Grant Gilbert

Grant Gilbert recently was a visiting lecturer. Through this lecture Grant discussed his experiences and developments through his career working with motion graphics. Double G studios is Grants London based design company who specialize in motion graphics, live action and brand identity.

Grant began with a brief overview of his background explaining that he once was a student at Stockport College studying Graphic Design moving on to complete a degree in graphics from in Birmingham. Grant discussed his early tendencies of preferring moving image work compared to the print based courses he had bin on. He then moved on to talk about his time working at the production company Planet24 who leading production company on such things as ‘The Big Breakfast’. From here grant moved on to develop his creative skills and began to work on individual briefs such idents and promos for channel 4. Then after a short time spent working for Attic in New York he returned back to England to start up his own company ‘Double g studios’.

From then he talked about his work through double g studio creating broadcast commercials for channel 4. Explaining this was one of his first briefs and he was quite luck to win the pitch. He discussed the process of the brief from storyboard/mock-up level to final production. Explaining the ident revolved around the music festival scene and he had an early concept that he brought in to realization for this brief. First mocking up scenes and shots in photoshop then moved in to production. For me the piece was perfect for that scene and age group, on a design view the pieces use of Colour, Lighting and Composition was fascinating as it was Grants first production.












Moving on to his more4 ident production grant explained in detail how this progressed from start to finish. He explained the creative and technical problems they had to solve. For example how complex the ident was, he explained there was a lot of discussion on how technically complex the ident was and explained that they started of making things over complex and ended up having to go back to basics. Using after effects and 3D software he finalized the ident to a similar form compared to initial ideas and experiments for the ident.

Moving on to his work for the rebranding of the BBC similar to More4 he talked us through the development of the project/rebranding. He shown his research in to the history of the bbc idents and explained that he went back to the basics for the bbc rebrand, revolving everything around a circle to symbolize community and unification.











Grant covered a great deal during his lecture and I was fascinated by the amount of projects he has been apart of through his freelancing career. Through this lecture I discovered that problems sometimes are easily overcome. In grants case he was able to step back from a brief and simplify and find the real purpose of his work. I think one thing that was evident through this lecture was grants ability to manage a successful brief and project, bringing different skills from different areas to make his concept a reality. It was an inspiration to look at Grant’s work but to find out the meaning and process behind the work was fascinating. I will look into getting in contact with Grant Gilbert in regards to work experiences or a constructive portfolio critique.