Translation is not simplification. Simplification removes information until only the obvious is left. Translation finds the smallest true story about a complicated product and builds a visual language that holds it. Done well, it preserves meaning while changing the form it lives in.
"Translate complexity into clarity" is on our homepage, our deck, and arguebly more of our emails than it should be. It is also the thing we end up explaining most often, because the phrase is so common in agency-land that it has almost stopped meaning anything. Here is what we mean by it.
The job is not to make things simple
Most studios pitch themselves as the team that makes complex things simple. I used to write that line too. We do not anymore, because it describes the wrong job.
If you genuinely simplify a derivatives platform, you end up with a film about borrowing and lending. The viewer understands it, and the viewer does not need it. The simplification removed the reason the product exists.
Translation is the opposite move. It says the complicated thing is the value. The job is to find a form that preserves the value while making it readable.
Simplification is what you do when you do not trust the audience.
What translation looks like, concretely
The clearest example I can give is a brand film we worked on for a fintech company that helps institutions run real-time treasury operations across multiple currencies. The product moves billions of dollars per day. Explaining the mechanics in plain English would have taken twenty minutes of voiceover.
What we did instead: we built a visual language out of one motif, a single coloured line moving across a grid, and let the film show the operation rather than describe it. The line splits, merges, accelerates, and resolves. The audience does not need a glossary. They feel the speed, the precision, and the trust. The film is 78 seconds.
None of the detail was removed. The detail was translated.
The four moves we use
This is how we actually work through a brief for something complicated. It is not a methodology with a brochure; it is a sequence of arguments we have internally before we open a single design file.
1. Find the smallest true story
Most products have a true story in one sentence. "We let banks settle in seconds instead of days." "We give analysts a single workspace instead of seven." "We turn a six-week compliance check into a six-minute one." If a team cannot agree on that sentence, no amount of motion design will rescue the project. We will spend the first week of an engagement trying to write it.
2. Find the visual that holds the story
The visual is not a metaphor. Metaphors leak (saying "our product is like a Swiss army knife" is, at best, embarrassing). The visual is a form. A shape, a movement, a colour relationship that behaves the way the product behaves. For real-time treasury, the form is something fast, taut, and resolved. For a knowledge management tool, the form might be something accreting and indexed. The visual gets tested by acting the way the product acts.
3. Strip the film of anything that does not move the story
Every shot has to be doing two jobs: advancing the story and reinforcing the visual language. If a shot is only beautiful, it goes. If a shot is only informative, it goes. The shots that survive are doing both.
4. Test the film on someone who has never heard of you
The last move is the cheapest and the most embarrassing. Show the rough cut to a friend who works in something else, and ask them what the product does. If they cannot say it after one watch, the translation has failed. The brief is still too internal.
Where this approach breaks down
It does not work for everything. Three places it fails:
- Simple consumer products. If you sell socks, do not translate the complexity of socks. There is none.
- Products that genuinely need a tour. Some workflows can only be understood by walking through them. A film is the wrong format. A guided product video on the marketing site is the right one.
- Companies that do not yet know what they do. If the smallest true story changes monthly, the studio cannot translate it. Sit with the strategy team first, come back when the story has settled.
Why we keep saying it
I keep the phrase on the homepage because, despite the over-use, it still describes the work I find most interesting and the work the studio is best at. There are studios that make beautiful films about things that do not really matter. We are not one of them, and we are not trying to become one.
When a fintech founder sends us a brief about a product that ten people have already failed to explain, thats the work. The translation move is the reason the studio exists.
Frequently asked questions
What does "translate complexity into clarity" mean in practice?
It means finding the smallest true story you can tell about a complicated product, then designing a visual language that holds that story across every frame. Translation, not simplification.
Is this just "making things simple"?
No. Simplification drops detail until only the obvious is left. Translation keeps the meaningful detail and changes the form it lives in.
How do you decide what to leave in and what to leave out?
We ask what the viewer needs to feel by the end, not what they need to know. The facts that survive the cut are the ones that produce the feeling.
Does this approach work for any kind of product?
It works best for products where the complexity is real and the value depends on the viewer understanding it. Fintech, infrastructure software, regulated services. For simple consumer products, it is overkill.