Motion Designer Presentation: Hugo Moss by Yawen Lin and Yingtang Lu
Hugo Moss
Hugo Moss is a designer and motionographer in the UK. After the closure of a leading television studio in 1993, he founded Huge Designs, which is a London-based studio that currently owns over 300 credits of television titles in the UK. Over the years, Huge Designs earned its notable reputation with the creations of many titles for films, such as Any Human Heart, Downton Abbey, Borat, and Call The Midwife. Titles for Any Human Heart and Fearless both won the RTS for Graphic Design Titles in 2010/2011 and 2016/2017 respectively. Huge Designs also won the 2012/ 2013 EMMY for Outstanding Main Titles Design with the title for Da Vinci’s Demons (Series 1).
One of his work, Any Human Heart, he utilizes light and shadows to narrate a journey of a man’s life from birth to death. In the first scene, the black curtains opens up and a silhouette of a man appears. The black curtains symbolize birth, similar to when a women’s birth canal opens up and the baby comes out though it. Then the man walks up the stairs which symbolizes growth, and at the end of the staircase, he encounters the city, which symbolizes his arrival into society as shown when many people shows up in the scene. The next scene shows the man entering the train, which further emphasizes his journey. As he walk, the path becomes narrower as his back begins to bend. This scene not only illustrates the usage of the shrinking of the block and how it affects the man walking form, but it also shows how the man is growing older. When he got out of the tunnel, he entered a serene area, filled with nature. The scene switches to the light and the man’s hand reaching out for it. This symbolizes the end of his journey and how he is at peace.
Any Human Heart uses a typeface that is similar to Courier New, but with round finial and drop-like terminal. The typeface infuses with some characteristics of humanist typeface like the circular tittle, which is different from the Courier New, a slab-like tittle. Texts interacts with the silhouette in simple way, like changing the color, moving along with the silhouettes, etc.