At the end of the day, there's a moment when the sun and the sea meet, and the sky is filled with a beautiful array of colours — if you’ve ever experienced this, you know it's magical.
Solimar, The Trade Desk's newest product, was born out of this moment, and it was the inspiration for the entire look of both the product and the event launching it. From a series of illustrations to event graphics, from a product UI sizzle reel to looping animations, from a 15-second trailer to a full launch video — and all in a system that would work for every screen resolution — we were excited to bring our best to each and every one of the hundreds of deliverables we produced for this project. Because you can’t bring anything less when your inspiration is the sun and the sea.
CREATIVE DIRECTION: Jorge R. Canedo E.
PRODUCTION: Stefan Green
PRODUCTION: Stefan Green
ART DIRECTION: Grace Pedersen
DESIGN: Grace Pedersen, Lorena G., Avikali Lomavatu, Annika McFarlane, Haewon Shin
ANIMATION: Jose Peña, Victor Silva, Manuel Neto, Greg Stewart, Paul Slemmer, Daniel Duncan, Francisco Quiles, Steve Savalle, Jorge R. Canedo E.
MUSIC & SFX: Ambrose Yu
ASPECT RATIOS— Going into this project, we knew that our videos needed to be delivered in 16:9, 9:16, and 1:1 resolutions. So at the start of our design process, we established a system of making everything in a full 3840x3840 frame that could then be cropped down into all the required sizes. We kept all the text and main content within the 1:1 frame.
TEXTURE— After exploring lots of variations for the added texture, we landed on a mix of noise and half tone for a tactile feel. The texture was created in After Effects, and applied to all our styleframes after they were designed.
ILLUSTRATIONS FOR LOOPING ANIMATIONS— As one of the deliverables, we created five unique illustrations that would be animated as loops and used in a variety of marketing materials. These assets followed the same aspect ratio system as our styleframes, which meant the client could use them flexibly in different formats.
STYLE EXPLORATIONS— At the beginning of this project, we explored some different design approaches. We knew the moment of the sun and the sea meeting was the driving force of the whole piece, so that's where we started. Our goal was to capture that magical sunlit feeling, while also trying to strike the right balance between futuristic and retro looks.
Style exploration by Lorena G.
Additional style explorations by Avikali Lomavatu, Grace Pedersen, and Annika McFarlane
FINAL STYLEFRAMES— After some back-and-forth with the client to narrow in on a locked style, we ended up using several compositional ideas from our different style explorations in our final designs. Here's a selection of our favourite styleframes.
ANIMATION PROCESS— Seeing everything work together across all the different assets made it especially rewarding to bring all the different designs to life. Check out some behind-the-scenes below from a few of the incredible animators who contributed to this project.
Animation by José Peña
Animation by Victor Silva
Animations by Manuel Neto
Animations by Greg Stewart
Animations by Paul Slemmer
Animations by Daniel Duncan
Animations by Jorge R. Canedo E.
