Thanks to the new MoGraph Brand Toolkit, Creative COW has fresh on-brand graphics for interview videos between Creative COW and the biggest gear and software companies in digital media. 

Our lower thirds introduce the COW and our guests, and stay consistent from video to video with varying text, but are flexible for all situations. With the full panel graphic, we are able to summarize our client’s most salient points at the end of each video, keeping with the style and animation of the lower-third graphics. This is helpful during trade shows such as NAB and IBC, where a plethora of companies are giving the latest information and encouraging visitors to go to a specific location within the show. And what's really cool is the graphics and text automatically adjust to new input – all we do it type in updated text and change the Brand Color Scheme and everything just works automatically.

The end of each video can display the company’s name, booth number, model numbers and software versions mentioned in the interview. This reinforces both our video information and our brand.

broadcastGEMs.com worked with us to develop a set of two color schemes within our branded colors to work against various backgrounds. Roland Kahlenberg was very diligent to perfect the fonts, style the lower thirds and full panels with eye-catching animation, and to adjust the opacity of the panels until they created the best pop.

Our in-house Motion Principles for Brand Identity Motion Projects calls for adherence to the principle of Eye Trace. This essentially means every movement should be strategic; leading the viewer from one element to the next. Simply put, movement of elements should lead from one to another without requiring the viewer to scan a wide area of the frame to understand what is happening. No movement should be jarring unless there is a real need to create a distinct transition or movement and these reasons should be fully appreciated before applying them. 

And of course Brand Personality plays a critical part in the deployment of Motion Design. 

Our application of Motion Design is simple - delight and/or excite with proper implementation of Eye Trace. Where applicable, we deployed Text Animations which were on-brand in terms of Brand Personality and this is displayed most clearly in the way Body Copy transitions into the scene. We deployed an Animation Style which had a 'newsy' and digital feel and look and which was also unique. And being unique is a great way to create differentiation from competitors while increasing Brand Equity.  

Applying Motion Design Principles for videos which will largely be watched over the Internet meant designing for quick transitions and movement or at least making them feel quick. Anything too draggy or long would turn off most viewers.

We believe we achieved these goals by applying Eye Trace Principles and motion that was delightful to watch and with a small dose of excitement. 

This Motion Toolkit consists of Two Master Templates. Each Master Template has Adaptive Features which means they work seamlessly across 7 Frame Sizes and Aspect Ratios, automatically recalculating position, size and re-animating when the Sequence Size changes. And our code allows new frame sizes to be added in minutes.

We then add Responsive Features that automatically adjust graphics and text elements with updated input. The single Lower Third Master Template below handles tens of thousands of name input without requiring manual adjustment to the animated graphics - everything is automated. The user only has to input updated texts and the code takes over to adjust graphics elements and texts and re-animates everything automatically.

So, instead of delivering 10s or hundreds of templates, a single Master Template doesn't break as it automatically and intelligently adjusts its elements and animation based on brand guides.  

Adaptive & Responsive Motion Brand Toolkits are easy to manage and update and they are foundational to development of other Motion Toolkits.  

This single Lower Third Toolkit, shown above, handles thousands upon thousands of use-cases and in any language supported by Adobe apps. We believe in customer-centricity; delivering what's best for the Client and the End User – we do not deliver hundreds or thousands of assets which become a massive problem for the client and the DEV Team to manage. 

We've invested lots of R & D to deliver Adaptive & Responsive Brand Toolkits that are exceptional solutions; ensuring a single Toolkit is feature-rich, intelligent and handles the work of tens of thousands or conventional toolkits. They are also a requirement to creating bespoke, fully automated content where hundreds or thousands of versioned content is created but with a custom-designed look. Nothing has to look cheap or simple with Adaptive & Responsive Motion Toolkits. 

Identity Branding is a lot about differentiating and with years of development experience, broadcastGEMs is confident of delivering unique Motion Toolkit Designs with exceptional functionality and great performance.

CreativeCOW.net has been around since 2001. They have consistently been an authoritative site for news on hardware and software for Creative Creators. Their peer-to-peer forums provide solutions and encouragement for those who push themselves to be better professionals, practitioners and persons.

Identity Branding Strategies serve to differentiate and position a brand. With these in mind, broadcastGEMs purposed an audit of competing sites to see where CreativeCOW.net stood and what its competitors were doing.

We then performed a Content Audit of CreativeCOW.net and its competitors. This provided insights into patterns of use as well as the areas for differentiation and where Brand Positioning could be applied strategically, with the greatest impact.

