Power of design when creative minds come together: Mark Miller on building Dark Igloo

VFS shares the journey of Dark Igloo, a New York-based content marketing studio founded in 2008 by digital design program graduates Dave Franzese and Mark Miller.

Dark Igloo has branded themselves ‘A Company That Specializes’; Since its inception nearly 16 years ago, the company has pushed the boundaries of what’s possible in the design world, building a catalogue of work that’s fresh, innovative , and always tackled with a unique approach.

With a highly collaborative core team of just 6, they’ve done it all – from major rebranding projects to sleek merchandising to short films.

One of Dark Igloo's standout projects is GIPHY the studio has spent the past 11 years directing the GIPHY brand. If you’re a fellow designer (or even just a millennial), you’ve inevitably sent a friend something from GIPHY.

Here are a few projects from Dark Igloo that we just can’t resist talking about:

GIPHY

For over a decade, Dark Igloo has been behind the branding, creative, and art direction for GIPHY. This partnership has led to video shorts, animated emojis, exclusive merchandise, and more, all of which culminated in a recent 10-year swag retrospective.

BORED GAME

The Greatest Board Game NEVER Made (but one you’ll wish was very real). A Dark Igloo passion project, this 90s-esque commercial features a mash-up of many classic games resulting in the most complex, stimulating, and perhaps stress-inducing game ever devised. We all have a competitive gamer in our lives who would flip tables over this game.

BUZZFEED

When Dark Igloo helmed office redesigns for internet giant BuzzFeed, the end product was so sleek, enticing and modern that it’ll have you ready to abandon your work-from-home life in favour of a return to the office. Featuring a factory aesthetic and industrial details that flow into sculptures and installations, it’s understandable if BuzzFeed employees forget they’re not actually working in an art gallery.  

FRAME BY FRAME

To call this the ultimate coffee table book for designers would be an understatement. Thirty-five international artists created all new animations for the first-ever animated book of GIF art—an 85-page masterpiece of lenticular holograms, flip books, images sequences, and stickers. The final product is the ultimate collector’s item for art lovers.

VFS interviewed Mark Miller, founder of ‘Dark Igloo’ — on the journey from  its birth to its future and everything in between:

How did Dark Igloo come to life? 

I met my business partner Dave Franzese while working in NYC We were in our mid-20s, Dave and I were fast friends. We eventually moved in together to turn our living space into an “art house” of sorts. Dark Igloo was just the name we gave our apartment where we made stuff every day.  “Dark” being a combination of “DAve & maRK” and “Igloo” being a really cool place to hang out.  Our logo is a cartoon bear with stars above its head, which is a combination of our two state flags (California and Indiana).

When the 2008 recession hit, I lost my job, but luckily had a strong daily art practice called “Stretch Daily” that I used to participate in national design conferences and experimental programs like Wieden Kennedy’s SEEKING. This introduced me to international creatives and garnered us our first projects – enough to buy a couple computers, keep the lights on, and get the Igloo rolling. 

And how has it grown over the past 16 years?

Since the beginning, Dave and I shared a vision of earning our place over time and showing the strength of our ideas as multidisciplinary creators. We saw that you could gain traction faster if you promoted one skill or style, but we’ve always kept our eyes on the horizon and the long-term goals of building our own IP and being able to create whatever we want. This vision attracted like-minded designers, who are all talented generalists. They have spentd YEARS with us at the studio, doing a bit of everything. It keeps the work exciting, the studio flexible and our team has accomplished things we never could have as two dudes.

In 2020, we moved our studio from our old apartment to a huge open office space in an old warehouse building. Working remotely during the covid lockdown helped us understand that the Igloo was more than the house we started it in. It was an attitude and energy shared across our whole team, and we could bring it anywhere we went.

You’ve managed to maintain an impressive balance between projects that pays the bills and self-driven passion projects. How important is it to you to give attention to passion projects?

When you’re starting out, people often only want to hire you for things you’ve already done or skills you’ve shown competence in. Looking at the future, we decided that we wanted to be known for how we think, our sense of humour and our taste vs. a singular style or service. The passion projects are our way of broadcasting our pure, unfiltered taste and vision to the world. Clients enthusiastically responded to the personal work, and over time the line between client and self-driven projects has disappeared.

