Parasol
BRIAN WILLIAMS
CREATIVE/ARTS/TECHNOLOGY
LONDON, UK
brian [at] parasol [dot] io
For commercial projects please go see Diane.
PROJECTS
ME ME ME
UNFINISHED WORK
Character set
The Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute is an independent research center exploring the frontiers of complex system science. Their researchers endeavor to understand and unify the underlying, shared patterns in complex physical, biological, social, cultural, technological, and even possible astrobiological worlds.
The publishing arm of the Santa Fe Institute asked me to design an alternate alphabet of glyphs that contained elements of the sciences they research: biology, language, technology, history and math.
The glyphs are now being used as graphic enhancement and as a system of categorisation in SFI's book publishing and collateral.
Concept, design
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Micro Essay
Comparing the career trajectory of English modernist author Virginia Woolf with Nintendo’s Super Mario franchise.
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Interactive documentary
The JFK Presidential Library
Launching on October 16, 2012, exactly 50 years after Soviet missiles were discovered in Cuba, this project lays out the full story of the Crisis, beginning in 1959 and continuing on until the missiles are removed in October 1962.
Clouds Over Cuba was the year’s most awarded interactive project globally, taking 54 international honors in documentary, digital design, interactivity, mobile connectivity and research, including two Emmy nominations and one win.
Creator, project lead, concept, creative & art direction
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Interactive live event
The JFK Presidential Library
The site launched exactly 40 years to the second after the real mission in 1969, and recreated every step of the journey over four-and-a-half days. The site was covered live on CNN, and visited by every internet-capable country on earth within a week of launch.
It was the most awarded campaign worldwide in any medium that year, taking 43 international honors for websites, live events and digital design, including 5 Cannes Lions, two D&AD Yellow Pencils and FWA Site of the Year.
Creator, project lead, concept, creative & art direction
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We Choose the Moon rose to the top of 40,000 entries to win FWA Site of the Year, and is now in the Archive at the NY MoMA.
Campaign & line
World Wide Web Foundation
The mission of the WWW Foundation is to establish the open Web as a basic right and a public good. However if you live in a developing country, in a rural area, are less educated and happen to be female, the odds are higher that you live without access to the Web. Thus the WWW is not actually WW.
Working with the Foundation board on creative strategy was a delight. I don’t honestly know how much they put this line into use, but I did chat briefly with Tim over our mutual love of A Pattern Language, which validated all the times I’d asserted that the creation of the Web must owe something to Christopher Alexander.
Creative direction, copy
STEM Education resource
Exxon/Mobil
Today, American students rank 17th in math and 25th in science in the world. Copywriter Rex McCubbin, producer Steve Callahan and I created this site to help parents, teachers and students—and anyone who cares about math & science education, really—access a wealth of resources, ideas and links to help get us back on track.
The lovingly crafted visuals are the work of our extraordinary production partner Jam3 who delivered round after round of stunning work across a great variety of technologies, and are now probably better informed about the state of STEM education than just about anyone.
Project lead, concept, creative & art direction
Interactive music video
SCRNS
Lavender is an interactive music video for the artist SCRNS. The barely-intelligible lyrics tell the story of a relationship whose details are kept secretly inside ourselves.
The girl in our story won't reveal what she's keeping inside until the viewer closes their eyes or looks away from the screen. When they do, an edit is triggered.
Code by David Vogeleer tracks viewer eye movement without any initialization. User only has to accept webcam activation. David and I conceived and created the project.
The live action was directed by the phenomenal Eva Midgley
Project lead, concept & design
Posters/press ads
The JFK Presidential Library
The Bay of Pigs invasion. A first meeting with Khrushchev. Establishment of the Peace Corps. A declaration that we would land on the moon before the decade was out. That's an eventful first year as President.
We overprinted the same photo of JFK a few different ways to illustrate that the same man had to deal with a great variety of things during his first year in office.
The late Matt Wojtysiak took the time to cut the illustrated overlays out of wood and print them in his garage. Thank. you, Matt.
Project lead, concept, design & copy
April 17, 1961:
Keeping your head above water
during the Bay of Pigs
June 4, 1961:
Closing the divide with Khrushchev
May 5, 1961:
If you want to get to the moon,
keep your head in the clouds
March 1, 1961:
The Peace Corps releases a million doves
Film & social
All Out
It’s amazing how uncontroversial Pride has become in London—a testament to the progress made by LGBTQ activists over the past decades. It’s so widely celebrated at this point that it’s easy to forget that not every city on Earth has it so good.
Gok’s Global Pride Makeover initially appears to be a light-hearted celebrity styling video but soon turns the styling tips to a different use: raising awareness of horrendous LGBTQ rights abuses around the world.
The structure of the video mirrors the global Pride situation—festive and breezy in some cities, dangerous and hateful in others. The true meaning of Pride is overcoming struggle, not purely a celebration.
Winner of the Jury Chair Award at The Drum Social Purpose Awards.
Creative Team: Matthew Waksman & Fiona Moseley. Directed by Connor Pearce.
Creative Direction
Posters/press ads
The JFK Presidential Library
Kennedy had enormous power to transform a difficult situation into an opportunity. Matt Wojtysiak, Wade Alger and I made these to underscore the elegance of JFK's transformational power.
Project lead, concept, design & copy
From posturing
to peace.
From hate
to hope.
From speech
to space
LP sleeve
My Good Man William
Hand-painted name and sleeve design for London-based band My Good Man William. Reverse of the sleeve features a hand-drawn topography of the Franz Josef glacier in New Zealand.
Cover painting by the stellar Simon Klein.
Concept, design, calligraphy
Interactive demo
Adobe Creative Suite
With Adobe Creative Suite, you can start with a simple object and take all the creative license you like. Painstakingly animated by Mike Kellogg and controllable by you.
Music and sound by Flip at johnny random includes the best bits from over 14 hours of card sound recordings.
Project lead, concept, art direction
Interactive documentary
The JFK Presidential Library
An Idea Lives On is a tapestry of stories—a series of short films and artworks showing that Nov 22, 1963 was not the end of JFK’s life, but rather the beginning of his legacy.
Politicians and artists, astronauts and peace corps volunteers, freedom riders and civil servants—even people named after Kennedy—all tell us in their own way how we are still affected by the ideals JFK put into place.
This broad spectrum of voices are given shape by a variety of filmmakers, artists, illustrators and animators, underscoring the diversity of JFK’s impact in our world today.
In its first week, the project received visits from over 200 countries around the world, was featured on live television, and garnered countless media mentions.
Winner in the Educational Resource category at SXSW Interactive.
Project lead, concept, creative & art direction
Interactive music video
Empress Of
In October 2012, Brooklyn-based musician Empress Of posted 15 one-minute songs on YouTube with 15 solid colors as the only visual accompaniment.
One year later, David Vogeleer and I gave this remarkable music and color series a textless, graphic facelift. Using triangles as the only navigation, the audience is now immersed in this color field free of outside distractions. For desktop and mobile.
Visit the site.
Concept, design
Instagram feed
Clouds in ink, paint, type, celluloid, cels.
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Curator