These exercises allowed us to have deep and concise knowledge of what tools and assets to use, to pursue our tasks to reach our goals with the expected deliverables.

We are wholly confident we provide exceptional solutions via our Brand Motion Toolkit deliverables in terms of functionality. We then moved to the Graphics and Motion Design stages of the process.

Our ability to deliver exceptional functionality with a small footprint (small number of Templates) gives us a cutting edge in development where productivity is enhanced and especially so for Identity Branding Projects where a large number of use-cases have to be explored to ensure the Motion Toolkit is robust and not just something that looks great. 

With Motion being an integral part of our solutions, we had to ensure our animations would delight and excite viewers while keeping in mind the Visual Language of the brand. 

CreativeCOW.net's logo has been consistent for over two decades. In terms of Brand Strategy, it was best to let the original logo continue its long and distinctive ride.

We used existing brand colors and fonts for the rebranding of their Motion Toolkits.

Part of our Visual Design Strategy was to use partial transparencies for Containers. A Container is a graphics element that is used to contain other graphics and text elements. A semi transparent container creates a more interesting and engaging visual than one that is fully opaque. 

Design & Develop a Brand Motion Toolkit for use by a Producer or Video Editor for CreativeCOW.net's Video News Releases and Interviews.

Deliver MoGRTs (Motion Graphics Templates) with advanced Adaptive & Responsive features that work in popular Video Frame Sizes. Provide exceptional Responsive Features that are a pleasure to work with and manage.

Adaptive & Responsive Features work like magic. A single toolkit works in different Video Frame Sizes and Aspect Ratios. This is what the Adaptive Feature does. There is no scaling up or down. Everything is recalculated when a new Frame Size is selected. And any text update done at one Frame Size is persistent when changing to another Frame Size.

The Responsive Feature re-calculates each element when text or user selected content is updated. Again, nothing is scaled up or down - pixels remain pristine while all elements are recalculated to provide the updated layout and animation.

Take a look at the finished Motion Brand Toolkits below. We'll then do a deep dive.

Brands and Organizations that face Content Velocity issues should be at the forefront. Brands and Organizations that value their Brand Identity, their Brand Equity should certainly be looking for a set of bespoke Motion Brand Toolkits for their Videos.

Not all Toolkits are the same and more so with Motion Brand Toolkits. Developing these require expertise in Motion Design, Brand Design, Graphics Design, Video Production UI Design and Coding. There are lots of areas to enhance as well as leverage on to make their use a positive experience and allow for a coherent and comprehensive Design System to be developed. 

Every Design System designer looks to establish a Single Source of Truth. We deployed Design Tokens for Font Sizes and Color Schemes. These were used during the Design & Development Stage to allow for a single change to trickle across multiple designs/components. And with Design Tokens, we were able to assign changes to specific components.

When designing a Brand Toolkit with dynamic input; which is essentially what a Video Design System entails, you have to test with a large number of inputs – a sort of a Stress Test. We used CSV datasets for this purpose and you may also avail the client of such a device so they too can partake in Stress Testing the designs/components.

The development process included use of Spreadsheet Data to input Color and Font Sizes. This makes it easy for project-wide changes and especially so during development when there are lots of experimentation with fonts sizes, colors and layout. 

Client may also be keen to experiment with different font sizes for the different text hierarchies. And this can be done in Adobe Premiere Pro or Adobe After Effects.

The two animations below were also driven by Spreadsheet Data. A single Color Value in the spreadsheet was used in Adobe After Effects to derive the tints and shades and text was automatically generated based on the derived colors. 

After Effects Expressions was used to read the spreadsheet data; specifically, each of the Primary & Secondary colors. Their respective HSB Color Values were interpreted and then variations were made. These HSB variations were then converted to RGB and HEX Color Codes. 

And the animations were entirely driven by a single property which was then linked to other layers. After setting up the animation for the Primary Color Code, creating subsequent animations was a simple procedure of duplicating the original After Effects Composition, changing its name strategically so that it would pick out the Secondary Color Code. Once this was done, everything ran automatically. Approximately 800 lines of Expressions Code was used to create each of the two automated animations below.

Both Toolkits share lots of common UI characteristics. This makes it easy for the user to get productive with the entire Toolkit. 

A well-designed Toolkit should be easily usable with minimal time for onboarding.

The screen captured animation below shows the Thumbnails for the Toolkits. The thumbnail is another touchpoint for users, usually an editor or producer. Creating captivating thumbnails is part of the brand experience and helps get everything on the right track. 

If you're keen on revolutionizing your Content Creation Processes, get in touch with sales@broadcastGEMs.com.