Now that Photoshop is ten years old, there's been enough time for the first crop of graphic design students to come through college completely familiar with digital ways of working and make their mark on the commercial design world. One such group is Image Now, a Dublin-based design agency that's been scooping awards and which has set its sights on London.

Coming through Dublin's College of Marketing and Design together, Darrell Kavanagh and David Torpey were one of the first computer-literate generations to hit the workplace and they believe it gave them a special advantage over previous years’ graduates.

"The company wouldn't be in existence without Photoshop and the other Adobe programs. Straight out of college, we only needed IR£5000 to set up in competition with the bigger, established firms," claims Kavanagh. "As the first computer-literate generation we could use the software to get to the objective faster and more efficiently, exploring more avenues."

"Photoshop and Illustrator have made it possible to work better," adds Torpey, "and they have created their own art form. But they are just tools - it's what you do with them, and why, that matters."

"Because the software exists, it opens up an avenue in your thinking; it's like having a better room with a better view, a better environment to work in, with more room to manoeuvre," rejoins Kavanagh.

Picture this
Photography is another shared enthusiasm among the Image Now team, and their own shots have appeared in a range of jobs, such as a music TV programme for Irish Screen that featured the music of seven countries. Again, the digital world is used to modify and improve the physical one. "In photography you're constantly trying to balance the exposure for the different parts of the image," says Kavanagh. "Now we can combine elements from several different shots, getting the best part of each." In a weather forecast ident done for the Irish Electricity Supply Board, a June shoot of a castle was turned into a snowy winter scene, for example, while swirling autumn leaves were added electronically to another.

Image Now started in design for print, producing annuals reports, brochures, corporate identities and even designing custom fonts for clients including Telecom Eirann, Fyffes and Aer Rianta. Photoshop is widely used for illustration and Illustrator for ‘little nips and tucks’ in corporate identity work, tweaking logos, as well as for preparing presentation spreads when showing visuals to clients. Perhaps some of the most widely-seen print work from Image Now was for Riverdance, for which they crated a hand-drawn font using Photoshop and Illustrator before saving as a font with FontStudio. The Riverdance work also led to them pushing the limits of the hardware, as Dave Torpey recalls:

"We were doing A2 size posters in Photoshop 3 on a Mac Quadra 950. Those were big files. Now of course the computers are faster, but the more power you have, the more tools you use."

Bursting into motion
From a solid base in print, the call of TV and motion graphics soon extended the company’s repertoire into the world of motion. "We all loved film and TV but didn't have the rights skills," says Torpey. The arrival of Nick Ryan in 1995 with a background in 3D animation and graphics plus a good directorial eye fixed that, and TV work started to flow in.

The latest motion project to bear the Image Now stamp is the opening title sequence for When the Sky Falls, the dramatisation of the life and death of reporter Veronica Guerin. Released in summer 2000, the film documents Guerin’s involvement in the Dublin underworld which ultimately led to her murder in 1996. Given raw footage of aerial and river-based shots of Dublin by director John Mackenzie (director of The Long Good Friday), Image Now worked to add a harder, harsher tone conveying the depths that underlie the picture postcard images.

The footage was captured at film resolution then colour corrected and graded in After Effects to achieve the gritty look. Stills were also combined with the live action in After Effects and animated with multiple layers to intersperse surveillance-style images and type with the increasingly sombre views of the city. The whole sequence runs for two and a quarter minutes and necessitated 140Gb of disk storage.

"Working in After Effects opens up the possibilities enormously," says Torpey. "Instead of being stuck in the solar system, you’ve got the whole universe to play in – you can do anything."

Speaking of the universe, the near-infinite expanses of the Web have also attracted Image Now’s attention, though they see it as one outlet for their creative energies amongst others. "The Internet is one venue, but we think digital TV is key," explains Torpey. "We’re starting to get involved in music videos and games design, bringing good graphics, 3D modelling, type and live action together."

However, that didn’t stop them for designing the Web site for an extreme sports equipment and fashion store. Adobe’s GoLive and ImageReady were put to work on this project, offering ‘the simplest entry’ to Web work, according to Torpey: "You can get started easily without having to worry about the technology – you can learn that later, " he says.

One aspect of the setup at Image Now that’s unusual in a commercial design studio is that designers are given a percentage of the working day to spend on personal projects rather than Image Now work. "It gives them the chance to see their work in print, in MacUser," for example," explains Kavanagh. "That helps them to like working here which in turn helps the work produced for our clients."

Although they have undoubtedly achieved success in Dublin, Kavanagh and Torpey have their sights set on London, claiming that in the UK capital you stand a better chance of being judged by your results. To this end, they’re now looking into opening a London office, with a view to repeating their success there.

ImageNow can be contacted by email to darrell@imagenow.ie. Their Web site address is: www.imagenow.ie.