The New Company

0:05Hello. Hello. How is everyone doing? Good. Can't see anybody. All right. Um, I know you guys were promised founders in the invite. We are not the founders of the new company, but uh, we do the work, so that's probably a better um, thank you for having us. We're super excited to be here tonight. Um, I'm Will. I'm a creative and technology director. I'm Elena. I'm the executive producer.

0:28Uh and we're here on behalf of the new company which is a design and marketing agency of about 25 people split between San Francisco uh and right here in LA. Uh we work across brand design, strategy, motion, UX and UI, packaging, experiential, art direction, narrative, film, photography, CGI, and as you'll see a bunch of other random stuff as well.

0:51Uh the new company was founded in 2018 with the philosophy that brand relevance is driven through um new and novel ideas. And what that means for us is that we're constantly pushing ourselves in terms of the types of things we make uh the perspectives we look for in the stories that we tell uh and the way that we bring those things to life. And also hopefully uh we're pushing our clients to get out of their comfort zone a little bit uh to give themselves uh to give themselves room for expression and permission to explore with us some things that feel a little bit out there.

1:25Sometimes that means being a little strange in terms of visuals like our Postmates work that illustrated the strange COVID era feeling of being stuck at home and the relationship that we had to our food or the hyper poppy collage inspired system that we built for the online platform PixArt. And sometimes that means rethinking how the work itself gets made. Uh this is a launch campaign we did for an audio series for Nike called The Athletes Mindset. And we wanted to create a really strong emotional link between the physical and mental part of sports. So we took this whole edit and all the motion graphics, printed everything out and did the whole thing with analog

2:01techniques, got it back in uh into the digital form. And sometimes being new means saying yes, we can do that even though we aren't 100% totally sure. A few years ago, we were working with Riot Games on their Wild Rift Icons Championship and they said, "Do you guys do trophies?" and we said yes, of course we do trophies.

2:22We didn't. Uh but that's kind of the thing we're always hoping for, right? Uh an opportunity to pair our experience and our desire to learn with really interesting creative opportunities. Sometimes it's about scale and breadth. Uh we've worked with station casinos uh for a number of years now and had the opportunity to fully brand and launch an entire resort and casino from the identity signage, apparel, uniforms, wayfinding all the way down to all the printed material, the key cards, even the poker chips and the felt graphics on the tables. Uh along with every restaurant, bar and lounge across the property. Um and then a few years ago,

2:58we got to sleep in it, which was new, at least for me. Uh, and as Meg mentioned, we also got to work on a helmet design for Lando Norris when he won uh the Singapore Grand Prix in 2024, which was super fun. Sometimes new uh can be about finding a different perspective on something familiar. Uh, we had the opportunity to develop a new identity for the Utah Jazz. So, we deconstructed the Jote logo and used it to build a simpler, bolder identity that didn't really feel like something you'd necessarily expect from an NBA team. Uh, and it was really incredible to see that uh, grow into a custom type uh, system and appear across jerseys and court designs.

3:41Over the last eight years, we've been able to work with a ton of different clients. Uh, a lot of what we're known for is in the world of sport. Uh, we've worked with we've had a great relationship with Nike over the years working on American football, basketball, baseball, running, skateboarding, and lifestyle. Again, trying where we can uh to find perspectives, stories, or brand expressions that feel a little bit unexpected or challenge our clients to ask themselves, can we do this?

4:19And while our foundation is in branding and design, we've always had the privilege to be able to work on marketing, films, photo equally uh with the design stuff. So we reach recently uh launched the Giannis Freak 7 campaign with a 360 uh photo video campaign that went through a whole year um in retail etc.

4:42We also worked on Hoka uh launching the Clifton probe with a full campaign film photo library design system at a home etc. And while sport is in many ways our wheelhouse, we've also been able to work with more classic brands like Ralph Lauren. Uh we completely rethought their ecom experience that they've been updating since like the early 2000s was something that for them was very very new and very very out there. uh as well as hyperminimal brands like Muto, a Danish uh furniture company. This is a super premium modular and very editorial driven ecom site that we built for them.

5:21Uh while continuing to push ourselves with highly principled systemic work like our rebrand of AG1 where we developed this really refined system that brought together the life and science that is so core to the brand and also found this really unique expression that uh has this balance of scientific and sequ uh sequenced but also these very human and at times surprising and playful moments. So, this only kind of scratches the surface of what we do at the new company. So, I'm going to show a quick reel of some of the stuff that we've been up to lately.

6:21All right. So, that's us. Um, as you saw in, uh, the reel, um, we've worked a lot with, uh, EA Sports in the last few years on cover art and design systems for a ton of their sports titles, uh, including spinning wheel, FC, Madden, NHL, F1, UFC, and college football. Uh, and between covers, photography, film, motion, and design systems, our work with EA is the main thing that really touches pretty much everyone at the studio. Now, a number of these uh, franchises release a new title every year, and that for us presents a really interesting challenge. When you're in this world of annual releases, how do you keep things new? Where can we take

7:09the story of sport that EA has never explored before? And what do we need to learn along the way? Uh, right out of the gate in our first year with EA, we challenged them to do the first ever Madden cover with real fans. Uh, this was a pretty big shift from where they'd been. Traditionally, they used a lot of licensed imagery and they'd only recently ventured into custom photo shoots. So pushing them to do something of this scale with over 30 real Bills fans, wardrobe and styling for all of them, a custom set and all these things they never attempted before. It turned out to be a huge moment. Um the energy of the fans was real. Uh Josh Allen was amazing on set. He was telling the fans

7:46between takes that they should grab him way harder because in a real game situation they like really want a piece of you. Um and that helped define the approach moving forward. It really identified for us that what we should be doing is looking for ways uh that we can uh do something for the game in the audience that's never been done before.

