mograph.net :: matt fraction interview page 3 ::
 
We’d give good money to see the faces of the Kansas City Film Jubilee board when they saw the trailer they’d be running in 2001.
The deep-color retro world of the overlooked DIK shorts, with some of the purest MK12-style camera moves in existence. To this day, this particular retro look is the one trademark MK12 style that nobody’s cribbed.
Just when you think you can spot an MK12 bit from a mile off, you get this sweet thing, and you wonder if you really know them at all.
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In lieu of that, how did a group of fresh-outs (that MK12 started out as) keep it together and snap the whip to get work out?
Being hungry helps. Oh! And being evicted.

And, in all seriousness, we employ four people now. And there's an inordinate amount of responsibility we feel towards them, you know?

But when we started it was... it was Now or Never, you know? It was our shot. We were young and dumb and reckless enough to take the shot and we had to stick the landing. Otherwise it meant pressing the khakis and polishing the resume and blah blah blah.

And we'd worked together in school a lot--we already had that rhythm going for us, which helped.

During 2003 it got to be kinda crazy, with MK12 being elevated to the godhead of design. Your name was on everyone's lips. What was that time like? How did you keep an even keel, has it changed how you all work? Does rockstar status give you any perks?
What are you, talking to our moms or something?

I kind of reject that question, I think. I mean, it's flattering to hear but it's absurd and there was no... nothing has changed. That didn't happen.

Things get bigger, but its the same cycle just on a different scale. I mean, none of us are rich, we still tend to live hand to mouth and month to month, we still have the same fights internally and externally, our work is still good, bad, disappointing, experimental, half-baked, or overblown, just like always. The rent's due on the first, the client still gets the last word, and we still haggle over
nickels. Samo samo.

How do you hope for your workplace to inspire your creativity?
We let people smoke after 6.

You guys seem to love Americana. How do you work that into your stuff?
I think it's loving design, especially if its trash design, junk culture, or any other wonders from the island of misfit design. We get asked about kitsch and camp an awful lot, and the answer's always the same: it's not kitsch or camp to us. Not that we don't see the surreal and absurd aspects of a room with an all green room and a bright orange shag rug populated by egg chairs or anything, but, at the same time, we have a tremendous affection for past looks and styles. I don't know if Americana plays into it any more than anything else--doing HISTORY OF AMERICA, there's a good bit of that in the bloodstream right now, but it'll filter out again.


Will the animations you exchange with Nando Costa ever be made public?
That would be a great idea for a book, actually. Just a bunch of designers dicking around.

 

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