Paper Pixels

CLIENT
OgilvyOne
ROLE
Head of design
AGENCY
OgilvyOne
YEAR
2014

Paper Pixels

Blurring the boundaries between print and digital art

The OgilvyOne design department is equally adept with both digital creativity and more traditional print work. The team collaborated on a project that blurs the two disciplines, to create an astonishing art installation. But is it printed digital, or a digital take on print?

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With the concept and design by Hiten Bhatt, the heart of the piece involves two ten-foot high mosaics of emoticons, the quintessential icon of the digital landscape.

But each of the pixels used to create them was formed from individual Pantone colour chips, synonymous with traditional art departments for decades.

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From the early stages, it was obvious that such an undertaking would require thousands of the inch-square Pantone chips to make the artwork (21,120 as it turned out). Each Pantone book costs £150 but on hearing about the project, Paul Graham, Sales Director for Pantone EMEA , offered to help by supplying over a hundred swatch books, that required an entire office's bookshelves to house.

It took four months and dozens of people tearing chips out of the books and arranging them by colour to amass the required amount of ‘Paper Pixels.’ Then over the space of 52 hours, a core team of twelve painstakingly assembled each image. As an added complication, it was decided to randomise the placement of each pixel, to make the design appear to grow organically when captured by time-lapse photography.

Web
Web
Role

This was one of those tasks that helped develop an identity and brought the design team close together. I set up a competition platform for designers to display their creativity. 

The winner would be able bring their idea to life with the support of the wider group. With Hiten Bhatt's playful concept, I directed the team's skills and assistance in a painstaking, yet rewarding project. 

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