Design Challenge and Design Ideas

Short animation directed by Richard Goldgewicht called A Thousand Kisses / Tausend Küsse. I was illustrator and art director on the project. The story tells of a young Jewish couple in Berlin who are separated by the fear of prosecution in the Nazi Germany of 1933, and make loose plans to reunite on the safe tropical shores of Brazil. Inspired by the actual correspondence recovered by the couple’s grandsons 80 years later in São Paulo, A Thousand Kisses presents a peculiar love story tainted by the harsh historical context of its time, with a light appeal of irony and real-life poetry. It was decided that the recovered letters should have a huge part to play in the visual resolution of the story.

How the brief was fulfilled

The recovered letters and epistolary textures are used in environments, backgrounds and as part of the character designs. As the main characters find themselves in an ever more precarious situation, their correspondence intensifies and so the visual texture of the film becomes almost collage based in its nature. Also during the film’s climactic scene, the book burning Nazis are composed of fire damaged pages of some of the actual books that were burned in 1933, reflecting the destructive ideology of the Nazi movement. I also looked at using postage stamps and franking that would have appeared on the envelopes going back and forth between Berlin and Rio de Janeiro by Zeppelin, with careful attention to accurate detail. One of the main characters Nette, was a shop assistant in Tietz department stores. So it was decided that the typography in the film is hand rendered based on the designs for sign card writing, which department store staff Berlin would have been expected to do in 1933. The two cities that feature in the film, Rio de Janeiro and Berlin, are treated quite differently to reflect the huge change in the environment of the cities. There is also reference to the underground cabaret scene in Berlin – which needed to look more vibrant to the rest of Berlin.