Meet the Team – A Cuppa with Lead Motion Designer Matt Rowley
We sat down with UNIT’s Lead Motion Designer Matt Rowley to discuss what drives him as a designer, stand out projects and more.
1. What inspires you and drives you as a Lead Motion Designer?
Big question! I’ve been around art, design and craft my whole life. As a kid I grew up messing around in my mums stained glass studio, sticking bits and pieces of glass together while her and her team built all these huge painstakingly intricate and beautiful pieces. I also worked there before I left school. I reckon the importance of dedicating time and effort to perfecting a craft and creating something amazing was something I learned about early on. Now any time I see awesome design work, across any kind of medium, digital or otherwise, (especially with all the disposable / quick fix solutions out there these days!), when it’s clear that someone really went that extra mile to perfect the process of putting it together, that’s the biggest inspiration!
2. How is it being part of such a creative motion design team?
We have a great design team here at UNIT. We always work together closely when we’re developing creative treatments and we pitch on a really wide stylistic range of motion design projects. One week we might be wading through archive footage, scanning drawings and piecing together mixed media collage animations in After Effects, the next we are animating characters and working with illustrators, then we are puzzling over fluid sims in Houdini and doing 3D product viz. I really like working in a team that covers all these bases. It’s even better when it involves collaborating with all the other departments across the company too.
3. Tell us about your previous post experience?
I’ve been working in motion design across post production companies and agencies in London since 2005 (although I did have some work in Scotland prior to that too). My first job in London was actually as a van driver for a video duplications company! They also had a small design department in a sister Post-House called Concrete and I managed to wangle a jr designer job there after a few months of too many parking tickets! After that I worked freelance for a long time. I’ve honestly been in and out of what seems like nearly every post house and agency across Soho over those years. I also did a couple of years working in a studio in Mexico City too. I joined the team here at UNIT full time in 2019, although I did a ton of freelance work here over the years before that.
4. What first inspired you to get into this career?
When I went to art college I signed up to the fine art school for my honours degree – at the time I genuinely thought all I wanted to do was draw and paint and was pretty obsessed with it at first. By my final year though, I’d got really into photography, film and graphic design too. (There definitely wasn’t a course called ‘Motion Design’ back then!) I spent a lot of time in the design school in my last term, even sneaking into their visiting lectures and using their computer kit 😂.. when I left I’d already begun learning photoshop and basic video editing. I think when I realised you could combine all this stuff into one process by working in animation, that was the game changer. Motion graphics was the best way to do all the things I liked at once with the bonus of potentially get paid!
5. Tell us about historical creative highlights?
I’ve had the chance to work on loads of really fun projects over the years, some of which have even won awards which is always a highlight! One thing that sticks out though is the first thing I ever made that aired on TV. Back in early 2000s Channel 4 used to have a late night mini-film series called ‘3 Minute Wonder’. A friend and I collaborated on a project that won a competition to be featured on it. We honestly had zero animation experience and drew the whole short by hand, frame by frame in Photoshop! I still love what we did even now and might never have made the move into the animation industry without the boost that came with making that.
6. Tell us about a recent creative highlight project you have been proud to work on?
A recent highlight has definitely been working last year on the graphic sections for the Feature Film ‘Midas Man’. The project involved creating montage sequences using lots of amazing archive footage from the Beatle-mania era when the band were living the highs and lows of their first world tours. We mixed all this together with live action green-screen footage and additional 3D work to create bespoke motion design pieces within the feature. It was great to see them in the big screen at the cinema too!
7. What are you watching / reading / listening to / exhibitions visited recently?
Not that I don’t love digital art but I do really enjoy stuff that exists far away from being sat at a computer. Recently I went to see a piece called Hanging Stones by the artist Andy Goldsworthy in the Yorkshire Moors. It’s a 20k hike in the wilderness that you do with a key that opens up abandoned buildings along the way. Each one is an individual art installation. Totally loved it. Music wise I’m really into record collecting and DJing outside of work. I’m currently doing a music project with my brother that involves a lot of playlist making so listening to loads via that. A ton of weird jazz fusion and cosmic sounds in there. Also really enjoying a lot of ambient music at the moment. Whenever I put a playlist on in the design studio, folk say it sounds like we are in a health spa!
