MATTHIAS WINCKELMANN

CREATIVE DIRECTOR, DESIGNER, DIGITAL ARTIST
and co-founder of someform stuDio

GOOGLE DEEPMIND

GOOGLE DEEPMIND
BRANDING TOOL

A branding project striving to articulate an abstract visual representation that would encapsulate the intricate essence of DeepMind's visionary pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI), while creating a visual language that exudes contemporaneity, friendliness, and approachability. The result is DeepMind’s own unique 3D design system that utilizes three key components to create an image branding that not only is recognizable and versatile in its appearance, but also illustrates the hugely complex concepts of artificial general intelligence.

This versatile design system, once established, transcended its initial purpose and found application in diverse forms. From a collection of traditionally rendered images to intricate animations, culminating in the development of a standalone application. This application empowers the design team at DeepMind to harness the custom visual language, enabling the creation of their own unique narratives within the framework of this 3D design system.

GOOGLE DESIGN

GOOGLE
DESIGN EXPLORATION

A short but intense research phase for Google Design that purely focused on visual development. The objective of someform Studio’s first collaboration with the design team at Google was nothing less than tapping into new creative directions for Google’s outreach and finding an inspiring visual representation of the incredible UI work they have done in recent years.

Aesthetically our research evolved around defining a palette of materials, objects and tactile qualities that would be ownable by Google Design. Not only to distinguish the designs from those of competitors, but also to express an emotional quality that suits the overall brand expression. Some of these qualities included approachability, warmth, friendliness, which in turn resulted in soft materialities, organic forms and playful and engaging shapes.

The outcome of letting us roam freely through the creative landscapes are a wealth of ideas, a pool of over 100 images and a big collection of independent motion concepts. To tip it all off we created a 25 second hero animation that utilises some of the ideas created in our RnD process.

BCG

BCG
BRANDING TOOL

Early 2021 the Brand and Creative Strategy team at BCG reached out to us at someform Studio with an exciting proposal - not only to explore 3D imagery for BCG’s brand identity, but even more so to create a standalone application that would enable our client to generate their own imagery on demand.

Together we set out to create an automated design system implemented into a sophisticated tool running on Unreal Engine 5. This tool generates unique, fully rendered, high resolution 3D commercial brand visuals within mere seconds. Each image generated is unique and created dynamically based on the design principles that were defined earlier in the process. The tool offers a variety of options for the user to choose from.

Once the rules of a design system that become the foundation of each composition are established, those rules can be automated. Thereby, empowering clients to use the design systems created as a whole, rather than having to rely on just a few images. The true power of this solution lies in its scalability - once the groundwork of such a tool has been established, its capabilites can continuously be expanded to build a dynamic generative application that can define and shape the visual appearance of a brand for years to come.

MICROSOFT SOCIALS

MICROSOFT SOCIALS
FEATURE SHOWCASE

Introducing new features within the Microsoft Office ecosystem with multiple films and images that showcase the new functionalities. These films accentuate the collaborative possibilities embedded within Office applications, illustrating how they facilitate seamless connections regardless of your location. Our creative vision focused on establishing a cohesive composition and design ethos, providing a unified platform to showcase the UI functionalities. The UI interaction is reflected in the designs outside of its conceptual box, thereby staying true to the beautiful design of the interface but highlighting its capabilities by adding additional design elements throughout.

MICROSOFT EMOJIS

MICROSOFT
EMOJIS REDESIGN

Collaborating with the wonderful team at Tendril, I was tasked to envision and implement a comprehensive overhaul of the current emoji library for Microsoft. Not only to conceptualize and redesign the existing emoji library, but to take it a step further and add dimensionality to this previously completely flat visual language. This encompassed establishing guidelines for each smiley, person, animal, food, object, and symbol—totaling over 1800 distinct elements. The culmination of our efforts is a vibrant, diverse and colorful celebration of joy and a sincere embrace of visual expression.

Redesigning a product of this size and magnitude is a challenge in itself. Not only are the emojis used worldwide by millions of people, but they also come with a huge set of rules and a big bag of history to be aware of. It was important to find the right balance between a serious commitment to the communication standards of the emoji unicode, while finding our own unique way of expression and design within it.

