Eye Magazine

Roblox ‘Brand anthem’ (2022)

DIA’s film launched a brand refresh and campaign devised by Special Group, Roblox’s current advertising agency.

The video emphasises the mutability of this online gaming platform aimed at school-age children on which ‘people come together virtually to share experiences’.

Klim (2019)

DIA made a series of analogue typographic films in collaboration with Alt Group to promote the release of the Söhne typeface family, launched by Kris Sowersby’s Klim foundry (see Eye 79) in 2019. Mitch Paone says: ‘Kris said, “you guys can do whatever you want, but you can’t do anything you’ve done before”. That forced us to re-evaluate. We’re proficient in thinking about how software generates stuff, but taking the same mentality into an analogue approach required work and experimentation.’

DIA had project carte blanche: ‘There was this “foggy memory” idea, and that translated into the process we developed, scanning and printing stuff with overhead projectors. Finally we set up a camera for a tabletop shot and figured out the solution of chemicals and inks and then just did one take after another.’

On his website, Sowersby has written of his love of white type out of black: ‘It looks powerful and ethereal. Instead of light being absorbed by black letterforms, letterforms are reflected by light.’

John L. Walters, editor of Eye, London

First published in Eye no. 104 vol. 26, 2023

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