Made in the Middle (2018)

“This is the strangest secret in the world . . .”

“What is it you want?" asks the voice. "Why do you work? Why do you get up in the morning?”

Strong and commanding and doling out direct questions, the voice tempts us with the strangest secret in the world. The sage advice that follows comes from Earl Nightingale, an American radio host and author of The Strangest Secret, a 1957 motivational book and audio recording. It's also the backbone of designer Ben Radatz’s purely typographic opening titles to conference Made in the Middle, a solidly engaging work that steamrolls and stretches text, moving back and forth between steady restraint and invigorating energy. 

Helmed by design and branding studio The Carpenter Collective, Made in the Middle is a two-day series of events that aims to inspire, educate, and connect a wide array of creators in the American Midwest. Drawing on homegrown talent, the conference tapped Radatz, a partner at MK12, a studio with its roots in Kansas City and a portfolio of title design projects including Stranger Than Fiction (2006) and Bond film Quantum of Solace (2008).

In our conversation below, Radatz discusses building on the conference’s existing branding, his layering process in After Effects, and how and why he makes time for unpaid work.

A discussion with Title Designer BEN RADATZ of MK12.

The last time we featured your work on the site was in 2014, four years ago, with the titles to Semi-Permanent 2014. What has been going on since then?

BR: I’m still a partner at MK12 and that has been going strong. We’ve worked on some film projects, some broadcast projects. Some advertising as well but we have been trying to move out of advertising and focus on broadcast. There’s the documentary we did [titles for], Particle Fever, right around the time that we did the Semi-Permanent titles. We got a…

RSS & Email Subscribers: Check out the full Made in the Middle article at Art of the Title.

from Art of the Title https://ift.tt/2Rz2nJy