Nice Shoes has significantly enhanced their design division with the addition of Brian Bowman to head the department as the company's new creative director. Bowman, who is moving to Nice Shoes after spending time as creative director at Digital Kitchen and designer at Tronic Studios, will be tasked with building a design and production unit to complement the company's well-known color-grading and VFX capabilities. The hire is part of a long-term growth strategy that included the merging of design and animation company Freestyle Collective into Nice Shoes operations late last year.
Bowman has staked a reputation for flawlessly executing ambitious, comprehensive design projects. His recent collaboration with Crispin Porter + Bogusky on the Cuervo Games 2010 - highlighted by large, iconic elements, including graphics and structures that functioned as wayfinding, branding and identity for the event - is typical of the scope and holistic nature of his projects.
"Brian is perfectly suited to come into Nice Shoes and build our design capabilities," noted Nice Shoes EP Maribeth Phillips. "He provides creative leadership in both the traditional and nontraditional areas that will elevate our design division to the level of our world class visual effects and color grading units. Brian's many past experience projects significantly enhance our capabilities as we seek to take on ever larger and more complex work in that vein."
Bowman's past projects include an interactive Microsoft/Operation Smile event to launch Windows Live, in which he combined live generative content with traditional CG and projected it onto a 60-foot-high sphere on New York's South Street Seaport; a time-lapse/live-action video, Meridian, which described the material connection between the ethereal universe and human perception; and the Go Humans Go film featuring large scale letterforms made out of people for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners' Quaker Oats campaign launch in Times Square. He has also completed notable work for MTV, HBO and the Webby Awards.
"Nice Shoes is legendary in the color-grading and CG realms, and I'm eager to help lead the design division to the same plateau," stated Bowman. "They're working aggressively to expand the studio and I've been given creative license to make something really unique. We already have some exciting projects planned that I can't wait to get to work on."
Meridian earned a 2009 selection for South by Southwest. His films have also screened at onedotzero, Resfest,Bitfilm and 25 FPS. An in-demand speaker, Bowman has spoken at Syracuse University's School of Architecture, Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Luster in New York, and at F5.