minutes ticked on and I contemplated leaving, his assistant would descend down the spiral staircase and apologize and assure me that it would only be a few more minutes. When I finally met Kyle, he rifled through my portfolio and stopped about half way through. He apologized, said nice work and left. The meeting was less than 5 minutes long, and I was thinking what a waste of time.
His producer called me the next day and asked if I was interested in working on a storyboard for the main title “Celtic Pride”. I yes said even though I had never made a storyboard before.
Those two events were the catalyst for my foray into motion design. We made the decision to walk away from identity and web deign work so that we could focus on motion design work. It’s been a wild ride ever since.