Daria Lanz, born and raised in Vancouver, is a media designer and digital film maker. After completing the Communication and Ideation Design, and the Electronic Media Design programs at Langara College, she interned at the award-winning Rethink Communications. Daria currently works as an Assistant Director of Motion Capture for the “Max Steel” series at Rainmaker Entertainment, and has worked as an editor, director, and project manager for Screaming Black Dog Productions. She is also an assistant project manager and filmmaker for Type Camp International, where she is able to combine her love of film, design and typography. Daria loves creating things in a collaborative environment, be it a tactile book or a musical composition.
I love to laugh, I love to sing, and hike and travel. But mostly, I love making things. Entering the world of design did not come as a surprise, as I’ve been drawing, painting, crafting and designing since I was little. I have a particular interest in typography, which is reflected through a lot of my work. I also gravitate towards creating in the tactile realm. It’s extremely gratifying to be able to hold or touch the final outcome of a project and be able to say “See, look! I made this!”
On her first pair of Fluevogs:
I’m a newbie! I was recently introduced to the world of Fluevog and have been admiring from afar. Now I have no excuse, and I’ll be sporting my new pairs proudly!
Star Wars Typographic Deathstar
This is a 3D typographic Deathstar using the script from “Star Wars Return of the Jedi.” I categorized the words based on their frequency throughout the script. Inspired from the structure of the Deathstar, I created a 5 layer cut away poster, pushing the smaller, less frequent words farther back to the bottom layer. Continuing this pattern over 5 layers, the result is a high contrast between frequent and few words through size and depth.
TypeCity
A typographic masterpiece! Every glyph of Adobe Jenson Pro is featured in this project in an original and unique way to recreate the Vancouver’s infamous downtown public library – a monumental library that was built to mimic Rome’s Coliseum. Rather than using the obvious Trajan Pro typeface, I used Adobe Jenson Pro which was first released in 1996, and is based on a Venetian oldstyle text face cut by Nicolas Jenson in 1470. Hence, drawing on the comparison of the library created in modern times, inspired by something ancient.
The original intent of this project was to project the library on building walls throughout Vancouver. This display was achieved for one night in July 2009. Now, the piece stands 5 ft wide, 4 ft tall and is available for purchase upon request.
What does typography mean to you?
At Type Camp California 2011, we asked all our participants what typography meant to them by asking them to finish the simple sentence “Type Can”. With 17 designers from all around the world, of all different specializations, it is brilliant to see how typography influences their work.
Type Camp is a series of weeklong workshop retreats held in different locations around the world throughout the year, taught by some of the top industry professionals. It has been my honour to work with this company as filmmaker, and I look forward to future camps over the next couple years. Type Camp provides a creative, modern, collaborative education in typography and design by providing flexible non-traditional education to help you become a better designer, no matter where you are. If you’re interested in attending a camp, check out their upcoming line up at www.typecamp.org
On entering the FluevogCreative contest:
A colleague recently introduced me to the competition, and I immediately went to the site to check it out. Had I known about them earlier, I probably would have participated in previous briefs as well! There was no specific reason why I did it, but rather, why wouldn’t you?
On the inspiration behind her winning ad Sharpest Tool:
I’ve been in the middle of renovating my room, and I’ve had tools lying around the floor for the past couple weeks. I think it was probably the drill bit lying at the foot of my piano at the time that popped the idea into my head.
The initial idea came quickly amongst a bunch of others during a brainstorming session. It evolved in the back of my mind as I worked on a few other submissions. Once I’d worked it out, I spent about an hour to draw it up, and another to put it all together and tweak. In total I’d say about 3.5 hours.
On what the dreams and future hold for Daria Lanz:
Hmm, I’ve got lots of dreams and aspirations, too many to list. I have a driving force to achieve all my goals and sometimes it causes me angst because I’m impatient and I want to do it all now. In saying that, some of my current dreams are to travel the world discovering every crack and crevice of the Earth. I’d like to explore the world of music and songwriting more in-depth, and improve my piano playing. I would also like to continue meeting new, inspiring, amazing people, and to collaborate with other creatives and engage and produce new, exciting, never-been-done before projects. I want to inspire, bring together, and help people around the world through my work, however that may occur. My goal is to make a difference to the World, I’m just trying to figure out how!
If you’re interested in working on a project together, or have some exciting ideas that need a push, I’d love to hear from you!
Keep an eye out in Vice, Juxtapoz, UTNE and Wax Poetic magazines for Daria’s winning design in print.
