Two animated projects from BYU professor Brent Barson were recently accepted into the Communication Arts 2020 Design Annual, a prestigious graphic design journal. Out of the 2,900 total entries, just 126 were accepted.
“It is a gratifying validation of all the hard work we pour into our projects,” Barson said in response to his projects’ acceptance into the journal.
With art direction and illustration by Linda Reynolds, another BYU professor, and animation by Barson, the two designed and created one of the accepted projects, a short film titled “The Get.” The project was commissioned by KUER’s RadioWest Films in Salt Lake City, which presents unique stories with a focus on Utah.
“There is so much satisfaction that comes from having others love a project you feel so passionately about,” Reynolds said.
Barson’s second accepted project was an opening title sequence created for the 2019 Motion Design Education Summit, which he directed and animated with a team of BYU graphic design students. BYU School of Music professor Steven Ricks wrote and performed the original music for the titles. Barson and four of his students traveled to Wellington, New Zealand, to present the project at the summit.
The theme of the conference was “interplay,” which became the core concept for the video.
“We wanted it to be a collaborative project where there was literal interplay between the designers and the creatives, as well as the visual style mixing 2D, 3D and hand-drawing all interplaying together,” Barson said.
