* more voices and stories from German tv

After days without web access I'm online again. My home office router started corroding and getting a new one and that new one connected with our German Telekom is a special affair...
Amazing to think back to those days when we communicated and organized entire conferences without web acces. It just didn't exist then, but we worked it all out quite well in other – maybe even less stressful ways!
So – my second interview session in Cologne went really well again. I had the former manager and the former senior art director of the RTL TV Dpt. to discuss my questions with. Both are now lecturing at different universities and are looking across that past period of active production work in a similar way as I do. This obviously comes with lecturing... With both of them, it turned into a very lively talk. We started at the early beginnings when tv design was produced on cardboard and then filmed with a camera... or if you would create an animation, it would take days until you got the exposed film back and could see how it turned out.
The major innovation which came with Paintbox was that small buffer for instantly viewable cell animations, and then Harry gave a us a full minute of image storage. Today all of this is vastly different – we hardly think of anything like storage anymore. It's simply there and gets larger each day!
Something else when thinking back is the memory of a simple realization during the production of commercial spots: commercials for tv in Germany were usually timed
"750 frames", equalling 30 seconds. This was how I started getting a feeling for frames and seconds, for timing and time in general. It seems to fly away faster and faster now.
Today I'll head off to my next interviews in Munich, and then Zurich is on the schedule mid week. Meanwhile I've also been busy finding supporters and participants in the UK and US communities, who make me very happy by responding very well to this idea and supporting it with great contacts and ideas. I am thrilled to mention that Martin Lambie-
Nairn will be part of this venture, and Lee Hunt from NY sent me this great link which might be interesting for all of us: https://keyframesthefilm.wordpress.com/about/   
So far I didn't have time to watch it (and for the past days no web access...,) but it is described as pretty close to what I'm trying to do together with you all in this project.
However, it is a digital documentary film, and so, again – to find it in a bookstore or library might be too hard. I'm still all in with a book for this. It may sound a little pathetic, but I simply believe that books will last longer than web content.
Talk again soon, I'm off to Munich now!

*digging deep

Whew - a beautiful sunny ride through the South of Germany towards green and lush mountain regions takes me across the Austrian border...
What luxury this project brings along!

While I had figured that an interview along 15 questions would take an hour at most, this time I was definitely wrong. We ended up digging up memories from long gone days all afternoon, talking about past productions when we must have been in the same studio without a real memory of it.
Is this what digital age does to us? Fleeting moments - all along?
One more reason to get this project done and out into the world.

But never mind - this one developed extensively into an inspiring exchange of good stuff, from university work experiences and the general ongoing change in time, politics, society, life and of course, television, or rather: media in general and visions about what might come next... Really enjoyable and good all along.

If all my intended talks would turn into something like this, my project will take years...
so, no way! You might be threatened if I'd tell you that you'd have to give me a half day's time. No, no - at least not in general! This depends fully on the situation, time & place and your interest in giving it your attention.

Here is the list of questions, so you can see and start digging in your past for yourself.
If you'd rather write about it, let me know. Of course, you can just do that and send it to me if there's no time for a face to face talk. Just don't forget to add some pictures...

Interview:

1. brief introduction to who you are, incl name place, actual work situation.

2. when and where did you start turning to "digital" with your work?

3. what was before / what lead to your first touch with digital graphics?
    did you study design, fine arts or anything else?
    or did you "slide" in without specific pre-formation // did you get in "playing around"?

4. were there important triggering moments, influences or people on your path?

5. did Quantel's Paintbox and/or Harry have anything to do with your entry
    to the tv design world?

6. when and what was YOUR first design job for tv?

7. for which stations or agencies did you work?

8. are there any moments of total high // total frustration you remember?
    and how would you describe those events?
    what would you rather never experience again?

9.  how did these events influence what came later?

10. which new developments in systems, which new design software triggered you?

11. were there specific new design trends you remember as being influential
      to your work?


12. ...any designers who impressed you // you followed? any "milestones" there?

13. which young talent // which contemporary agency do you observe?

14. when you look at the paradigmatic changes in use and perception with new,
      smart media - what do you think does this require in television marketing & design?

15. what has to happen in tv design  in order not to get behind in the face
      of these changes?
     

*interview appointments in process

After many of you have responded and signalled to be willing to share experiences and tales about individual paths into and through the years of developing tv design and creating branding processes, I am moving forward by planning interview trips to the South, East, North and Northwest of Europe.

