The G in Gmake —

Gmake is Greg Duncan, an award-winning creative director working in television, film, interactive and environmental design.

Greg is responsible for some of the more iconographic identities on television today, including HBO’s award-winning on-air look, “The Colbert Report” logo, show open and graphics package, and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” show open and graphics package. Greg was recently honored to be asked to design the cover of “Print” magazine, the premier graphic arts publication in the United States.

Prior to Gmake, Greg was a founding partner and creative director of Verb! in New York. Under his creative leadership, the company emerged as one of the premier design firms for both on-air branding and large-scale, multi-screen media design. He currently works in many different mediums, including film, television, web, proprietary interactive, and multi-screen environmental design. He has worked with some of the most high-profile companies in the world and has a penchant for simplifying complex problems through intelligent design.

Greg now lives in Los Angeles, just south of Hollywood, between a golf course and a tennis club, neither of which he is a member.

And it’s pronounced GEE-MAK, but you’re welcome to call it GUH-MÄH-KEE.

Published on July 27, 2010 11:55 am.
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Nielsen NRG web portals

Branding, strategy, information architecture, design and web style guide for all Nielsen client-facing portals. The mission was to take Nielsen, the Hollywood ratings giant, from slow, awkward and out-of-date technology into clean, platform-agnostic, design and technology space. Details »

Published on March 29, 2011 3:06 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Interactive, Strategy Tags: , , , , ,

National Museum of American Jewish History

 

“350 Years in America” film created for the National Museum of American Jewish History. Easily my favorite project of 2010, if also the most grueling. I was given a short script, a placeholder soundtrack, hundreds of historical images and  a little over a month to create one of the primary film experience exhibits for the new museum. The 3 minute film sets the tone for the emotional journey the museum goer is about to experience, taking users through American Jewish history from colonial day to the present in breathtaking scale. The film is projected Details »

Published on March 29, 2011 1:15 pm.
Filed under: Creative direction, Environmental, Motion Tags: , , , , ,

Duck Soup

The last (maybe) of the stop motion experiments created with photographer Chris Korbey on a recent shoot in Dallas. This one started by trying to create spray from a toy gun with shaving cream. We liked the shaving cream pile and the shape it was making, so we kept going with it. Duck soup became the obvious go to.

Details »

Published on August 9, 2010 10:00 am.
Filed under: Experiments, Motion

Reinvented mortgage banner ad

Finished up a shoot EARLY in Dallas last week with photographer Chris Korbey and decided to kill the time with some stop motion experiments. The goal with this one was simply to improve upon the hideous (but strangely compelling) mortgage banner ads that frequently junk up my screen. Click thru to see how it looked in motion. Details »

Published on August 2, 2010 6:05 pm.
Filed under: Experiments, Motion

Insight website

Best practices study. Site design. Information architecture. Image library. Created for Milliman, a global actuarial and management consulting firm. The project was to build a web version in place of Milliman’s much-loved,  premiere print publication. Tall order. I included a best practices phase in the project to make certain the client was aware of current thought leadership practices, and to make sure Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 4:58 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Interactive, Strategy

SAP SapphireNow

“Network” package + 8 individual show package designs. Environmental graphics. Motion billboards. Onsite creative direction and design.

Just got back from Frankfurt after 8 grueling days (after 2+ months of production) working on this show. Working for WooArt and RedThread Productions, I created 9 individual (but related) identities, environmental media and graphics for SapphireNOW, a live, 3-day event broadcast simultaneously from Frankfurt and Orlando. The event was built around the concept of a live channel, with 8 recurring shows which featured live interviews Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 2:25 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Environmental, Motion, Strategy

School of Thought

2 minute info graphics story video built entirely in 3D. Created for SF-based ad agency School of Thought, this was a fun, quick-turnaround 3D story-tellilng exercise. I hate to show my hand (and geek out at the same time), but this animation would have taken a month Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 2:12 pm.
Filed under: Creative direction, Motion

Print Magazine

Cover design and illustration. The Print Magazine October 2008 cover, highlighting an article about the rise of faux news graphics. The story details “The Colbert Report,” “The Daily Show” and “ONN” (The Onion News Network).

Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 1:55 pm.
Filed under: Creative direction, Fake news

CA

SD & HD motion toolkit of animated and still elements. Wrote 50+ page style guide. Created for Sequel Studios and their client CA, the motion graphics toolkit was created to give CA’s myriad vendors not just rules to follow, but actual elements to work with. Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 1:12 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Motion, Strategy

Milliman careers web site

Best practices research. Photo art direction. On-camera interviews with employees (35). Information architecture. Editorial / site copy direction. Video editing.  Site design. Incredibly fun project working for global actuarial and management consultancy, Milliman. Realizing that the 10 year old HR brochures gathering dust on receptionists’ desks weren’t exactly reeling in high caliber talent, Milliman called on me to help them rethink their HR communications strategy. Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 1:04 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Interactive, Strategy

HBO Channel Package

Channel package design: Menus and navigation, genre show opens, network IDs, custom software, cross-promo toolkit, internal sales toolkit, print and interactive toolkits, brand style guide and inspiration book. After the success in redesigning the on-air look for HBO in 2002, Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 1:03 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Motion, Strategy Tags: , , , ,

Art & Business of Motion

For all you motionographer junkies looking for an alternative industry source, check out producer-extraordinaire Denny Tu’s blog, Art and Business of Motion. The site covers the business side of the biz, and there’s no better resource for main titles and channel branding. Great story on pitch fees here. Denny kindly published my response to the story.

Published on July 27, 2010 1:01 pm.
Filed under: Uncategorized

CBS Scene

Channel toolkit: opens, bumps, navigation, interstitials, backgrounds, environmental graphics and signage for a joint restaurant venture between CBS and The New England Patriots. The restaurant is part of Patriot Place at Gillette Stadium Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 12:59 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Environmental, Motion

Milliman image library

Image concepts. Art direct photo shoot. As part of the Insight and Milliman home page redesign, I proposed and created a 60 image library with industry rockstar photographer Chris Korbey, to use as primary art for Milliman feature publications. The challenge with creating an editorial library was anticipating future topics and trends in healthcare,  Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 12:50 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Strategy

Circles.com

Messaging. Brand positioning. Tagline. Editorial direction. Information architecture. Website design. Project done in conjunction with KORBEY. Circles.com is now live.

Published on July 27, 2010 12:48 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Interactive, Strategy

The Colbert Report

Show open & graphics package. Network promo package. The challenge with The Colbert Report was to make a graphics package as funny, unpredictable and hyperbolic as the host…starting with the logo design, which was designed to be intentionally ugly. We brainstormed with the show’s writers to come up with over-the-top patriotic themes. For the show open, I shot Colbert on a green-screen Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 12:44 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Fake news, Motion

The Daily Show

Show open, bumps and promo package. For this package, the challenge was to find a way to promote the show in a way that brought both The Daily Show and Comedy Central brands together without one short-selling—or dominating—the other. The Daily Show’s cheap parody of news graphics is actually the core of the joke, whereas Comedy Central sells comedy as urban hip. We started from news graphics cues but interpreted them in irreverent ways—odd angles, multiple globes, extreme animations, cut-and-paste collages of Washington, grungy Comedy Central typography—to find a balance between the two. The result is a sort of pastiche of the two brands that plays both equally and sells each other up. Kudos to Geoff Bailey, who played a big role in this project.

Published on July 27, 2010 12:39 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Fake news, Motion

Herman Miller

Design and animate 4 films. Created for Rasikas Films and Herman Miller, these films were designed as a series called Workplace of the Future to serve as both internal inspiration to the industrial design staff and as a primary sales tool. The films describe four types of companies—“Iconic,” “Eclectic,” “Visionary” and “Pragmatic”—as they might appear in the year 2012. My challenge Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 11:56 am.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Motion

Milliman illustration library

Illustration library. Based on a look developed with photographer Chris Korbey during my recent trip to Dallas for the Milliman Insight photoshoot. Chris and I were shooting extruded type (cut from PVC plastic) for a bunch of acronyms that needed to be featured on the company’s website. In an effort to squeeze in a couple more talent shots, Details »

Published on July 27, 2010 11:56 am.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Strategy

HBO Genre Opens

Series of network genre ID interstitials. I’m dating myself with this one, but it’s always been one of my favorite projects. The Genre Opens were an opportunity to explore typography, light and color in new ways. The substance of these opens, which play right before an HBO show begins, is a series of adjectives, followed by an edit of footage from that genre, then capped by a text build of that particular genre, e.g., “HBO Original Series.” The fun with this project Details »

Published on July 25, 2010 12:47 pm.
Filed under: Brand creation and stewardship, Creative direction, Motion