Helen Friel, Ross Symons and other paper artists’ incredible designs for Google

Helen Friel, Ross Symons and other paper artists’ incredible designs for Google

Six paper artists have created stop motion animations entirely from folded paper, as video wallpaper designs for Android tablets or smartphones.



Google abides by a visual language that provides a unified experience across all platforms and device sizes. It’s called Google’s Material design.
The idea is for Google’s digital interface to resemble real-life objects, and Google Material is the design philosophy, guidelines if you will, behind this. It’s a way for designers to collaborate with users and create a cohesive design (if that still doesn’t make sense, here’s a video from Google Design that tries to explain it).
To mark the third year since its existence, in a strange twist, well-known paper artists have created stop motion animations made entirely from folded paper, which have been digitalised into video wallpapers for consumers to download onto Android tablets or smartphones.
Image: Helen Friel


Helen Friel, Ross Symons, Sena Runa, Clare Pentlow, Anastassia Elias and Ayumi Shibata have all created stunning paper designs – to be played on loop – available for anyone to download through the Alive Video Wallpaper app.
Google announced Material Design at its I/O conference in California in 2014 (see Nexus Studios' beautiful animation from this year’s conference). The visual design language tries to embody paper-like surfaces and light and shadow effects – which can be seen in most Android apps today.
The paper artists 'live wallpaper' designs are part of over 200 other designs, designed to be "perfect looping scenes", such as waterfalls, forests, nature and city scapes.
See the paper fold designs in this feature.
Image: Helen Friel

Helen Friel

Helen is a freelance paper engineer and illustrator based in London. Her Mindful Geometrics video wallpaper collection has been created in collaboration with photographer Mitch Payne.
The endless loops, minimal design and gentle motions are designed to act as a focus for calm breathing.
A portion of every sale from this collection will go to Young Minds, a UK charity that supports the wellbeing and mental health of young people.
Find out how Helen created her book, Midnight Creatures, in this feature.
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