8:04And for those of you in the audience with excellent vision, you are correct. That is me on the cover of Madden along with our design director Ryan. In that same year, we helped EA move from FIFA to FC. It was a fresh start for them. a huge game with over 19,000 players, 700 clubs, 30 leagues, and our goal was to make the game feel closer to football than ever before. We knew that to do that, we had to go further and closer to the game than licensed imagery or a studio photo shoot. So, we developed a photo system, a photo direction, and we actually got our photographer onto the field to follow

8:46Manchester City for several games. And then we landed on this iconic cover worthy image of Holland setting a Champions League record with five goals in a single match. It ended up being the cover along with this library of incredible images and this perspective that makes you feel like you're in the game on the field uh like never before.

9:09And for FC25, we brought this really ambitious concept to celebrate the legendary athletes across generations of the sport. For this one, we pushed ourselves and our client to execute something that surprise surprise turned out to be a huge challenge. Uh we needed the involvement of every league, every team, every athlete. We built a custom trophy room with handmade inlaid floors that model were modeled modeled after the Palace of Versailles. Uh we filled it with hundreds of props all which got like approved before we even got to the shoot and the Easter eggs exit spann the history of professional football. Uh, and then of course the players were there, some of the best players of all

9:55time. And then we fe featured almost two dozen of actual legit trophies from the leagues that were sent to be in the set with us from around the world. And then our latest cover for FC27 that came out recently was about uh inviting the players into the richest, deepest, and most complete football world ever made. uh we planned and sketched and composited and we designed every single element, every Easter egg that you can see on the screen. It was a huge collaboration between 3D, photography, retouching. We built this massive immersive world that you can explore for hours and even not see everything that

10:36we put into that image. Uh for that one, we found the right partners. We learned new technologies. We learned new workflows. And ultimately that's how we approach things. We try to set out to make something that's never been done before and then uh we get out of our comfort zone and that's how we make all these new things happen.

10:59For Madden this year the push was really about evolving the storytelling. With Madden we've traditionally been hyperfocused on bringing you closer to the action, putting you on the field, recreating iconic moments. And this year was all about expanding what a Madden cover can be. exploring the world around the game, creating something cinematic with a sense of cultural relevance. So, the cover athlete this year was Caleb Williams, quarterback for the Chicago Bears, and there were so many stories that we we wanted to draw from. We explored who he is as an athlete, his performance on the field, the bond he has with the city and people of Chicago, the idea of him as a savior for these fans uh who haven't been doing so hot.

11:36Uh him as a mythic sculptural hero at the gates of Soldierfield, his onfield Iceman persona, or him as this high fashion icon that sort of sets him apart from a lot of quarterbacks. These turned out to be some of the best received covers we've ever made, and it all came down to the storytelling. Uh, we ended up creating a world that blends performance and story and the history of Chicago sports. So, if you're familiar with Caleb, the standard cover on the left here was a recreation of his iconic game-winning fourth down jump fade from the playoffs last year. And if you're familiar with Chicago sports as a whole, it's also a little nod to another iconic jump man that was extremely meaningful

12:13to a different Chicago sports team. Uh, and for Deluxe, we created probably the most cinematic image we've ever done for Maddening Cover, drawing on his Iceman persona and celebration. Uh, crafting this sort of crystallization of the pressure, the place, his expression, and his resolve. Um, and really highlighting his place as having the best nails in the NFL.

12:35And while we're doing all that stuff, we're also building a fully custom design kit with all the stuff that we know a design system needs, logo, usage, type, grid, color, layout. Um, but beyond that, what we're doing new there is we're starting to explore new tools and new ways to make these systems easier to use for more people. We're writing plugins that automatically set up dynamic layouts and automatically apply uh editable image treatments. This year we released nearly 50 layout combinations all in multiple sizes across marketing, social, and partner teams. Um, you know, it needs to work with photos, screenshots, 3D renders,

13:08every team in every color. So we try to build enough uh range into the system so they can get this out in the world as many places as they can. Sometimes in places we didn't necessarily imagine. So what have we learned? Um we've learned from doing this work year after year that the biggest takeaway is not really a repeatable process for making something new. Every project starts somewhere different. Every athlete has a different story. Every the ideas change, the tools change, the collaborators change. Every time we start the process, we have no idea where we're going, how we're going to get there, what we need to learn, or who we need to meet in order to make it happen.

13:43And that uncertainty is kind of the point. It forces us to keep learning, keep experimenting, keep finding a way, a new way through. Uh that's the thing that keeps us going too, as a studio. We value creativity, the craft, the novelty behind everything. And we hope that this shows through in all of the work that we do. And we hope as always that people keep asking us to do some new weird stuff. Thank you. Sync to video time