We are a group of artists, directors, designers, dreamers, developers, animators, illustrators, photographers and producers who learn from each other. We work in all fields of commercial art and deliver content for anything that remotely resembles a screen. Ideally we would be situated in Los Yorkdon, but for now we have studios in New York, Los Angeles and London.
Brand New School was founded in 2000 by Jonathan Notaro as a design studio with an emphasis on idiosyncratic visual style and witty conceptual solutions. Jonathan’s irreverent and energetic attitude combined with an exceptional talent for sophisticated form-making has attracted a host of talented young designers, who have formed a constantly evolving close knit creative community. Since its inception, our company has evolved into a colorful studio of commercial directors, designers, animators and illustrators.
BNS operates in a range of capacities within the advertising and media industries with equal brilliance…creating network identities, packaging individual programs, and writing and directing live-action. We have consistently evolved, refusing to adhere to one specific style, instead creating context specific solutions that are fresh and exciting to the audience, the clients and the designers who make them. Our work ranges from clever filmmaking to dense opulent animations to quirky stop-frame homemade puppet shows…from high-tech visual perfection to guerilla graphics, and everything in between and beyond.
This open approach to problem solving has allowed us to be commercially successful while remaining creatively avant-garde. An extensive client list attests to our success and includes youth orientated companies such as MTV, Fox Fuel, VH1, and Cartoon Network, as well as corporate giants such as Apple, Nike, AT&T, Pepsi, UPS, Jeep and BBC One. We have also directed music videos for The Polyphonic Spree and Muse.
While consistently earning critically acclaim from our peers, we have won awards from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the Art Directors Club, the Broadcast Designers Association and the Music Video Production Association. The studio’s work has been published in numerous design books and major magazines worldwide, and our principals have presented our work in design schools and at professional conferences across the USA and in Germany and Brazil.
Akin to leading academic institutions, our guiding philosophies prize experimentation and learning, and our commitment to discovering the best ideas for our clients is absolute.
+School of Film & Video
+School of Art & Design
+School of Interactive Media
We take pride in operating out company with the community and greater planet in mind. Each office is virtually paperless, carbon neutral, and uses clean energy sources where available. Plastic bottles are forbidden, and much of the work is developed and shared digitally. Additionally we give annually to various charitable causes including the Surfrider Foundation, the Fireflies, Woodstock Animal Sanctuary, and Manhattan’s PS142.
We are equally earnest in using business as a means for good and social change in our local community and related fields. To that end, Brand New School proudly supports the Pat Notaro, Sr. Endowed Scholarship Fund at CalArts, which it established in 2010 specifically for third-year students of the School of Art’s Program in Graphic Design.