The year of the gif: Studio Feixen’s multitude of moving posters

During 2017 Swiss graphic designers Studio Feixen expanded its impressive portfolio even wider. The studio redesigned the widely read Swiss newspaper 20 Minuten for the day, it created a Hermés Christmas perfume campaign with ping-pong balls and diamonds, it made a digital music playing poster for cultural evening Oto Nové Swiss, and contributed to a campaign for trainer fanatics’ favourite day of the year, Air Max Day. Due to these landmark design achievements it’s safe to say the studio had a pretty brilliant year, one that was met with personal achievements too, and to celebrate they made an animation for each.

“For us in 2017, things revolved around movement more than ever,” Studio Feixen’s Felix Pfäffli tells It’s Nice That. Looping, satisfyingly designed, glorious colour combined moving digital posters is a side project the studio have become known for, but for its designers it’s a way to show its interests: “In general I can say that these works are kind of very compromised images to show how we understand design and what we think is interesting to think about in graphic design at the moment,” explains Felix. “It’s all about technology. What will the future poster look like? How will we interact with design in the future?”

One animated poster announcement Studio Feixen presented to its audience was Hellou released around this last time year to share its new website design. The studio utilised dynamic type as a way to “say hello to everybody,” but also declare its interest in responsive programming, and just how responsive it can be in the right design hands.

A further poster, and a favourite among its Instagram following, was to celebrate its growing admirers, pinpointing the moment Studio Feixen made it to a certain number of design hungry followers. “At some point we started to celebrate our followers with every step,” says the studio. It began with one in celebration of 30,000 in at the end of 2016, before jumping in 10,000 in the following January, steadily continuing to 50,000 the next month. Each of these moving posters showed its followers a totally new fresh perspective on graphic design, exactly the reason for following them in the first place.

Joyfully and deservedly, this steady climb of followers continued, culminating in three separate animated posters for the moment they reached a whopping 100,000 followers in October 2017. “All the videos play with dimensions, scale and also the use of technology,” says Felix. “You have computers, tablets and iPhones changing their scale. You have an animated book and a poster which stretches its type content. In a way we made these products to show how we understand technology. There are no real boundaries.”

To close out the year Studio Feixen gave back to its audience one last time, creating wobbling numbers in “experimental three dimensional/flat type showing 2017”, simply to “wish a happy new year to everybody”.

Studio Feixen thankfully don’t appear to be slowing down or stopping this tradition any time soon, welcoming a new year the way they know best: a new moving poster to show all these updates in one looping animation with an update from last year. “It’s a very simple animation showing how we work. Playful , fast, and with a looove for the detail.”