My first stop this week will be in Austria's beautiful "Vorarlberg", a pre-alpine region which forms the Eastern part of Austria, bordering on the lake of Constance. If the weather stays as brilliant as it has been these past weeks, it will be a wonderful trip to this part of Austria. There I will meet the creator of the very first sat.1 logo, the famous rainbow ball!!!

During my very first year into this business in 1986, I happened to be working (or rather practising ;) at a Munich-based studio, when he gave birth to this logo right there, before my eys! The sat.1 logo – with a few adaptations into the present – pretty much kept its look until today. Only faintly did I remember who this young guy was, manoeuvering the then brand new digital video image tool "dvi", the latest new toy in the studio's ultra modern post production table, as I was still completely new to this entire technical context of digital production for tv and video – but curious enough, wanting to know it all. Lately I kept pondering and wondering if I do remember this guy's name right. And I did - at least his first name... :)
I am really excited to finally meet him in person after 30 years – both of us meanwhile teaching at universities in similar programs. I'm sure we'll have some stuff to share.

As I will then already be South, I will cross into Switzerland and head to Zurich, where a former tv design buddy of mine is head of ... at the Swiss tv station "SF".
He was called to Switzerland shortly after he managed to create and produce an entirely new look for Germany's second oldest tv station, the "Second German TV Station" ZDF in 2001. His design, too, has been alive unchanged until today, and if you know what that station's logo looked like before, you can see quickly what a creative and courageous change into a really modern look was behind this process of total renewal.
We might hear more about that when I get the chance to talk to this great guy who has since then been swamped with work there, but managed to give a rather conservative Swiss tv station a clear face lift. As this is obviously a continuous process, he is busy as ever with his work there, so I have to keep all fingers crossed, that he will squeeze me in between his other duties.

For next week more appointments are lining up in and around Cologne, after which I plan to go to Berlin where I actually started my research  tweo weeks ago and where I had this highly interesting talk with the ex-program director of DW ("Deutsche Welle"), the global network supplying the whole world with news from Germany. He has witnessed the birth od German television if you will, not only from a design prepective, but also from a huge historical and political point of view.

And I will hopefully get to meet the longtime creative force behind ARTE plus another colleague of those first years in "digital paintboxing", who started just like I did – as a paintbox operator on "the other 1st Quantel Paintbox" in Germany! In 1986, Quantel delivered 3 pieces of their first generation of their famous Paintbox to Germany. One (...and soon the second one...) was/were in Munich, where I had then just started my working experience, the other one in Duesseldorf, where my Berlin friend was the queen of digital graphics, and one more at the NDR tv station in Hamburg, where it was mainly used for the big daily news shows "Tagesschau" and "Tagesthemen", and of course, the most cherished weather report.

So, we can look forward to more news on this evolving and exciting story – stay tuned!

*day 2 of sending this idea out into the world

WOW!
Thank you all for these positive and interesting responses to my first mailings with the blog link.
Obviously no one wants to post their comment right here, but rather respond by e-mail.
That's fine – as long as I do get as many reactions and replies as I do... ;)
But as some of you have asked how to help and how this is going to happen, I'll give you some news about my ideas for next steps right here.

Of course, I've been plotting about how to go forward with this in more detail, but I first wanted to hear and feel into what you all think about the idea in general. And if you'd be willing to join in this project. I'm very happy to say that pretty much everyone who I sent the link to, be it European, UK oder US colleagues, responded positively.

I am still fixing the feasibilities of getting in touch for face-to-face talks and reviewing material.
Several trips will have to be made, as I'd rather speak to the participating individuals in person.
If that is not possible due to circumstances, we can set up a skype date for an interview at you ease and timing, or I'll set up an interview online and you'll send me the image material via internet.

My intital idea for organizing and structuring the content is to to work along each participant’s individual paths, so it’s also going to be a bit like an autobiographic reflection of your professional career paths. How did your individual path start where did it curve, where did it hit some highs (and possibly also lows)...?  So there will be quite a bit of reflection involved which I hope is taken well by all willing to participate.

I believe that these kinds of stories are what triggers interest in each kind of audience – more than just seeing awesome color pictures and titles, which, of course will accompany the individual interviews. But I want this also to be about "life-and-career-story-telling", as each of our lives has been revolving so much around this area of creativity and excitement. So much for today - I'll keep you posted!
Thanks again for responding and again: feel free to comment!!!

