“When it comes to developing interactive video content, it’s not a choice so much as
a requirement that we use Notch.”

In celebration of this year’s San Francisco Design Week, All of it Now’s CEO Danny Firpo invited the public to come and play in their offices. The talented team at All of it Now crafted several installations that highlighted their skills and ambitions as an experiential design studio. Using a combination of Notch, Kinect, and a simple webcam, the team reinterprets the classic fun-house mirror into a Digital Distortion. Danny and Creative Director Cody Samson share their design story.

Danny Firpo, CEO, All of it Now

“All of it Now is a creative agency based in San Francisco, California. Our services include digital content & immersive experiential installations for brands, agencies, entertainers, and events. With roots in Film/TV production, information technology, and brand marketing, we thrive at the technological intersection of connecting people and content in wonderful ways.”

Cody Samson, Art Director, All of it Now

“I am fascinated by the intersection of motion design and the ever-expanding world of immersive tech art. My background is in traditional motion graphics, but things have shifted since I joined the All of it Now team and started using Notch. My eyes are open to the endless design possibilities made tangible by new technologies, and I’m eager to explore them all.”

Vision

Danny: “As part of the 2019 San Francisco Design Week, All of it Now invited the SF design community to come to our studio and explore the frontiers of experiential design and interactive motion graphics. We knew that we wanted to make four installations for the event, highlighting our various areas of expertise. Digital Distortions would focus on camera-based interactivity.”

Cody: “We knew from the beginning that we wanted to develop a range of interactive designs for this installation, using live-camera and Kinect feeds piped into Notch. We decided on two vertically mounted 4K monitors as our canvas. For the design of the interactive content, we took inspiration from The Funhouse of Mirrors. We wanted to use Notch to warp, augment, and distort the users’ image in a way that made it impossible for them to hold back a smile.”

Production

Cody: “We wanted this piece to feel cohesive and refined, so we opted to merge different looks and find commonalities in form and colour palettes. The ability to iterate rapidly and easily merge different files made this project run much more smoothly. With four designers working on this job, we were able to come up with an initial selection of about thirty designs that we were then able to slim down to our final ten. We were able to quickly tackle this portion of the project using bins and merging node graphs.”

“We used Notch to intake and stylize a live RGB camera feed and 3D depth mesh. The result was five pairs of interactive looks that played in tandem on the two monitors.”

Danny: “When it comes to developing interactive video content, it’s not a choice so much as a requirement that we use Notch. It is our failsafe to make sure the project goes right.”

“We couldn’t have been happier with how this project turned out. Viewers reacted as we had hoped, swaying and laughing in front of the cameras. Digital Distortions was a highlight of our open studio event. There was often a line to wait and try out the display!”

Credits:

Client: San Francisco Design Week
Production Design: All of it Now
Art Direction: Cody Samson
Notch Designer: Izzy Medina, Cody Samson, Lehuanani Rodriguez, Kevin Zhu (All of it Now)
Video Director: Cody Samson
Video Producers: Kevin Zhu
Media Server: Notch Standalone