At his first student-film showcase he screened a slap-stick comedy short to stone silence, just crickets and no laughs, while the crowd reacted to arty films and tortured dramas. “Bombing that hard was liberating,” he grins. Translation: if nobody’s clapping anyway, you might as well break stuff.
“Scaling a creative business is not only about adding bodies or landing prestige accounts. It’s about evolving your identity and removing the Imposter Syndrome in a brand. It starts with the realization that what got you here—your hustle, your hands-on control, your ability to do it all—isn’t what will take you to the next level.”
Motion Plus Design’s journey began in a sunlit Paris studio in 2011, when title designer Kook Ewo set out to champion his craft. Joined by Carla Canard, Ronan Guitton, Mathilde Ammar, and Yu Hu, the team shaped a festival devoted to celebrating Motion Design as a serious art form.
Digital Design Days, the international festival recognized as a leading platform for digital creatives, will mark its 10th anniversary this year with two distinct editions in Palermo and Milan. The milestone moment not only reflects the event’s enduring influence in the design and technology sectors, but also introduces a strategic expansion into Southern Italy.
Before The Motion Awards™, there was no platform built specifically to honor Motion Design — only borrowed categories and unfair comparisons. In this personal reflection, Carlos El Asmar shares how frustration, love, and a commitment to fairness led to the creation of the first awards show designed by the Motion Design community, for the Motion Design community — and announces a new global collaboration to celebrate the craft together.
“As someone who’s been at the studio since day one, I still find myself getting into the weeds from time to time. Sometimes the clearest (and most fun) way to direct is to dive right in and channel my younger self; the one pulling all-nighters to composite an animation, or churning out endless renders to hit a deadline…
That person never disappears entirely. Whether it’s a simple draw-over, a mood edit, or a quick storyboard, sometimes you just have to jump on the front line and get stuck in.”
“Both Mark and Thom being from the UK, and because a lot of the inspirational stories and narratives where UK based I feel like Tall Tales exists very much within that geography. There is a link in terms of Australia’s history as a British colony, in particular as a child growing up on the fairly distant and isolated Western Australian coast the stories I learned about various mutinies and people far away from their homes finding themselves in faraway lands.”
“For us as much as this project was an anniversary gift to ourselves, it was also celebration of craft, of making purely for the love if it. Commercial demands make it hard to set aside time for projects like these, it almost feels like a luxury to be able to experiment. It was an utter joy.”
“The logo was the starting point—the anchor of the whole identity. Typography often plays a central role in my projects, and I design custom letterforms whenever I can, even though I’m not a type designer by trade. In this case, I began with the work of legendary Italian typographer Aldo Novarese. His typefaces—Microgramma and Eurostile—are iconic: bold, futuristic, and beautifully structured.”
