For the open of CMT’s highest rated show, we created a world designed and lit like a theater set. Entirely made out of flat, cut out props, it’s loaded with emotionally charged iconography: pickup trucks, wheat shafts, rooster-mounted wind vanes, faithful dogs and fiddles — all contributing to build a Country universe, as it counts down to the number one spot and day turns to night.

While the piece appears to appropriately reflect the simplicity of Country music’s grassroots ethics, the whole thing was, ironically, produced digitally.

When we delivered the piece, the folks over at CMT liked it so much that they asked us to do a tease for the redesign – a spot actually saying “Same show, new look”. An ad for Dennis’ design, essentially. A “Making of the Video” of sorts.

He took a page out of an Eames book and reverse-engineered the imaginary analog creation of the show open, showing the making of the stencils and the props seemingly using an exacto knife. Again, everything was produced digitally.

It’s a bit like hearing a beautiful slide guitar and then realizing it was recorded not in Nashville but created in Logic Pro in an Echo Park apartment.