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Friends of The Egotist Interview: Jakob Trollbäck
As interviewed by Charles Carpenter and Mindy Nies.
Trollbäck + Company is a visual and conceptual creative studio producing expressive and purposeful graphics, design and live action for advertising, broadcast, and entertainment.
Led by creative directors Jakob Trollbäck and Joe Wright, the collaborative group of designers and writers launches and rebrands TV networks, creates motion graphics, live action, print, environmental design, and film titles. T+Co’s trademark approach relies on unorthodox thinking and immersive storytelling, and the belief that a compelling and focused message is essential for any communication to be successful.
Recent projects include rebrands of A&E and ESPNEWS, commercial work for MasterCard and Target, and the visual content for one of the world’s largest high-resolution video walls, located in the Franky Gerhry-designed IAC headquarters in New York City.
As Trollbäck + Company looks to its future, the goal is to sustain the firm’s dynamic blend of high-profile commercial projects as well as its more avant-garde collaborations with emerging and established talents in film, music, architecture, magazines and fashion.
Q: We’ve read that part of your desire to make effective brands and advertising is to create something that touches people – that makes them stop and listen to your message. What brands or ads do that for you?
A: Some brands have led the way in talking to people in an inspired, clever and respectful way. One of the best examples I can think of is Nike in the 90’s. They became a huge brand by letting the product become secondary. Their ads celebrated human achievements and told us that if others could, why not us? Some of my favorite spots from the last few years are for Honda, incidentally also by Wieden+Kennedy, but this time the London office.
But I believe that everybody must, at some point, stop and ask if what they are doing has any redeeming value. I think this is especially true for people in marketing and advertising. It is hard to get moved by anything unless the product or message is important. What we need are brilliant campaigns for social issues that can motivate people to work for a better world. Or else there won’t be one.
From this perspective, it doesn’t matter how brilliant a fast food ad is. People in our business are so brilliant at selling junk. Just imagine what they could do for a good cause. That would touch me.
Q: You have mentioned your work evokes joyful and unexpected responses. Is this always planned and deliberate or does it happen sometimes by chance?
A: We try to focus on transformative moments: the instant when things click, when you get it, when something changes from one thing into another. The magic in that moment is what we try to catch. There is immense joy in transformative experiences. It’s like marshmallows for the brain. You can really feel the neurons firing as new, unexpected connections are being made.
It can take an amazing amount of time to find or create that moment – it is a very deliberate effort. Everyone at the company is constantly tossing words and images around, so random, unexpected and beautiful mistakes do happen, but mostly it’s hard work.
Q: You describe passion as being a driving force in your life overall. When passion fades, do you stick with an idea or abandon it and move on? How do you maintain that passion in your work?
A: There is very little to gain from sticking to your ideas. Ninety-nine percent of the ideas that we’ve had to abandon were replaced by much better ones. If you don’t like to come up with ideas, you’re in the wrong field. If passion fades, it’s due to a lack of energy. That is a serious issue, and the only way out that works for me is to feed myself with experiences – art, movies, books etc. – there is so much inspiring stuff everywhere. That and a good night’s sleep followed by a long, long shower, and you’re fit to go again.
Q: You are self taught. Can anyone learn the language of design? How does one improve speaking this language?
A: Of course anyone can learn the design language. As a matter of fact, anyone does. What you need is focus. A school is a great place for this, as you have others to discuss things with. But all you actually need is commitment and, I guess, a bit of a knack for it.
You improve your design skills just like you improve any skill: by listening to others and by trying to be as good as they are.
You also need a certain distance from yourself to be able to improve. We once ran an ad looking for designers; we asked them to look at our website, and if they thought that they had the right stuff, to send samples and a résumé. You wouldn’t believe the amount of junk we got. I was sad because I thought that the ad would be a perfect way to find great people. Unfortunately, if there were any good ones in the pile, they drowned in the sheer volume of junk.
Q: What are some of your favorite movie title sequences from either your company or other work you have seen in the industry past and present and why?
A: There are so many good ones. You can always count on Kyle and Garson. And I always loved Bullit. Then there is that odd Saul Bass sequence from the film “The Shrike,” where a pair of scissors cuts out strips of paper to reveal typewritten credits. Of my own titles, I will always enjoy “Night Falls on Manhattan.”
Q: As a leader in the motion graphics industry, where do you see the industry at a year from now and 10 years from now?
A: I hope that it will become even more immersive. I don’t mean like some nonsense marketing lingo about a website. I hope that a combination of more intuitive interfaces and real physics in motion graphic software can make the experience of motion both more sensitive and powerful. I hope that designers spend more time experiencing nature, love and life, and will try to capture some of that in their animations.
Q: What is your strategy for maintaining and/or increasing your business during this “economic downturn?”
A: We try to do the best work we can. If nobody wants good work, we’re screwed.
Q: You have work in the AIGA National Design Archives here at the Denver Art Museum, (your work for Nike). What is the importance of preserving ideas in a medium such as motion graphics?
A: All that creativity strives to do is make things better in some way. Smarter, faster, yummier, more beautiful and so on. We stand on the work of all great creative innovators before us and we need that history to put what we do into perspective.
Q: You have described the U.S. Constitution as being America’s ultimate creative brief. In a country that celebrates different ideologies, how do we measure whether America is still an effective brand or not?
A: America is a little bit delusional about itself. It is still a strong brand, but not the positive brand it used to be. Once, it was such a beautiful antidote to the stuffy, old Europe. Young people all over the world wanted to be in the midst of all that cultural excitement. Today, America feels old – just like John McCain – and most of the world looks at it as the brand of power, arrogance and greed.
In order to turn the brand around, we need to change the product line first. One good first step would be to become a peaceful nation. Yet, even if I believe that the Constitution is a great creative brief, all briefs are a work in progress. There is some ancient muck in there too that we could do away with. Like the right to bear arms.
Q: We admire your studio’s design work that expresses its own political voice, especially the sophisticated series of Obama buttons. It’s not always considered safe for a studio to be so politically vocal. What do you feel other designers should be doing right now that would be most beneficial to our society during this time of great change?
A: If we don’t speak up against things that are wrong, who will? Should we just leave our junk to our kids? What kind of person can do that? If there aren’t enough clients out there that care about the planet and people’s right to healthcare and that it’s our duty to help those with less means and that it’s unfair to make more money buying and selling stocks than to actually work, well, then, I guess I’ll just have to shoot myself.
Q: In several interviews, you’ve made reference to the following quote by Frank Zappa: “Information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, wisdom is not truth, truth is not beauty, beauty is not love, love is not music, music is THE BEST.” Why is music “the best?”
A: I love that quote. He was a genius. The syntax is a bit off at the end though. The punch line is actually the least elegant part of it. If it was my quote, I might have been tempted to simply end it “beauty is not love, love is music” but that sounds a bit sappy and also steals some thunder from the music.
Why is music the best? I really don’t know. It just is. Maybe it is because our perception of everything around us comes through waves: light, sound, heat. And we spin around the solar system in gigantic waves. Could it be that by finding harmonies and resonance amongst all those waves, we can connect to everything we are and then let the beauty of that experience tell us all that we can be?
Anyway, in a life without music, you can count me out.
Showcasing award-winning work that uses a combination of thoughtfully choreographed graphics, type and live-action, Jakob Trollbäck will discuss how to play off the audience’s creativity Wednesday night as part of AIGA’s Speaker Series.
When: Wednesday, November 5, 2008, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM
Where: Denver Art Museum, Frederic C. Hamiliton Building (Sharp Auditorium), 100 W. 14th Ave Pkwy, Denver, CO 80204
RSVP: Here
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