Many things fit in your pocket, but until recently an HD camera wasn’t one of them. With this in mind, Nylon Studios decided to see what happened when a group of commercial directors were given a pocket camera, two minutes, and one signature item. In addition, they would work with Inner-City Filmmakers, a nonprofit dedicated to providing hands-on film experience for disadvantaged youth. Shooting on Kodak’s new PlayTouch HD camera, the directors, including Superfad’s own Justin Leibow, were challenged to create a film involving—wait for it—‘binoculars’. For Leibow, the result is “Exquisite,” a neo-noir short about an interview between a photographer and a journalist that takes a dangerous, seductive turn.

The resulting festival, Pocketfest, showcases 11 films, each wildly unique from the other. The films were screened on Sept. 22 at Pacific Design Center, and you can now view them all online here.

Talking chimpanzees? At first it sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi movie. But after watching Project Nim, the compelling new documentary from director James Marsh (Man on Wire), you’ll never doubt their ability to learn our language. Following a successful collaboration on the titles to their film Red Riding:1980, Marsh and editor Jinx Godfrey once again contacted Superfad and Fad NY Creative Director Kinda Akash to create a graphic counterpart to Project Nim. Working together with Marsh and Godfrey, Kinda and Superfad developed a specific design strategy for the documentary: bold, large scale typography juxtaposed over footage for words Nim learned to sign; simple animation to speak to his progress; and subtitles for silent, signed exchanges with humans. During a fruitful and extended collaboration, this visual language itself evolved in subtle and profound ways, culminating in the titles seen throughout the finished film. As Kinda says, “This is the sort of project that keeps us all inspired, and reminds us why we are graphic designers first and foremost. We are thrilled to make a contribution to such an amazing film.”

You can check out the Project Nim trailer here.

Let’s take a little detour from Süperfad work to celebrate our people. This month, our very own Art Director Gretchen Nash was featured in the respected design magazine IdN. In a section focused on “tactile design,” the profile shows a number of Gretchen’s personal pieces, and focuses on the influence of handcrafts and mixed-media in her work. Outside of the office, Gretchen recently completed a book entitled “Dear Gretchen” that colorfully and graphically analyzes a collection of letters from her childhood to the present. If her consistently strong motion-design work didn’t prove it already, the girl is no slouch. Congrats Gretchen! Now get back to work…

Did you know that White Castle was the original American burger chain? Or that they actually invented the “sliders” you now see on every menu in town? Neither did we, until we worked on this new campaign for the iconic chain’s 90th Anniversary. In “Everything’s Better With Bacon,” we use bombastic 3D animation and playful typography to give the viewer a quick history lesson, while showcasing the burgers that made White Castle famous. “The Rules Are Different” takes the brand to another level, colorfully separating the original from all the other “wannabes” out there. Consider yourself informed.

Every day, people from all around the world visit superfad.com to learn about us. We thought it would be nice to learn about them for a change. With that in mind, we created a global traffic visualizer to teach us more about our web audience and the cities and countries in which they live.

The visuals are driven by data from Google Analytics, the Yahoo! Developer Network and GeoNames. Key technologies include HTML5, CSS3 and, most notably, WebGL, which allows for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics directly within a web browser.

To enjoy the visualizer, you’ll need a cutting-edge browser like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox 4 or a developmental build of Apple’s Safari.