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Interview with Circus Family

If you’re looking for a committed group of audio visual designers to help bring your project to life, check out Circus Familiy

“Hello, we are Circus Family. A committed group of audiovisual designers that help bring your project to life”

Circus Family is a Dutch design studio whose mission is to create content that moves people. Their expertise includes motion design, graphics, animation, visual effects, live-action production and technical consultancy. They have made emotional connections with audiences with short films, documentaries, animations, commercials and massive projection installations, among other things. And like every good circus, they’re always out to instill a sense of wonder and awe in their audience.

NYCxDESIGN

This last part certainly happened during the opening of the Designweek in New York this month. For Wanted Design Circus Family created an interactive LED installation. A unique piece specifically designed for the official opening night of NYCxDESIGN in Brooklyn. This custom build LED installation consists of 35 LED light tubes. All animations that were created for this LED installation were directly connected and reacted to surround sound present in the room. Walking past the installation you could manipulate the visuals by clapping and shouting or stamping your feet, creating movement. During the official opening event at night all visuals were triggered by the audio output of the DJ playing. Fully reactive to the music. “This installation was a great way to showcase what we are as Circus Family and what we can do. An introduction to NYC so to say”, according to Linda van der Heijden.

See below the installation of Circus family, in collaboration with Dutch Culture USA, created for NYCxDESIGN.

 

The directors, designers, and artists of Circus Family are from diverse backgrounds and create powerful audiovisual experiences, employing a colorful spectrum of styles and techniques. They are fully aware of the overwhelming amount of information surrounding us so they aim to speak a clean, clear and meaningful message. The focus is on unique storytelling solutions for moving image. Their mission is to create content that moves people.

Circus Family commissioned works are mainly for clients in the fashion, luxury, sports and music industry. “For our uncommissioned and self initiated projects we always look for ways to blur the boundaries between design and technology.”

Projects

Circus Family works with a large network of talented partners on a project basis. This allows them to pull together the best team for each challenging project. As Linda explains: “we are one tent with many acts that can be orchestrated especially for your needs. But nothing can explain what we do better than our work.” 

When we asked for their top projects, we got a big list. As Linda stated: “we are most proud of projects that manage to cross the boundaries between design, narrative and technology and form powerful conceptual audiovisual experiences.” 

We selected some great references of the divergent projects below:

Scotch & Soda Berlin

Show concept & visuals for fashion show and opening party of Scotch&Soda AW1314 during Bread and Butter. Masssive screen setup using ten projectors and three D3 video servers. See also the making of.

Art Directors Club Netherlands

Selection of graphics created by Circus Family for the ADCN 2012 award show.

TED conference

Radical Openness through open source motion graphics. Motion graphic animations based on colors, patterns and schemes. Project these onto various surfaces which break the light coming from the projector. Think mirrors, glass, water etc. All the moving images we use to build our films are available online as a free download.

Nike New Masters

Launch of the new Dutch national team’s away shirt. Check out this behind the scenes film of the photoshoot by Anton Corbijn with Wesley Sneijder, Natalie La Rose, Gregory van der Wiel, Reverse, Nalden, Doutzen Kroes and Afrojack. Find out why these New Masters are the chosen ones to proudly represent the Netherlands.

The new Dutch Away shirt by Nike Football pays homage to the creativity and tradition of renowned Dutch Masters from the 17th century. On the inside of the neck are the words ‘New Masters’ in Dutch. This also refers to the talented, vibrant group of players in the Dutch national team and the seven selected New Masters who all have the potential to write their own history.

Future

For Circus Family it is time for a bigger audience and in the US they’re confident that this audience is to be found. The Netherlands is a fantastic place to call our home but our projects are crossing borders and speaking a universal language. They like to see if they can add their work to the international design community, bringing their signature work worldwide, starting in the US and meeting like-minded people that they can collaborate with.

So keep an eye on this design studio and their upcoming projects and follow them on facebook, twitter, instagram and website for more information.

DutchCulture USA