The gutsy stunt, plus her creative skills, landed her a junior designer post at what unbeknownst to her was one of the most renowned print design firms in the U.K. "It was definitely a man's world," she says of being Attik's only woman designer for almost five years. Nevertheless, she went on to become the firm's first female creative director and even helped to branch the company (which at first worked exclusively in print) into motion design when she helped to launch a New York outpost in 1997. At both Attik's London and New York offices, Lamba oversaw network branding packages for the BBC, British Telecom TV and Bravo England, and collaborated with advertising agencies like TBWA/Chiat/Day, Grey and Saatchi & Saatchi. After seven years at Attik, last year Lamba pulled another ballsy move and relocated to Goodspot in Los Angeles, joining managing director and founder Richard Kaufman. "I am so completely opposite to what a California person should be like," she admits, "but I was up for a challenge and I wanted to do something new." Now overseeing a staff of 12, split into separate editorial and design divisions, Lamba's excited because the smaller outfit brings her back to the creative front line. An architectural vibe resonates in much of Lamba's Goodspot work, which includes a Lexus car show installation and a conference presentation for ABC Cable networks. There's also a graphically crisp opener for Nike's 2002 global conference presentation that pulls the famous swoosh logo from various media placements, like Friends episodes and Britney Spears performances. And in what seems like an out-of-nowhere turn from Lamba's admittedly hard-angled style, she recently brought the look of traditional Chinese painting to motion in a branding project for CCTV, one of the first government-sponsored cable channels to launch in China.
Another plus is the company's history of cinema projects, which was a new challenge for her. Lamba's Hollywood debut came in the form of a whimsical opener for the upcoming indie flick Cheaters. Playing off the film's "cheating" theme, the title flirts with the audience's notions of the 3-D world, taking place in a diorama of what seem like full-bodied images, which turn out to be flat as a pancake when the camera zooms around behind them. "The title itself is something of a cheat," she notes, revealing that, in fact, there was no camera work or live action involved. The entire title sequence was created using a combination of stock and Illustrator elements, pieced together in After Effects. The project was in line with Lamba's preferred style. "I like playing with the fact that you have a flat screen, which doesn't mean you can't have depth. I think that comes from being restricted to 2-D and print for so long. Now I can put an element on the screen and I can actually rotate around it 360 degrees," she exults.