Asking Creatives of Forward #2: What was the nicest/coolest/most interesting project you did that never got published?

Have you ever wondered about how other creatives work or deal with the difficulties of the creative industries? Welcome to “Asking Creatives of Forward”, our new series in which we ask the creatives of our newly founded Forward Network about their daily hustle, their techniques and other advice.

Forward Network is THE hub between brands and creatives that aims to enable successful collaborations and projects that outshine the competition. By now the network already counts about 40 creatives of 14 different fields ranging from photography, AR/VR, motion design, 3D, creative code, film, sound design, street art, lettering, AI, text and illustration.

Almost everyone in the creative industry knows the struggle of working hard on a project, investing time, sweat and tears but in the end the whole thing gets scrapped. For this second edition of “Asking Creatives of Forward”, we wanted to know more about the work of our members that never got published. Read about their struggles and the wonderful ideas they came up with to save or recycle their work.

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What was the nicest/coolest/most interesting project you did that never got published?

Lucas Christiansen: I did a project beginning in 2022 for a Kiev based magazine. Everything had to be shot and edited quite fast, since the deadline was really tight. We managed to send everything in time and the visuals turned out really great. Two days later, Putin invaded Ukraine and the magazine was unable to print the issue. Not only we had put money, sweat, and a lot of effort into our project, which now couldn’t be published, but also one country attacked another country in most vicious and radical ways. After some thinking and calls with the stylist, who actually put me on the project, we decided to help the people in Ukraine by selling prints from our unpublished story and donated all the proceeds. I printed and packed all the images myself, and we raised a great amount of money. To be able to help a little in this kind of way, made me happy.

REVKIN: This is a tricky one. I’d have to pick my recent 9 minute original short animated film ‘Losing It’ that did get published, but only after many ups and downs. Originally it was conceived in 2010 and is now finally being shown at festivals. It is a surreal feeling to know that it’s out there, living and breathing on its own, so to say. It is a stubborn little film, built like a riddle. Initially, I set a goal for myself to make a really, really complex short film (I was really stubborn, too) and I kinda shot myself in the foot with it. It’s a great feeling now to have overcome the hurdles and get on to the next thing.

keinGarten: always recycle your unpublished work – don’t waste the time you’ve already spent.

David Silva: Some time ago I did an Intro Sequence for a young entrepreneur that was launching his Youtube Channel. The project came in a very surprising way since I was not expecting to work with him. And the deadline was also very strict and short. I ended up doing a lovely work of design and animation that I was very proud of. Without mentioning that this has been my best well-paid job ever. It was very sad to see that his team didn’t use the Intro, and instead of that they used something very different. I’ll never understand why this happened, but I’m still very proud of the project: https://silva.exposed/Next-Play

Wald und Schwert: We started a project called SLOW HORSE with so many ideas that are on hold for 3 years already. Problem was TIME, as usual 🙂

Vincent Wagner: I recently completed a small set of social media assets for a US-client. They wanted to try a new type of communication for the launch of a new product of theirs. I made 7 animations in total, 4 typographic and the other 3 more abstract. Everyone was excited about the outcome. A first animation was posted on schedule, the rest never saw the light of day. So far I can only speculate why. I suspect it just didn’t perform as well with their core audience as their regular content and so they shelved the rest, but I have yet to ask what really happened.

Monika Ernst: I got to conceptualise a nature walk within a place of excursions, that educates children and parents in an interactive, playful way about climate change adaptation. Not only did I write the story that runs through the various stations, but I also designed all the interactive elements for each stop. The characterdesign of the protagonist was already finished, the illustration concept as well. Sadly it wasn’t published to date, because of financial reasons and probably also the involvement of public monies.

CIN CIN: Some time ago, we were invited—alongside other studios—to propose a new campaign design for the WIENER FESTWOCHEN. We came up with a series of three campaigns, which went from a neo-classical style that referenced the long history of the festival, to an exuberant design. The three design concepts were meant to be a progression over three consecutive years and take a more familiar style to a totally different level. It would have been exciting to bring our concept to life!

Toni Eisner: A location based AR Horrorgame for iOS and Android. Coding the whole game was too expensive without funding.

PERKUP: In 2017 there was a project for a festival in Vilnius, Lithuania. They asked me to do the festival design. I was totally hooked and immediately started working on it. They always said there wasn’t much money for this job, but I could do whatever I wanted. Of course there were some expectations and I had to keep changing the drawing. But in the end they didn’t take the design and I didn’t get any money. You always learn something new with projects like this.

Miró Tiebe: I think it was in 2019, when I was doing a full page illustration and two silhouettes for an article about very famous rave events in Berlin for the magazin “Das Wetter”. I loved the article and the meaning behind it very much, plus I was super happy about my work on Illustration. But then at the last moment the organization behind those rave events was extremely against the article so the publishers of the magazin had to cancel it.

Process Studio: Most of our client work comes with a lot of experimenting and oftentimes we are building visual instruments specifically designed for a project’s need. This entails a load of variants and different directions. Naturally, a big chunk of that visual output does not get used by the client, but after the client work is done we do experiment with these systems further and share these ‘b-sides’ on our instagram account: @process.studio

Zoe Guggenbichler: When I started to work on the wine brand „Zehnvonzehn“ I designed so many different labels and bottles, using so many techniques. The whole process is crazy to look back on. At the end, the design we ended up with is not only in production, the design was also our favorite. However, looking back at the former tryouts It’s still insane how many different options we have on every Single project

Robert Wagenlechner: A children’s book about constipation that equally helps kids and adults understand that you can’t keep running away from things because eventually shit will always catch up with you. It never got published because I was running away from it. Up until now. Who’s interested in doing some potty illustrations for a children’s book about constipation?

Bounty Studio: Usually we don’t have any unpublished projects. When an aspect of a project we really love gets scrapped we try to get the most out of it and repurpose already produced illustrations, snippets of animation and videos as short form content for social media. Because no project deserves to be buried deep in a folder on a hard-drive.

LWZ: I think everything we did got published somehow. Sure there have been ideas that didn’t make it into a final draft or presentation but not an entire project. We once worked on graphics for a TV-Show that got canceled before it aired, but we published the 2–D Animation on Vimeo and just named the Show LWZ. Does that count?

Thomas Waidhofer: I have so many works that look finished but they are not. Others cant see the missing detail because often i don’t know myself. Somehow there is still a little something missing or suddenly i imagined it differently etc… – but someday the big day of publishing will come for these projects too, I promise.

Lukas Diemling: Definitely a poster campaign I did as part of a pitch together with SMITH Berlin for an exhibition about the history of the Documenta. I loved the whole concept and the outcome we presented, unfortunately they decide to go with a more safer concept from a competitor.

Rosa Kammermeier: There are some designs I created for pitches that weren’t chosen – i liked many of these ideas and I am very sad about it. Actually that is why I don’t participate in pitches anymore – it’s a waste of good ideas & the creative work is not appreciated.

Birgit Palma: Together with Daniel Triendl, we developed some art for Adobe which never got published. The project got canceled (and our project with it) but I loved the way it was heading.

Andi Meier: I made a series of travel shots of me and monsters that I added digitally. I like the project so much, but unfortunately never finished it.

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The launch of Forward Network is supported by Vienna Business Agency.