Universal Everything by Matt Pyke

28 Sep 2006 Category: Events & Exhibitions, Features, Film / Animation, Graphics, Worldwide

Matt Pyke is known as an ex-member of Designers Republic. But for the past two years, Matt has been designing things in a style totally different from DR’s at his own design studio “Universal Everything“. Matt is part of a great line-up at a group exhibition “UK Jack OK!” which opened on September 20th in Tokyo. Pingmag asked him about his recent activities.

Written by Chiemi

Can you introduce yourself please?

I’m Matt Pyke, the director of Universal Everything, a design studio based in Sheffield, in the north of England. We have collaborators everywhere in the world and work as a large team of people creating animation, programming and processing, web designing, illustration… So, there is no central studio where we work. We work across i-chat or email. That’s the modern way to run a studio. (laugh)

When did you start Universal Everything?

I worked with Designers Republic for 8 years and finished there about 2 years ago. I started Universal Everything in September 2004. There is only one permanent member and about 15 freelance members. There are a sound designer, my brother Simon who does freefarm and a web design company, Kleber who did WARP website, and people from San Francisco, Berlin and Amsterdam… It’s a wide network. We work with more and more people.

What kind of work have you been doing recently?

We’ve just done something for the UK Jack OK! exhibition curated by Colette. The show was already held in Colette shop in Paris and Dover Street Market in London, and now it’s in Tokyo. At the exhibition you can see some of our motion work on the screens.

I saw your work on the website and noticed that your design style is very different from Designers Republic. And also almost each project has a different style too, doesn’t it?

Yes. That is the one of the reasons why I left Designers Republic… Because they’ve got a very strong style, their clients and people expect that style. So even when you want to try something different they say “We want this!” and point at their classic traditional style. I really wanted to start working in lots of different styles. And now we do every project in a totally new style. So people can’t guess what we are going to do next. That makes people feel like “I really look forward to seeing what Universal Everything do.”, right?

I see… Can you show us some of your recent work?

Ok, here is the commercial film for the exhibition called “For Everyone Forever”. This is an exhibition made into a sculpture. This film was shown at Onedotzero at the ICA on a big plasma screen too.

This is very interesting! …And it looks quite British to me.

Does it? Next one is a video ring tone for Nokia’s snowboarding festival. You could download it only at the festival site through Bluetooth.

(Click HERE for animation)

Sound synchronizes with the visuals very well on this video.

Yes. We are doing lots of these audio reacting using sound waves as a part of design. So there’s a very strong relationship between sound design and visual design. At the moment we have just started creating a DVD, which is going to be HD and surround sound and all the music will be done by my brother Simon. And there will be animations by different people but not like traditional animations. It will be more like this. I am curating and doing some animation too.

When is it due to be released?

It will be reased by Dalbin, a French Label for Visual Music, probably next March.

The next one is for Nokia’s first flagship store in Moscow. There are 28 screens and videos showing all round the store. They have very beautiful architecture and we can control the lighting of the whole store with the animations. So you can make the store go white to red then yellow really quickly. It was a very big project… It took 2 years to finish.

The round objects remind me of jellyfish. There is an air of fantasy about this animation.

Isn’t it like an aquarium or something? It’s like an artificial life thing where these dots are like people chasing each other and meeting each other and making friends with each other.. then eventually they fall in love with each other. Then they start become red and the whole store becomes a red colour. It’s a living animation.

The next one is also for Nokia. It’s for the window of the shop. And of course, this is done with processing too.

Is there anything you pay special attention to when you start to work on a project?

We always try to find a new way of creating, or using a new way of creating, like processing or stop motion animation.. to keep our lives interesting.

How about ideas? How do you get them?

Music and walking.. I’m trying to avoid looking at things too much. (laugh) I look at magazines like “New Scientists” and “National Geographic“. So many interesting things are going on in the world. And I just walk around with my eyes opened, like a sponge. So when you squeeze it some nice idea comes out.

Matt, it was really nice to meet you today. We all are looking forward to seeing more of your new ideas! Thank you so much.

“UK Jack OK!” exhibition
（Curated by Colette）
including: Martin Margiela, Comme des Garcons, Show Studio, Trevor Jackson, Alan McGee and many more

Till Tuesday 3rd October
At Shinjuku Isetan department store

13 Comments

1. Change the color of the room with plasma screens, perhaps is to much expensive. But, is really amazing the synchronization between music and movement. I would love one in realtime.

   Posted by: Sergio on September 28th, 2006 at 11:56 pm

2. Some reason the Youtube seems slow today. But I love the concept!

   Posted by: ヤーッコ on September 29th, 2006 at 12:49 am

3. I have been a huge fan for a while. Love your work, keep it up!

   Posted by: seth on September 29th, 2006 at 9:16 am

4. aaaaaaaah!Dalbin got another one on board, then! Well done!!!

   Posted by: ill p.e. on September 29th, 2006 at 11:18 am

5. Videos on YouTube were kept “private” which may explain why they don’t load in this article…?

   Posted by: boib on September 29th, 2006 at 11:56 am

6. I have just changed them to “Public”, so hope everyone can watch them now! Sorry!

   Posted by: chiemi on September 29th, 2006 at 12:05 pm

7. brilliant stuff, how did they get the animation working across 28 screens? … all those colours … lovely!

   Posted by: henry on September 29th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

8. Too good work. Contempory and colorful.

   Posted by: Paavani on September 29th, 2006 at 6:38 pm

9. [...] Universal Everything by Matt Pyke (tags: inspiration design interview toread) [...]

   Posted by: pristina.org | everything design » links for 2006-09-29 on September 30th, 2006 at 5:17 am

10. Universal Everything is the booshaka!

    Posted by: Ian on October 3rd, 2006 at 1:19 am

11. Great work! - your adverts are so simple yet so effective - less is definatly more!.. adverts do control the world - as we’re all such tv addicts - at least yours are positive, colourful and refreshing! Keep bein creative!!

    Posted by: Cherith on October 6th, 2007 at 5:02 am

12. [...] in the launch of a long-term multi-screen exhibition at the Millennium Galleries, introduced by Matt Pyke (Universal Everything founder and previously of The Designers Republic). Along with it, there will [...]

    Posted by: Advanced beauty « sarah badr | pieces at random on April 23rd, 2008 at 9:08 am

13. [...] comprised of 18 visuals by 20 artists, or rather sound sculptures, as curator Matt Pyke of UK-based Universal Everything would say. These transient pieces made by processing are for us to see how far you can really push [...]

    Posted by: Advanced Beauty using processing on November 19th, 2008 at 4:08 am

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