“HOARD” Animated Promo
The German startup Hoard (https://www.hoardspot.com/en) approached my design partner and me to help create a whimsical animated video to help promote their product which is a shared locker system.
Because they are relatively new, we had a lot of creative freedom in coming up with their branding message as a company to attract their target audience.
We first determine the WHO, WHAT, WHY with our clients:
Who Is it For?
– Appeal to the customers, young demographic.
– Keep it personal and user focused, emotion grabbing
– Meant for a specific audience: people who use AirBnB, rent out their apartments, cars, GetAround, etc.
– Should be fun and quirky to maintain attention
What kind of video?
Colorful animated short video that explains their product. Animation was the best way to express how their product works since it is eye catching and better suits their logo and website design.
Why?
Promote their product to their consumer base, acts as an introduction to their company on their website, and a pitch for future investors.
Budget & Timeline:
4 week deadline for the company to utilize this video as a pitch for future investors. We broke down the timeline as such:
1 week for finalization of script, visual aesthetic, and animation test samples.
2 weeks for asset creation in Illustrator and animation in AfterEffecs
1 week for polish, any feedback for final cut.
Budget was based off of hourly rate between two designers, equipment, software, and any 3rd party assets that may need a fee (ie. music).
Structure of the video:
1) Address problem at hand: handing over things like keys and physical objects while participants are far from each other. Specific examples of situations our consumer base can encounter where Hoard would be useful.
2) Explaining the product: How it works
3) The vision: Scalability and operating on a macroscale
My contributions to this project was coming up with the script to depict their message, designing the style of the video (colour palette, iconography, narrative flow, etc) , creating 2D assets, and animating half of the video.
Colour Palette:
Colour palette was based off of their existing site and logo design to help keep things consistent, as well as maintaining a warm, saturated palette:
Graphics
Here are some storyboards and assets I created for this project:
Storyboards
Obstacles
Communication was done entirely out of Skype video call as my design partner and I are based in the US and the client was based out of Shenzhen China. There was some initial misunderstanding as to the tone of the video the client wanted and we went through various script revisions before we pinpointed what they were looking for. We took note of their target demographic, company philosophy/culture, brand and found that “Personal” and “emotional” really meant putting ourselves in the shoes of the customer, creating humorous spin on the perceived problem, and creating a video that is fun to watch.
Due to the tight deadline and the scope of the project, we decided to use some vector stock images for background elements such as building silhouettes. Everything else was create by myself and my design partner. Simplicity and clarity was key to our visual aesthetic.
What I learned
This was the first international client I’ve worked with, so our connotations of words may be very different. Like with every client, by utilizing clues as to the project’s purpose, the company’s mission/philosophy, existing design sources, we were able to collaborate with the client in determining what they wanted.
From a technical standpoint, Adobe’s cross-software integration was vital to our workflow efficiency (ie: importing AI layers into AE for easy animation of assets).
Client Satisfaction
Client was very happy with the video and continues to use it as their website, promotional, and pitch intro.