Each year Mill+ are tasked with creating the opening title sequence, title slates and idents for the prestigious D&AD awards. With an open brief, the project is always a fantastic way for the team to flex their creative muscles and develop something truly inspiring. 

This year's idea is based on Factory Fifteen's initial concept of a 'Design Carousel' and Planning Unit's idea for this year's show. The Mill+ designers and animators set out to develop machines that represent the creative vastness, inspiration and process of design development. Every machine in the sequence unveils a piece of information to the user, whilst revealing their working and also being beautiful to look at. The piece is simple, yet also hypnotic with the images enhanced by intrinsic sound effects from Angell Sounds.

Director Nils Kloth comments, "Every year the D&AD titles are a fantastic opportunity for us to come up with a custom brief for an idea and style that we really want to create. The guys at D&AD are greatly supportive and it's a real pleasure to be working with them. They trust us and we have all the freedom to create something amazing.

We opted to complete the whole sequence in 3D, enabling us to have full control over the workflow and creation of each machine. We built and animated everything in Cinema 4D, utilising physics simulation and manual animation methods to achieve the working of all these machines. To achieve the best and most realistic look we decided to use vRay for all lighting and texturing. It took days and weeks to render everything but it was worth it!"