THE BEAUTIFUL SYSTEM
Fashion is one of the most wasteful industries on the planet, and the people best placed to change that are the ones designing it. Sustainability is easy to agree with and easy to leave to someone else, which is exactly why it stalls. The film was made to close that gap and turn a problem everybody already accepts into something that feels like a responsibility rather than a statistic.
Fashion is one of the most wasteful industries on the planet, and the people best placed to change that are the ones designing it. Sustainability is easy to agree with and easy to leave to someone else, which is exactly why it stalls. The film was made to close that gap and turn a problem everybody already accepts into something that feels like a responsibility rather than a statistic.
The Beautiful System is an entry for the RSA Awards 2020, answering the Moving Pictures brief. The brief supplied the audio, Fashioning a Circular Future by Make Fashion Circular, and asked for an animation to carry it. The response is a wake-up call to designers, showing what a circular fashion industry could look like if the people building it decided to build it differently.
The Beautiful System is an entry for the RSA Awards 2020, answering the Moving Pictures brief. The brief supplied the audio, Fashioning a Circular Future by Make Fashion Circular, and asked for an animation to carry it. The response is a wake-up call to designers, showing what a circular fashion industry could look like if the people building it decided to build it differently.
The narrative was written to the audio before anything was drawn, moving from rough sketches into a storyboard that set the pacing for the whole animation. A human hand runs through it, and that was the one deliberate break from pure graphics. The audio is about the role of the designer, so the film needed a maker in it. The hand builds, places, and reassembles the system on screen, because the point of the piece is that nobody else is going to.
The narrative was written to the audio before anything was drawn, moving from rough sketches into a storyboard that set the pacing for the whole animation. A human hand runs through it, and that was the one deliberate break from pure graphics. The audio is about the role of the designer, so the film needed a maker in it. The hand builds, places, and reassembles the system on screen, because the point of the piece is that nobody else is going to.
The look development followed three principles. Objects are illustrated rather than abstract, because an argument this specific needs to be read, not interpreted. Colour is bright and saturated to keep the film alive and moving, since a film about a hopeful future should not look like a warning. Shadows and grain give the flat shapes weight and personality, so the system on screen feels built rather than diagrammed.
The look development followed three principles. Objects are illustrated rather than abstract, because an argument this specific needs to be read, not interpreted. Colour is bright and saturated to keep the film alive and moving, since a film about a hopeful future should not look like a warning. Shadows and grain give the flat shapes weight and personality, so the system on screen feels built rather than diagrammed.
A brief about a broken industry, answered by handing the problem back to the people who design it.
A brief about a broken industry, answered by handing the problem back to the people who design it.
Credits
Year: 2020
Audio: Make Fashion Circular
Concept, Design & Animation: Filipe Cordeiro