*call for tv designers to participate

 *this is a call for cooperative participation in collecting tv design work from the 1980s until today. The main goal of this is to prevent all that good stuff from getting lost in the digital void and to make it accessible for young generations of screen designers.

The idea of sampling and publishing a collection of tv design work from the mid-80s,  when we all faced the beginning of digital graphics, until today in our all-encompassing digital life has been on my mind for a long time. With an upcoming sabbatical I now have the opportunity to start making this a reality, but I can't and won't do it without you.

You all have done outstanding work in the field. So – if you feel similar about wondering where it all went and are interested in seeing it published, I am asking you now to join into a cooperative effort to create a compendium of great "historic" tv design material. You started out contributing to the broadcast industry as a creative individual during that time and were/are part in the competition of the delivery of new images, videos, sound and outstanding creative ideas. You may ask yourself a similar question as I do: "...where did or does all that work go in the end?" Yes, some of it might still be sitting in the back rows of our shelves, on outdated vcr tapes, other great work may have its only place in our memory. This is about to change. I am asking you to go digging.


*visualizing constant change in tv design – tell your story

We all are aware of how many stations or channels changed and thrived due to a new design image while others died or were merged with other stations due to diverse circumstances. We all met year by year at the BDA conferences, which in the earlier years – until the mid-90s – happened only once a year in the US and there we always enjoyed a sparkling review of amazing work and conversations, made friends for life and what not. And do you remember Michael Eisner's enthusiastic prediction during his keynote speech at the Orlando/FL conference in 1993 of the soon-to-come 500 (and more) tv channels ? This made a huge impression on me, in spite of - at the time - I thought this guy seemed to be quite a bit "out there..." in Disneyland. Well, whatever my little understanding then made me ponder way back then – we all set out to work on exactly what he had predicted and created audiovisual corporate designs for those new stations all over the world. Each year brought along new ideas and created new trends in how to represent the latest design hype on screen for new tv stations and channels.


*We have stories to tell.

How did you happen to be in that business? Remember where you came from, what you set out to do and where your adventure led you to? Addressing these individual whereabouts – simply telling about our sometimes unusual career paths already could be thrilling and inspiring young ones to go for it... Many of us collected awards which are most probably still sitting on some office shelves... collecting dust? Our VHS tapes with the awarded clips from then will hardly play on any of our present devices and from some of you I heard that they already eliminated their digital tapes.



*stop that for a moment!

So much has happened during those years – some of us are still in the business, others (like me) went into universities, helping the youngsters to grow into this meanwhile completely digital world and others are done with their working career, enjoying their retirement – creatively, of course ;). With tv now merging into the internet, using social media and is presented through other new and unprecedented communication tools, the permanent change of looks, needs and strategies for tv design, branding and marketing is open again for the next big adventure. To me it feels as if the present time is marking the end of one era and the next big change in our kind of work - happening as I write this. So – it's time to look at where we came from and appreciate it together now.

My dream is to turn all of this into a cooperatively written, edited and printed publication from where QR codes lead to the creative work that you hopefully will be able to dig up and are ready to share.
My side dream is to manage to store all the good stuff you bring to the table on a database which I hope can be installed at our university.


*one last word

Still - you may think: ”…why publish all of this in a book when there is the web and everything could be uploaded at ease?"
Reason 1: The general lack of literature on the topic. The reality I perceive during literature search for my lectures: there is very little valuable written and printed stuff on tv design out there. Douglas Merritt's book on tv graphics from 1983, Martin Lambie-Nairn's wonderful book on branding television from 1997 and two later studies of German and Austrian broadcast design from 2012 - black and white print without pictures or illustrations is all I find relevant. Oh yes, there is this one great collection of work in "Type in Motion”, put together 1999 by Jeff Bellantoni und Matt Woolman and there are some interesting articles in the web.
Reason 2: The disappearance of digital data. Today a book represents more value than any contemporary online publication which you now may find awesome and bookmark in your favourites, but soon forget. A book has its place in your life, on your shelf and in libraries and endure many more years than a website.
Reason 3: The younger generations. Students of media design like the ones I teach who want to explore the field of design in television with true material can't find more than those few valuable books mentioned above and digital data are spread out on too many internet channels under too many key words – very confusing.
Said enough.

Now you think about it and share your thoughts here for each one invited to this blog to read, comment and re-comment and exchange. Then we will find out together how we can pursue this best. I have some ideas but first want to hear what you all, whose first reactions were utterly positive, think and share. Feel free to share this link to others who might be interested!

*thank you in advance!