No Comments Written by Anders on May 20, 2008 – 8:29 pm

Audiovisual design or AV design, also known in various contexts as time-based design or motion design, is a relatively new discipline that integrates sound with moving images. Generally speaking, the practice of AV design typically falls under one of three broad subcategories that often overlap: film design, TV design, and animation.

The process also draws upon a number of associated disciplines including typography, illustration, sound design, and branding. Despite the fact that the film industry has always relied upon the expertise of designers, it was traditionally considered to be a separate category, distinct from design.

This changed with the specialized disciplinary profession of “production designer,” which first emerged in 1939 to ensure that the overall look and style of a film was coherent. Today, production designers are charged with overseeing everything from storyboards to special effects to supervising the entire art department of a film or television production.

The responsibilities of the “TV designer” are similar to those of a production designer (> Broadcast Design). This role emerged after the television broadcast boom of the 1980s, and had a significant effect on making audiovisual design a highly profitable field of practice. Since animation is so often categorized as a sub-genre of film or television, the practice of AV design in this context is not often addressed. However, in the course of the media industry’s economic development, there have been many advances in animation techniques and technologies that should not be overlooked.

The possibilities inherent in 2-D and 3-D animation technologies in particular have deep implications for the future of TV and film production and its related professions. It is clear that audiovisual design is also becoming increasingly important in relation to (>) interface and (>) web design. These days, the development of the World Wide Web and mobile telecommunication devices have to be taken seriously when discussing audiovisual design, especially as their significance will only intensify in the years to come. Until the 1980s, audiovisual technologies relied on analog image manipulation using the classic rostrum stand and camera to construct frame by frame pictorial compositions and animations of varying complexity.

The tedious processes involved in monitoring the results (developing, editing, scoring the film, and so on) often resulted in simplistic or inconsistent design concepts.

The introduction of electronic media marked the beginning of a broader approach to audiovisual design that took place in the 1980s, and was quickly followed by the introduction of (>) hardware and (>) software systems that further facilitated designers’ abilities to work with image and sound. The effect that these innovations had on animation in particular was clear from the outset.

When open desktop computer systems began replacing black boxes (computers used solely for video production) in the late 1990s, yet another realm of possibilities became available. In the course of the digitalization of all design-relevant production phases, audiovisual designers have claimed increasingly central positions in almost all of the media-based entertainment industries.