Cool Hunting

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, CH friend and colleague Seth Brau recently completed the rather daunting task of bringing the words to life with motion graphics. The result is on one hand elegant — using a two-tone palette, linear — and on the other an experimental take on scale, the use of typography and symbolism.

Given complete creative freedom and a little over a month's time, Seth used a mix of After Effects and Illustrator to seamlessly connect the 30 articles of the document into a captivating piece. In this case, no plan was the best plan. Seth comments, "There were times when I had no idea what I was going to do for the next section of the document. I would churn out something that I would hate but in that process I would come up with the idea, layout or imagery for something I ended up developing and liking."

To recreate the feeling of an older document Seth chose a simple color palette of black against a textured tan and kept it modern with Helvetica. "Originally, I hoped using to a two-color scheme would simplify the process but it actually ended up making things harder because creating single color imagery, especially when it's the the same color of the text, was very challenging." He proved up to the challenge, creating a dynamic flow between the text and the morphing illustrations that impels the viewer to follow along. Using the text itself as a graphic element that shifts and plays across the screen, both pays homage to the original document and cleverly blurs the line between words and images. The melodic music, "Minds Awake," by Rumspringa off Cantora Records is also nice touch.

Originally written by Eleanor Roosevelt 60 years ago, it's astonishing that less than five percent of the world even knows that the document exists. The message rings particularly true now and we're proud to be associated with Seth, whose work enhances the Declaration of Human Rights with his motions graphics to spread the word to both the younger and older generations.