PsychoTypoGraph: Cocoe Are Mad for Typography

As I was verifying the links when translating last week's post on FontFont's viral ventures I discovered another great motion typography short which would be perfect for the Typophile Film Fest 5. The description for PsychoTypoGraph, a short movie by Cocoe, reads as follows:

In the beginning was the Word.

Through command line all things were made.

PSYCHO

1. [n] A person afflicted with psychosis.

TYPOGRAPH

1. [n] A machine for setting type or for casting lines of type and setting them.

PSYCHOTYPOGRAPH

1. [n] Psychosis on typography.

PsychoTypoGraph from microbians on Vimeo.

The Cocoe Conspiracy is a Spanish multimedia label founded by David Sanfelipe et Gabriel Suchowolski. They principally work in motion graphics, animation, and art direction for broadcasting and advertising. David Sanfelipe – a former FX supervisor at Estudio Mariscal – is media director at Onez Networks (Arroba Systems). Argentinian-born Gabriel Suchowolski also runs the website Microbians.

Cocoe's wacky video originated in 2007 when David and Gabriel were invited to do a presentation at MadinSpain 07 – the international design event in Madrid – whose main theme that year was Psicotipografico. MadinSpain is a combination of conferences, a round table discussion, and an exclusive art exhibition, and ends with a closing party for the attendees. For this event Cocoe filmed a number of scenes on video, but post-production was only done for a 20 second excerpt. Their intention was to have a teaser of the video, because due to their client workload Cocoe couldn't manage to do any more work on it. After the event David and Gabriel started working on the video in earnest last February, making it longer and more consistent. As they are only two in their studio – the same two guys in the video – resources are limited. They produced the film in-house, entirely on their free time, at a ratio of two hours a week.

The concept for the video is a trip inside the dream of an obsessed typographer, but frankly this was more of an excuse to create an experimental video. Although it looks like it was entirely done in stop motion, different techniques like stop motion, photography, digital motion graphics, … were combined. First all the scenes were filmed in video, and the post-its were photographed over chroma; then everything was composed. Because there was a lot of post-its to move in post production, programming was used to make that task easier, but still most of them were animated individually by hand. David and Gabriel principally used Adobe After Effects, while Flash was used for the animations within the post-its. Composition & Post-It Android by Ane Skov Vithner.

PsychoTypoGraph is a real gem, bursting with energy and creativity. The lo-fi, grainy image quality perfectly suits the jittery, staccato action and off-beat images. Inventive and beguiling things happen with post-it notes, ranging from flipbook-style animation to moving pixel typography. The video is beautifully complemented by Kein Trink Wasser ("no drinking water" in German), an oddly-layered minimalistic track by British electronic duo Orbital taken from their album Snivilisation.