I once saw a crow drinking from a glass that had filled up with rain water. When the glass was half empty, the crow couldn’t reach the rest of the water, so it flew away. When the crow came back, it had a pebble in its beak. It dropped the pebble in the glass, raising the water level. Now it could keep drinking.

What is impossible for you to make? What’s out of reach? Chances are, you haven’t given it much thought. You can’t light a campfire underwater or force an eclipse or invert gravity for liquids or be inside a mirror ball, so you might not consider any of that for your next project.

That is unless you know CGI. In that world, the laws of physics are plastic; anything is anywhere. We can do anything, and make it absolutely convincing. It is yet another pebble to drop in your glass.

3D for persuasion

Convince your clients

We were making our first drafts of packaging for the cat food brand Perle. Perle means pearl, so one of our ideas was to add a thin film to the packet, which would give it a nacre-like sheen. One of our designers drafted the idea, and presented it a little reluctantly.

"The effect looks a little cheap," he said.

A senior designer assured him that it will look premium once it goes into production. It looks cheap now because it’s just a flat image. But how were we going to convince the client of that?

Once we had the packets in 3D, we could see the effect simulated for real. These images were much more persuasive for the client. Here, they could see how their product would look; they didn’t have to imagine it.

Side note: Seeing the design printed on 3D models helped us build in the right amount of padding around the design, so important information wouldn’t be lost in the folds.

Designing buildable models

Paper craft

3D software lets you design a 3D model, then unfold it into a printable 2D version of that model. It’s an essential tool in CGI, since it allows you to map 2D textures onto a 3D model, but we can also leverage it for another purpose.

We can design the 3D shape we want, then unwrap the model into a foldable map. It’s perfect for designing packaging, POS stands, and (I think) gingerbread houses.

In testing this hypothesis, my baking skills fell short.

Beyond reality

Very digital photography

I worked in architectural visualization for a while. Our goal was always the same: Present a building as it would look in absolute ideal circumstances. While keeping it realistic, we added lush vegetation, beautiful weather, smiling people, and vibrant colors.

Created with a team at Goldbox

As designers often do in the early stages, we showed a vision—an ideal to reach toward. That demands a certain level of realism to seem credible.

And no brand has allowed me to go so full-out surreal as Provocativo.

For carnival

For daylight saving time

For independence day

For opposite day

I leave you with the silliest job I’ve done. I helped KFC imagine their bucket as a sofa.