Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss

Blue Spill were more than happy to jump aboard the search on this Peacock docuseries ‘Rainn Wilson and the Geography of Bliss’, hosted by ‘The Office’ star Rainn Wilson.

Based on Eric Weiner’s eponymous nonfiction book, the series takes Wilson on an adventure to find out what happiness truly is and how people around the globe attempt to find their own joy, even when things around them can seem a little bleak.

When we were approached by the USA based production, to come up with a complete graphics package and brand identity for this 5 part series including a title sequence and all in show GFX, we grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

Disguised as a travel show on the surface, we found this series to be a more reflective and educated journey, enriched with human connections and demonstrating the global reach of human emotion and spirit. all seen through the eyes of Rainn, who guides us through 5 separate countries connecting and learning along the way.Drawing on this idea as a basis, we wanted to create an identity which reflected the personal journey that Rainn finds himself on within the show.

We chose to draw on the idea of using a traveller’s journal aesthetic to guide the narrative by employing a tactile, analogue quality to our designs. To evoke the sense that we are looking into Rainn’s travel journal we collaged together real-world objects such as postcards, maps, photographs and other examples of collected travel ephemera from the show amongst hand written elements, illustrations and paper textures. Which we animated with a stop-motion effect to fit in to this handmade aesthetic.With happiness being integral to the series we created upbeat and engaging graphics, using vibrant, poppy colours and energetic movements to give our animations a playful touch. Using these techniques we created a title sequence that guides us through Rainn’s travels in a fast-paced collage of clips, postcards, stills, rotoscopes and handwritten notes, showcasing key moments from the series.

Each episode required a number of explainers which ranged from demonstrating a countries economic status to more abstract visual representations of specific words or phrases used to describe emotions in various languages. We also created maps, photo treatments and lower thirds, all of which we styled to fit within the same travel-journal world.Blue Spill delivered over 70 GFX shots for the series in 4k using HDR ACES workflow in Adobe After Effects and Autodesk Flame.