Happy Friday! It’s been a while since our last Friday Favorites post, but we’re back with a few treats for you today. We hope you’re enjoying the beautiful (almost) summer weather as much as we are, and wish you a very happy weekend.

Modern Love, Animated

The Modern Love column in the New York Times’ Sunday Styles section is always an interesting read, featuring a new non-fiction essay about love each Sunday accompanied by a fantastic Brian Rea illustration. Earlier this month the Times released this new video, an adaptation of a Modern Love essay brought to life with a simple color palette and beautiful motion graphics by animator Freddy Arenas. This is one of eight videos in a series of animated essays, all of which can be found here.

World Cup Google Doodles

We’re in full World Cup mode here at Planet Nutshell, and the Google Doodles team is clearly sharing our excitement. There have been numerous doodles daily celebrating the event and the nations playing, sometimes changing in response to the current score. Our favorite came this Wednesday, when the letter “L” bounced a soccer ball against a building amidst the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The simple animation shows us why soccer is so popular worldwide – it can be played anywhere, by anyone, with nothing but a soccer ball.

Don’t Fail Idaho PSA

Production Company Buck has created outstanding work in a variety of media, from live action and puppetry to mixed media and stop motion. This animated PSA combines strong graphic design elements with character animation and motion graphics to tell a compelling story about the state of education in Idaho. We love the visual style of this piece, and we always appreciate seeing animation being used for good.

Annecy 2014 Bumpers

Motionographer introduced us to these 5 beautiful shorts, created by students at Gobelins, l’ecole de l’image for the 2014 Annecy International Film Festival. Each short runs around a minute and tells a unique and beautiful story. The above short, entiltled “Le Coup du Lapin,” was directed by Emilie Almaida, Pierre Butet, Magali Garnier, Clémence Maret and Hugo Weiss.