Final project for the Domestika course “Expressive Typography in Motion using After Effects” taught by Mat Voyce.

The assignment was to create a kinetic typography animation based on a simple phrase. I selected the NASA slogan “Work the problem,” made famous during the Apollo 13 crisis.

To capture the NASA feel, I used the colours from NASA’s own brand guidelines, as well as the typeface Nasalization, created by typographer Ray Larabie as an homage to NASA’s “worm” logo. I also imported blueprints from the Apollo mission (available on the NASA website) for the looping background.

After creating elements in Illustrator and then animating in After Effects, I added adjustment layers and effects to reproduce the vintage film reel look, imagining this as an educational film discovered in the NASA archives. For that reason, I also used an aspect ratio of 4:3 like old Super8 film, including the rounded corners from the frames on the actual film stock.