Shannon Davis Forsyth (right), creative director of Turner Classic Movies, came to Trollbäck & Company to create a series of ten thirty-second TCM menus that would serve as the cornerstone of TCM's on-air branding and navigation. The firm had collaborated with Forsyth on several projects through the years, and, says Jakob Trollbäck (left), "her creative judgment is impeccable, and, above all, she's as highly passionate about the creative product as we are." It had been ten years since the menus had been re-designed, and the firm was asked to make quite a dense amount of information look beautiful on screen, while providing strong visual continuity and identity. Of the solution, Trollbäck says: "TCM airs a wide variety of movies. They cover many eras, plots and visual styles. Trying to bring the movies and the viewers together, we noticed that the one thing they all share is a sense of physical space. Environments seemed to be a good place to start. Ultimately, we decided to focus on buildings in cities. In addition to being graphically very powerful and providing a perfect grid system for information, they seemed to contain millions of stories. Very fitting. Our creative director, Nathalie de la Gorce, came up with the final solution, which we both shot in 35mm on location in New York City. We tried to avoid iconic buildings to make it relevant for people all over the country."

TROLLBÄCK & COMPANY

Are there any special challenges to working with pop cultural clients?
Jakob Trollbäck: The challenge with all of our projects - whether a graphic identity for a Hollywood hangout like Tokio, a film title like Vanity Fair, a television campaign for Fidelity or network branding for Lifetime, AMC or TCM - is that we can't choose from a series of off-the-shelf products or ideas. For each assignment in all media, we have to start from scratch and come up with a distinctly new and compelling concept.

How did you get involved in pop cultural projects? Did you go out looking for such clients?
You have to work hard to not become involved in pop culture if you grow up in the Western Hemisphere. Back in Stockholm, I co-founded the club Nocturne in a renovated movie theater and began designing flyers, posters and invitations. I was a deejay at that time. Soon, other people, primarily performing artists, started coming to me with design projects. Then in 1991, I took the leap to New York, and landed at R/GA, working my way up to creative director in charge of the design department. We launched Trollbäck & Company five years ago, and, although we really get off on weird artistic projects, have worked primarily with entertainment and advertising clients. Obviously, you can't create successful communication without a deep knowledge of current cultural trends.

Is it as fun or as glamorous as it looks to an outsider?
We really do have fun, but you'd be hard pressed to say glamour enters into it. We have been fortunate with our clients, many of whom have been inspiring artists in their own right. For us, I think that's where the true excitement lies: in finding a common language and working together to fulfill a unique creative vision.

Are you yourself a pop culture junkie? Who is your pop cultural icon?
It's actually a very intricate question. As I said before, it's impossible to avoid pop culture. But at the same time, if you want to create something unique you need to be contrary. You need to see and imagine things others do not. This is the creative challenge. You must live within the language of popular culture but at the same time try to look at it from the outside. Only then can you infuse the culture with new expressions. If you're lucky, they, too, will become part of popular culture. But I am certainly a junkie when it comes to music. I have a music studio within our design studio, several thousand CD's, and, even though I keep buying the largest capacity iPods, they fill up within days. To confuse the picture even more, I don't own a tv and am very happy about that. And with two young children at home, my free time tends to be spent with my family and not at the movies, like a lot of it used to be. Pop culture icons? Maybe Frank Zappa, Bob Dylan.