The Neighbourhood: Building worlds

For a studio founded by three former architects, it’s rather fitting that The Neighbourhood’s tagline is ‘Building words, telling stories’. The concept of building up a brand and telling its story three-dimensionally, from all angles, like the most famous buildings, is something that has carried through from its founders’ studies and now permeates The Neighbourhood’s client work. Whether it’s motion, animation or broadcast projects for clients as diverse as Sony PlayStation, Wallpaper* magazine and experimental chef Heston Blumenthal, the ethos of building a world from scratch and filling it with a story is evident across The Neighbourhood’s impressive portfolio.

“Architecture has definitely carried over in many ways,” considers managing director and creative partner Ben Davies, who completed his Architectural Studies degree at Liverpool John Moores University, as did The Neighbourhood’s creative director and co-founder Jon Humphreys. “In the most obvious sense, we do a lot of work with architecture clients. But I think that, more than anything, architecture is about a certain way of looking at things,” he adds. “We only learnt about designing buildings right at the end of the course; until then we were immersed in all kinds of art and science disciplines.”

Davies credits exercises like making a short film or creating an oil painting with awakening an appreciation for many styles of visual art. Humphreys agrees: “One strong way that this has shown through in our work is through the ability to think in 3D, and that comes into play whenever we have to think a concept through three-dimensionally. Even thinking through content and information has parallels with how we visualise space.”

The pair, along with third co-founder and art director Jon Hey, met while working for Smoothe, a Manchester-based creative agency. All three felt that their broad interests in different design disciplines weren’t quite being satisfied. “We had very mixed experience – and interests in everything from animation and graphics to illustration – that we wanted to bring together, but couldn’t in those positions,” Humphreys recalls.

“We felt a bit constrained,” says Davies. “The whole media landscape was converging around that time. We were into our own particular crafts, but we also enjoyed telling stories above everything else. We wanted to create an interesting place where all of this could happen.”

The three decided to take the risk and launched a studio in a tiny space in Davies’ house. It was a chaotic couple of months to start with, they admit, not least because they managed to land one of the studio’s biggest clients – Sony PlayStation – not long after setting up.

“We got that one entirely by luck,” Davies confesses. “They work with a number of agencies, some of which we know, and that first brief was simply a case of right place, right time. Plus big brands do seem to like working with smaller agencies at the moment – they know it means they will be treated as one special project by the creative team, rather than one of several similar projects.”

The studio was asked to create a short promo film for the release of the PlayStation 3, which featured a vibrant mixture of different animation styles and photographic work. Having proved itself with this initial project, The Neighbourhood was able to form an ongoing relationship with the client that has continued to the present day, with the studio working on all kinds of different creative, including a series of videos to promote the launch of the portable PSP. “They’re great projects for us to get creative freedom on and be experimental with,” Humphreys says. “I think as long as we carry on keeping it fresh and maintain an open mind as to where they’re going with the brand, the relationship will continue. If we ever started to repeat ourselves or failed to understand them, then it would stop working,” he adds.

This practice of staying closely connected to clients, understanding their values and messages, and building up a creative solution based on the information is integral to the way the studio works. “The first thing we do with a new client is sit down and have a proper conversation with them,” states Davies. “It’s always tempting to take the brief at face value – they’ll say, ‘Oh, we want a two-minute film’ – but it might not actually be the right solution for them. So we try to couple the brief with a long discussion about what they’re trying to do. Sometimes we end up coming up with something completely different,” he explains.

One notably prestigious project for The Neighbourhood where this practice recently came into action is its animation work for Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck restaurant. The eatery, considered by many to be one of the world’s finest, has a two-month waiting list, and Blumenthal wanted a film that would heighten diners’ anticipation as they waited for their table. The chef was keen to evoke the feeling of being a ‘kid in a sweet shop’ – even working with a perfumer to create a “bottled sweetshop” scent – and wanted The Neighbourhood to create an animation that reflected this.

“When we looked at the brief we thought that the idea was nice, but we felt there was a bigger opportunity there,” Humphreys explains. “We visited the restaurant ourselves and were blown away by the complete sensory overload it offers. We wanted to work on something that fully reflected that experience.”

The soon-to-be-released animation takes viewers down a pathway towards a sweetshop. When the virtual door is opened, they are immersed in darkness with only sound to guide them, stretching their senses to the limit.

The Neighbourhood roped in two specialists – Manchester-based design agency Love Creative, to devise a narrated script; and music design company Zelig Sound, to create an audio experience – to help fully exploit visitors’ senses. And to the studio’s delight, actor John Hurt agreed to narrate the piece.

This collaborative approach is central to The Neighbourhood’s philosophy: from the start it has always aimed to be more than a studio, instead forming a creative community with a wide-ranging network of contacts that can be called upon for different jobs – hence the name.

“We have a database with about 300-400 different people listed on there,” explains Davies. “It lets us shrink and grow depending on what a project demands, and stops us being pegged to one style.”

Davies also cites a culture of collaboration across Manchester’s creative community in aiding this approach. “There is a real independent spirit and a ‘can-do’ attitude,” he continues. “A lot of people left agencies during the recession and set up on their own, which has definitely added to that feeling.”

Moving forward, Davies and Humphreys are adamant that they want The Neighbourhood to be known less as a provider of creative and more as an ideas-manufacturer. This goes back to the studio’s guiding principle of ‘building words and telling stories’. “We’re trying to become more solutions-focused, rather than focusing on any particular product output,” concludes Davies. “We don’t want to just be an ‘animation studio’. We want to be creators of the story rather than executors of the craft. I think it’s difficult to be both a generalist and a specialist at the same time, but we’re working towards building a hybrid.”