Jimmy Turrell on his surrealist animated collage video for new Beck single, Wow

Jimmy Turrell has art directed a surrealist animated video for Beck, working with graphic designer Bráulio Amado and animator Antonio Vicentini. The lyric video for new single Wow is a retina-boggling animation of collaged images and typography that depicts lyrics from the song. A combination of psychedelic gradients, retro aesthetics and gritty textures, the visuals suit the song to a T, as Jimmy explained to It’s Nice That just after the single dropped.

“We followed the music in style, so it’s ultra modernist at the beginning to go with the hip hop-ish 808 trap drums and weird fake pipes, and then at the end it becomes like psych-pop,” says Jimmy. “We only had eight days to do this, so it’s been a crazy week. But in a way I think the sleep deprivation has added to the strange random energy of the video.”

Bráulio — a Portuguese designer based in New York, who works at Bloomberg Businessweek — created entirely custom type for the video and artwork. “I tried to make it as unique and chopped-up as possible, with cut-out letters, some hand-drawn ones, some 3D ones, to fit the collage feel of the video,” Bráulio explains.

Jimmy originally pitched for a previous project with Beck but didn’t get it, only to receive a phone call from him for Wow. Initially he was asked to design artwork for the sleeve, but according to Jimmy, Beck saw his ideas and asked for it to be animated. Jimmy collaborated with Bráulio and Antonio to bring it to life.

“There’s a weird juxtaposition between some of the images, with Bráulio’s style and mine. I think that’s why it’s become quite surrealist and psychedelic. It was a real team effort, the guys have been amazing.”