PERKINS&WILL - Explainer Video

The Brief: Celebrating 90 Years of Perkins&Will

Perkins&Will asked FEVR to create a 90-second film celebrating the firm’s 90th anniversary. The challenge was to bring together decades of architectural projects, photography, and video footage within a single film that felt contemporary, energetic, and true to the studio’s design culture.

Shaping the Explainer Video Visual Direction

FEVR developed the creative direction around the idea of connection: connecting projects, people, places, and different moments in the firm’s history. Rather than presenting the archive chronologically, we built a continuous visual journey in which photography, footage, typography, and graphic animation flow into one another.

The film was structured around an uplifting voiceover and original pacing designed to keep the story moving while giving the architectural work enough space to remain at the center of the film.

Creative Approach: Architecture in Motion

The visual language combines images of Perkins&Will’s projects with gradients, natural textures, bold color fields, and minimal line drawings. Architectural details were sometimes extended through simple graphic interventions, creating transitions between real spaces and more abstract compositions.

A moving line became one of the film’s recurring elements. It travels through the different sequences, changes color and form, and creates continuity between projects from different periods and locations.

From Storyboard to Animation: Bringing the Vision to Life

Before animation began, FEVR developed a detailed storyboard to explore transitions, pacing, and the relationship between the different visual sequences. This stage helped establish a coherent narrative while allowing close collaboration with Perkins&Will before production.

During animation, our team focused on seamlessly integrating existing photography and footage with custom-designed graphic elements. Precise synchronization between voiceover, music, typography, and visuals created a fluid progression from one architectural project to the next.

Building a Story from Decades of Material

One of the main production challenges was bringing together visual material created across many years, with different formats, styles, and image qualities. FEVR selected, reframed, and treated the assets so they could coexist within one consistent visual system.

The graphic design also helped move beyond a traditional anniversary retrospective. Instead of simply looking back, the film presents Perkins&Will’s history as an evolving body of work that continues to shape what comes next.

Perkins&Will: A Global Architecture and Design Leader Since 1935

Founded in 1935, Perkins&Will is a global architecture and design firm recognized for its commitment to sustainability and its belief in creating places where humanity can thrive in harmony with nature. With offices worldwide, the firm works across healthcare, education, culture, corporate, and infrastructure projects, guided by a regenerative approach to design.