ARTIFICIAL SPACES

ARTIFICIAL SPACES
INTERACTIVE INSTALLATION

“Artificial Spaces” is an interactive installation, created in collaboration with SixNFive for the exhibition “Digital Impact” in Disseny Hub, Barcelona. The installation is capable of generating architectural spaces on the fly and letting the audience interactively explore the environments. By automating the rules of architecture and combining them with functions that intelligently assess the created environment, we were able to create a procedural solution that can generate an infinite number of architectural environments that feel realistic and livable. The algorithmic creation of these spaces is specifically tailored to generate results that convey a sense of visual beauty, a notion of imaginative spaces that go beyond mere architectural visualization.

As part of the installation, the audience is able to manually generate new spaces and control the direction of the sun by using a minimalistic inverted sundial that controls the time of day rather than informing about it.

Rachael is not real

RACHAEL IS NOT REAL
SOCIAL MEDIA EXPERIMENT

Starting from May 2020, Rachael has been posting to the Instagram account @rachaellic one new image per day. She continued posting without any human intervention 1000 times amassing a following of over 10000. Her capabilities were specially designed to create “likeable” images representing popular visual languages on the platform.

Rachael intents to critically examine the consumption of contemporary imagery in the fast-paced social media landscape. Due to the continuously growing speed of how images are consumed on Instagram, the more successful (liked) images are the ones displaying an immediate, visually pleasing impression. On the contrary, images embodying deeper meanings or more complex ideas fail to be as popular, since they require more time to be seen and understood.

With the incredible advancements in machine learning and AI, visually pleasing images can be fully automated. If we neglect the communication aspect of visuals and simply use design techniques to attract likes, we as human designers risk becoming obsolete in the near future. Therefore, designers' priority should always remain finding smart conceptual ways of communicating our message, while the visual expression is utterly the vehicle that delivers it. Automating the human skill of visual communication that requires creativity and conceptualization is a much harder task to accomplish by an artificial algorithm.

Microsoft Editor

Microsoft EDITOR
FEATURE SHOWCASE

To introduce new features within the Office ecosystem, Microsoft reached out to someform Studio with a proposal to create multiple films and images that showcase the new functionalities in an inspiring and creative format. This time we set out to tell the story of Microsoft Editor, an AI-powered service that enables you to write with confidence in 20+ languages. Our aim was to offer a lively portrayal of the AI behind this feature, showcasing its spell-checking, grammar correction, and intelligent suggestions for enhancing writing. The recurring motif of the blue marble across all films symbolized our approachable and amicable representation of the AI algorithms working seamlessly in the background as we engage in writing.

Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365
app redesign TEASER

The well known collection of mobile office apps got a fresh makeover that is stylishly minimal and exudes a friendly usability vibe. For the launch we created a film that interprets the impact of the mobile user interface toolkit in everyday life and celebrates the adaptability of Microsoft’s design components for mobile.

The new look of the office apps are part of Microsoft's broader efforts to take mobile productivity to the next level. To celebrate the new appearance of Outlook, OneDrive, Word, Excel and Powerpoint, we developed unexpected playful narratives that artistically tell the story of rethinking how we interact with our mobile devices.

Influencers

MAXON INFLUENCERS
LAUNCH TEASER

A film commissioned by MAXON that explores unique creative territories to showcase the innovative new tools in the latest release of their software. 'Influencers' is about drawing out the intrigue in the Everyday, and allowing it to humbly influence the world around us. It’s a subtle and playful critique of contemporary Influencer culture, while embracing the unexpected life within everything. For us it’s a celebration of the Creative Process and a meditation on the way we work in 3D.

Ledger

ledger
product launch

A unique and fresh look at product photography for the full rebrand of the crypto-security experts LEDGER. someform Studio had the pleasure of translating the entirely new and precise branding system created by HelloMe into an exciting collection of minimal and slick product images and animations, that take reference to contemporary culture and technological aesthetics.

To fully cater to the needs of the client we created three different types of images: Highly stylized artistic expressions around the product to be used in marketing and social media, visually pleasing simulated product photography and a clean analytical representation of each product to be used within the online shop.

Spaces on Wheels

Spaces on Wheels
research project

A playful research project in collaboration with IKEA’s Future-Living Lab Space10: Seven concept-studies of futuristic autonomously driving vehicles, challenging the traditional idea of the car and exploring how we can re-purpose it to create a more fulfilling life on wheels.

Because we won’t have to worry about driving, vehicle interiors can expand to a point where we stop thinking of them as vehicles. In the future of mobility, the car will no longer be just a way to get people and goods from A to B. Ultimately, Spaces on Wheels invites more people to envision the profound paradigm shift the development of self-driving cars could have on our everyday lives.