You were part of the very first group to graduate from Vancouver Film School’s Digital Design program. How did your year at the school impact the early days of your career?

I did my undergrad in Indiana, where most of my interests were not yet supported by proper courses.  As a result, I worked with professors on their grant projects and crafting my own major.  One of the larger grant projects allowed a few of us to tour other leading programs like SCAD in Atlanta and VFS.  The VFS computer labs seemed so next level, and I found the metropolitan area really beautiful and far enough away from home to be a real adventure.

The year I spent at VFS was an incredible time to focus and receive next level mentoring while pursuing my passions. We were also tasked with creating personal branding, which really helped solidify my perspective on how I wanted to be perceived; I still use that logo to this day and have created countless versions of it.

What’s it been like to creatively direct the GIPHY brand for over a decade?

Dave and I really love world-building whether it’s a brand, cartoon, or game universe. When most people think of “branding” they think about the logo, the voice and the design system. GIPHY is all those things, and so much more. 

Over the last 11 years, Dave and I have had the pleasure of deciding what GIPHY feels likes as 100’s pieces of merch, R&D’ing new products, creating original content and campaigns, designing their physical office and event spaces and, most importantly, fostering the vibe shared by all the people who have worked at GIPHY.

In a game-changing move, you turned Dark Igloo’s Contact Us page into a playable game. What led you to implement this unique approach?

Most of our wilder ideas come from wanting to subvert expectations; we’d go to lunch and dream up things we could not even afford to create then make the first version of it with zero budget and manifest it into reality. When we were creating our contact form, we wanted to show that we offer a different experience as collaborators., that we like to have fun, and play.

The first version of our Contact Us page was 8-bit, styled like outrun, where you drove your email to the finish line. We always wanted to upgrade it to 16-bit, but, you know, time flies… and at our 10-year anniversary we decided to skip straight ahead to 64-bit, creating Contact Us 2 —– a psychedelic version of Mario Kart 64.

How important is mentorship to Dark Igloo?

I’ve always loved mentoring. In high school, I mentored a sixth. When I moved to NYC, I mentored high school students. And, after getting our footing as a company, we began to hire and share knowledge with recent graduates that crossed our path. It may be a slower process to arrive at maximum production speed, but relationships REALLY are the best thing we have going on in this life and it’s worth investing in each other.

What an impact you’ve made within the design world! Has leaving your mark?

I honestly feel like we’re just getting started. Though our work for GIPHY and other global brands has been seen and shared billions of times, I personally believe it’s not about everyone seeing your work, but your work finding the right audience, and I’m really proud of the hearts and minds we’ve helped open and inspire along the way.

How do you view the current state of the design industry? What lies ahead for its future?

It’s definitely wild to watch capitalists essentially try to program out the fun part of being alive; we try to use AI responsibly for things like pre-visualization or rapid prototyping. I heard an Alan Watts lecture where he said, “As soon as you know the future, you don’t want it anymore. It’s as if you’ve already had it.” I think we’re here to enjoy and struggle through the process of creation. The question becomes are we capable of treating it as a dance? Or will we let it become a drag?

And finally—what is your #1, all-time-favourite Dark Igloo moment?

One of the most profound moments was touring our Duality Derby art cars back in my hometown at the largest county fair in the US. We spent two years conceptualizing, designing and building 80s Nascar replicas covered in logo flips and custom graphics and prepared them for a demolition derby. I’ll never forget the first kid who ran up to our booth and spelled out the entire project to me as if he had created it, noticing every detail. I felt tears well up in my eyes, knowing that the work had found its audience. He and his friends ended up hanging out and operating the RC portion of our booth all week!

If there was ever an argument in favour of ‘art matters’, Dark Igloo is the proof. Pioneers for innovation in the modern digital world, the studio has shown us the power of design when great creative minds come together.

If you're an aspiring designer, learn how Vancouver Film School's Digital Design program can launch your industry career. Click here to get started.