ripe: Blurring Boundaries
Since 1998, the team at Leeds-based multimedia agency ripe have been exploiting the creative power of Apple technology to produce truly integrated campaigns spanning such diverse media as print, web, video, special effects, touch-screen kiosks and spatial design.
“We’re even blurring the boundaries between architecture and design”, says Alex Murray, company founder and managing director. “We recently designed a modern house that’s going to be featured on Grand Designs”.
Exhibition stand commissioned by Adidas for the London Marathon.
Blurring boundaries is what ripe is all about. Over the years, this forward-thinking agency has worked with such top-drawer clients as Adidas, BMW, Honda and Coca Cola, coupling a ‘never say never’ philosophy with what Murray describes as “high-quality, connected technology solutions”.
Examples of the company’s output include an animated video sequence for baby food manufacturer SMA incorporating 3D and motion graphics; a large-scale exhibition stand for Adidas, promoting its presence at the London Marathon; and a complete, customer-centric online environment for childhood development experts, Fisher Price.
“One of the reasons ripe has been so successful”, says new media manager, Andy Shillito, “is the close relationship between technology and design. In fact, trying to draw a distinction between the two in a creative environment is foolish; we use our technology as a creative tool. That’s the key to our business”.
From its humble beginnings as a print agency, ripe has been committed to Apple technology and its ‘joined-up’ approach to content creation and delivery. As Murray says: “When we started the company, I’d been using Apple technology for a number of years and knew we could use it to produce really good work for clients. I recognised that things like graphics were evolving onto the desktop and saw it as an opportunity to get involved in other media”.
Thanks to Murray’s instinct, the company, as well as its integrated outlook, has gone from strength to strength. “Over the past 10 years, we’ve seen Apple become a complete end-to-end solution”, comments Murray. “When we first started out, we had to run some PCs or dedicated hardware for certain animation and 3D programs. Now we run everything on the Mac — the technology and our operation has become 100% integrated”.
The sorts of designer that ripe employ — who tend to be technically as well as visually astute — revel in the opportunity to push Apple technology to the limit. “Part of the design process is exploring the technology”, says Shillito. “Our designers are passionate — they love to work out new ways to do things, to experiment with new features or to combine technology in interesting ways”.
For example, when the ripe team were asked by Adidas to produce an exhibition stand for the London Marathon, they were required to take a fully integrated approach, making sure their array of hardware and software worked together seamlessly.
While initial designs were laid out in Illustrator, a small creative team filmed the Adidas footscan system in London. The assets generated in Illustrator were picked up from Bridge by ripe’s 3D designers and used as the basis for the initial stand designs. Shillito says: “We’ve found that Bridge makes an excellent asset management system, particularly when multiple designers are working in many applications on the same project”.
