Submit-production occupies a peculiar place within the artistic economic system. When it is performed properly, no person notices. The color grade that makes morning mild really feel nostalgic? The VFX cleanup that erases a lighting rig? The sound design that makes silence really feel pregnant with that means? All of it exists to be invisible. The second you see the work, the spell breaks.
So when London studio Microdot wanted a brand new identification, they handed Commonplace Tasks—a model, expertise, and expertise studio based mostly in Melbourne—an fascinating downside. How do you make basically invisible work really feel seen and compelling, with out undermining the very craft you are making an attempt to rejoice?
To an extent, Microdot’s credentials counsel they do not want a lot assist getting observed. Since launching in 2025, their work has appeared at Sundance and Stockholm movie festivals, streamed on Netflix, and featured in campaigns for Maison Margiela, Nothing and Nike. Founders Adam Clarke, Mikey Smith and Zdravko Stoitchkov describe themselves as equal elements cinephiles, avant-garde artists and technical consultants; a mixture that enables them to push actuality’s boundaries whereas sustaining the pixel-perfect precision that retains the phantasm intact.
However credentials solely get you to this point. In a discipline the place the completed work not often reveals who touched it and the way, post-production studios want identification methods that may maintain their very own throughout wildly completely different contexts. One week you are subsequent to an A24 movie, the subsequent you are in a gathering with a tech model’s advertising workforce. Your identification must really feel at dwelling in each conversations, with out making an attempt to match both aesthetic.
The answer
Commonplace Tasks’ answer was to cease taking a look at what post-production creates and begin analyzing the instruments and artefacts of creation itself. And so the brand new identification attracts completely from cinema’s technical language: edge codes, timecodes, movie grain, scrubbers, slitscans. These parts aren’t ornamental additions however purposeful elements of the model system. Edge codes work typographically and structurally. Scrubber interactions on the web site borrow mechanics from the modifying software program Microdot makes use of every day.
This issues as a result of it solves the visibility downside at a conceptual degree. Most individuals by no means see edge codes or perceive what a slitscan is, but they recognise these parts as genuine to the world of filmmaking. You are feeling it even if you cannot articulate what you are taking a look at. The model makes the micro particulars of post-production seen with out requiring technical literacy from the viewers.
The positioning line
The central idea behind the identification is mirrored within the phrase “Rendering Creativeness”. That is each literal (rendering is the ultimate technical step the place every part comes collectively) and aspirational (suggesting artistic ambition past pure technical execution). Extra importantly, it reframes what might be dry technical work as one thing nearer to magic.
What really makes the system sing, although, is restraint. Commonplace Tasks’ artistic director, Dan Flynn, and his workforce might have gone maximalist with the cinematic references, however they understood that self-discipline permits expression, relatively than opposing it.
All the identification makes use of Akzidenz Grotesk. The palette stays largely monochromatic. Cinematic parts weave via relatively than dominate. This enables the identification to recede when crucial, letting Microdot’s work take centre stage, whereas remaining unmistakably theirs when considered in isolation.
The web site demonstrates this philosophy in follow. As you scroll via the homepage, photos develop and resolve like negatives in a darkroom; barely psychedelic, quietly subversive, nodding to Microdot’s experimental facet with out demanding consideration. Case research play out cinematically. Dynamic titling shifts and breathes. Micro-interactions reward shut commentary with out penalising informal scrolling.
None of this occurs accidentally. The consumer workforce weren’t passive recipients however lively collaborators with sturdy instincts and deep technical information. They’d reference obscure movie methods or experimental video artwork, sending the undertaking in instructions Commonplace Tasks would not have discovered by itself. Even the studio identify knowledgeable the work; Microdot references each Chilly Battle spy microfilm and a kind of LSD, a duality that resonates with the strategic and visible method.
The collaborative depth exhibits within the closing system. This is not only a model about post-production; it is a model made by individuals who stay in that world. You’ll be able to sense it in how the references combine relatively than beautify, how the technical parts operate structurally relatively than superficially.
Key takeaway
For designers and studios dealing with comparable challenges (tips on how to characterize craft-based work with out being both boring or bombastic), the Microdot identification affords a helpful mannequin.
Discover the language that already exists in your consumer’s world. Perceive why these parts exist and let that inform how they operate in your system. Belief that the viewers will really feel the authenticity even when they can not clarify it. And maybe most significantly, know when to step again and let the work converse for itself.
Submit-production will at all times be basically invisible. However Commonplace Tasks proved that the instruments and language of creation may be seen, expressive and distinctly ownable… with out breaking the phantasm that makes the work highly effective within the first place.
