‘Design a Photoshop for robots’—this is the brief I received from Jeff Linnell, co-founder of Google Robotics acquisition, Bot & Dolly.
The Oscar winning film, Gravity, was a formative project for Bot & Dolly—the first FX shop to utilize industrial robots for cinematography.
I met the development team and immersed myself into an unfamiliar world—one in which anything seemed possible.
My first task was to create a new brand identity for internal venture ‘Human Machine Interaction’. I assembled a gathering of references that spoke to the relationship between robot and man.
‘Ride’ was the name the robotics team gave their fledgling desktop product. I started by studying wireframes and reviewing project goals. My aim was to design a UI that was visually comprehensive in terms of data, while minimal and beautiful to look at.
The Robotics Team built prototypes that mimicked the movements of dogs—using existing examples of successful quadrupeds. I began to learn the structural mechanics at the heart of robot design.
To illustrate Google Robotics new building initiative—code named ‘Make’, I was asked to envision a fully-functioning construction site—staffed entirely by a fleet of robots.
As part of the ‘Move’ initiative—I was tasked with presenting a work flow, an actual step-by-step process by which a robotics warehouse would function.
The design team wanted to see ideas for posters, anything that evoked the robotic world. I went to work, exploring texture, movement and color, working with an expressive graphic-driven approach.