Howard Nourmand: Analyze This
Howard Nourmand grew up in Hollywood, so it’s perhaps not completely surprising that he had therapy at an early age.
“I went to a private school, and in those days they didn’t have counselors on staff,” he says. “But I was causing so much trouble that they hired a therapist just to see me. We sat down, and the therapist pulled out this card with an inkblot — it was a Rorschach test, of course — and asked me what I saw. Well, I immediately thought, ‘I’m going to milk this for all it’s worth.’ And I told her all this dark stuff: ‘I see devils!’ ‘I see dogs attacking people!’”
Was this the typical acting out of an angst-ridden teen? Hardly. Confesses Nourmand: “I was in the third grade.”
Twenty-odd years after his sinister elementary school period, Nourmand is again reinterpreting that classic analytic tool. Only now he’s made it the visual centerpiece of his latest design project: the very inventive title sequence for the film “The Dog Problem,” conceived and created on his Mac.
Mac Epiphany
Nourmand’s path solidified soon after he graduated from the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture with a degree in design — around the same time the Power Mac G4 was introduced. “I saw my friends editing video files on a home computer and I was awestruck,” he says.
In that media-capable Mac Nourmand saw the possibility of crafting a career from his many interests. “The Mac had all the applications for so many of the things I loved — film, fashion, design, photography. All these juicy things came together on the screen. And I had faith in that. That alone was enough.”
Nourmand soon realized that not only would the Mac allow him to combine his creative interests; it would let him approach them in a businesslike way. “I could do what I love and be successful,” he says. It was a light bulb moment for a young man who couldn’t quite resign himself to waiting tables in order to support his vision of a life built on inspiration and imagination.
“When I was growing up being a graphic designer seemed kind of boring to lots of people,” recalls Nourmand. “Then Apple came along and made graphics so damned cool. If you told someone you did graphics on a Mac, you scored serious points. And now we’re in the rock star phase of graphic design. So when I got the chance to work on film titles, I decided this was my chance to go full force — and not be a starving artist.”
Big Screen Entitlement
“The Dog Problem” was directed by Nourmand’s childhood friend Scott Caan (son of James Caan) and stars Don Cheadle, Giovanni Ribisi and Mena Suvari. Its story centers on a therapist (Cheadle, whose character, as it happens, is named Dr. Howard Nourmand) who recommends his patient get a dog so he can learn to love.
Nourmand, hoping to gain wider attention for his work, signed on to create the title sequence. The project evolved into a playful sleight-of-hand, spun from the inkblot image that Nourmand worked on for nearly six months. “It took me almost as long to create the titles as it took them to edit the whole movie,” he says.
Paint to Pixel
Once Nourmand settled on the inkblot concept, just one problem remained: “I didn’t know how I was going to do it.” Still, he wasn’t fazed. “That’s the great thing on the Mac,” he says. “From one job to the next, you do something you think you can’t do. I’m not some tech genius,” stresses Nourmand. “But I know that if I sit down and try to figure it out, there’s always a way on the Mac.”
Bringing his inkblots to life started with a massive art session. “First I painted about a zillion blots,” he says. After much experimentation, he discovered that whisking the ink onto the page in a very thin stream worked best. “It was sort of a Jackson Pollock method — you had to do it fast, with authority and conviction, without overthinking it.” He created nozzled tools from ketchup bottles and beauty salon applicators to make the blots come out just the way he wanted.
He folded the paper to create the mirror images and laid the blots to dry in the sun, then chose his favorites and began transforming them into the title cards he had conceived. Using a lightbox and onionskin, he traced the inkblots so he could refine the shapes, ultimately meshing painterly craft and modern-day graphic design.
