UNIT Design Collective's Creative Highlights

Join UNIT for a cuppa and screen catch up with UNIT Studios design collective creative director, Tom Wansbrough-Jones.

Design Influences

There’s so much good stuff to look at on various social platforms these days, it’s hard not to get lost in it all and totally forget what you were doing. Getting out to a good exhibition gets me excited and keeps me focused on some really interesting work that’s out there in the real world. Recently, I’ve been going to a lot of the exhibitions at 180 Studios. Future Shock and UVA - Synchronicity were a couple of the visually stimulating ones that were really cool to go and experience, especially as they could easily translate into the type of work we do in the UNIT Design Collective studio. I also really enjoyed Wes Anderson’s, Asteroid City as it featured so many of the props and costumes from the film. It’s so interesting to see the amount of detail, close up, that goes into every single item there.

What Are We Working On

We just finished a great piece of work celebrating Chinese New Year that I’m really sad to say is not allowed to be PRd. Such is life sometimes, but I am allowed to show it off on the cinema screen to anyone that comes and visits us at the office. I’m always happy to present and show clients our ideas and process behind our favourite work, and this is certainly one of them. I’m currently also prepping some of the best GFX shots we did for The Creator, which came out late last year.

Recent Creative Highlights

We had a great year last year, with such a variation of different types of work for both Film and Commercials. The Creator was probably one of the biggest we did, featuring a ton of UI GFX shots throughout the film. It was such a great experience working with the Director, Gareth Edwards, on this and was such a reward when the film finally came out.

We also worked on the TV series, Bodies, producing some big screen lecture theatre GFX about quantum physics and time travel. Another highlight was Studio POW asking us to create a studio logo animation for them to feature before the film. We’ve really pushed ourselves in all the different disciplines from Motion Graphics, 3D and 2D Comping, so it’s always a development to our learning process with each job as we’re constantly applying new tech to our workflows.

The recent job we worked on, that I can’t talk about unless you come in and see me (!) involved using AI image prompting to make the final film possible in the time we had to achieve it. Other recent commercial highlights included the Moju idents we did for Channel 4. These brought together so many different disciplines from each UNIT department and were so much fun to work on with Who Wot Why and Merman London. There’s a fun Q&A here about this job which makes an interesting read.

Design Offering

I always smile to myself when I pass clients on the stairwell and hear them saying that they love coming here because we offer an ‘everything in one house’ scenario. No running around from one place to another if you don’t want to. Having all of these departments at your fingertips also really helps the UNIT Design Studio on pretty much every job we do. Sometimes, it’s just getting that extra finish from Denny and Harry in Grade, or that extra flourish of sound design and mix from Jamie and Hannah! Then there’s always the invisible VFX work from Frasier’s guys in Flame and Nuno’s CGI and Nuke department when we need more skill set dependent tasks from Houdini, Maya or Nuke! Sorry, I couldn't help myself there, but I am happy to be part of a larger offering when it helps you create stronger looking work. 

Design Set Up

Following what I just said, we’re fully set up to work from pitch stage to final delivery. Or come in at any stage to help if needed. We work both from home and from the UNIT office as is the norm these days depending on where you are based. It’s been wonderful to be able to work with some extremely talented artists based all over Europe and even New Zealand. It’s proven that we can upscale with the right artists for any given project if we need to.

Check out more from the UNIT Design Collective here.