Set up branding guidelines for videos

Created on Tuesday 11 August 2020, 13:41

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  • ID
    34238
  • Project
    Metabolism of Cities
  • Status
    Open
  • Priority
    Medium
  • Type
    Design work
  • Tags
    Good entry-level task
  • Assigned to
    No one yet
  • Subscribers
    Carolin Bellstedt
    Paul Hoekman

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Description

We are creating more and more videos, and thanks to Aris our Youtube channel is looking more and more impressive and professional with videos ranging from interviews, tutorials, news and coverage of events.


We are now also starting to record short videos for our online courses, which will range in duration from a few minutes for short ones, to 15-20 minutes for longer ones. I am personally interested in having a branding strategy for those videos, but while we're at it, it would be good to try and put in place a larger overarching strategy for all of our video materials.


When it comes to branding of, this is what I have in mind based on our other videos/what I've seen elsewhere (very open to comments and improvements):


INTRO


The intro (before the actual video starts) serves to quickly frame the video (telling the viewer e.g. the title/subject, who the host is, who is behind the video...), and also to send a consistent branding message out to the world. In our case the current intro is good for consistent branding, and if we follow that with a custom title of the video plus the presenter/host (where applicable), then we cover our basis.


OUTRO


The outro (last few seconds of the video) serves a different purpose. Firstly, it makes it very clear the video is finished. Secondly, it can provide some additional details that are not suitable for the intro and not necessarily mentioned in the video, but that are important to mention nonetheless. Credits or acknowledgements could go here for instance. Also, the outro can serve as a way to lead to user to additional content. In Youtube videos there are options to show thumbnails of additional related videos, for instance, which users can click. Lastly, the outro should yet again emphasize our branding.


IN-VIDEO BRANDING


Within each video, we should simply have a consistent style. Fonts and colors (e.g. when putting the name of a speaker on the screen) should be consistent. I think here the key thing is that it should look good and more than anything that we should be consistent.


CONVENTIONS


So let's talk about conventions/consistent styles to use when creating intros and outros. Here are some thoughts, fully open to improvement:



  • Two parameters come to mind when deciding on what style/format to use for intros and outros: the primary publication channel, and what kind of video this is.

  • When the primary platform is Youtube, we could default to the "Welcome to our YT" intro, and an outro that has a YT channel signup link and space for related videos.

  • When the primary platform is our website, we could have a generic intro and outro, and where needed we have content-specific intros/outros.

  • If the video is part of a MOOC, then the intro should have the title of the MOOC and should make it clear this is one of many videos in a series. Same for the outro. The outro could also mention some other content that may be of interest (e.g. our social media links).

  • If a video is part of another specific series (e.g. series of interviews), we should also have an intro that makes that clear.

  • It could be nice to have a SOME part of the intro/outro style be consistent and always be the same, independently from channel/series.

  • Some part of the branding (e.g. the title screen for that particular video) could vary, depending on which series / course this is part of.


I am attaching some branding from existing videos of thumbnails, but these could also be titles, where you can see that Aris already has a nice style for MoC videos, and he uses a certain branding for the Chair Podcast series as well, which makes it easy to recognize. Continuing some of this differential branding is quite nice I think.


Thoughts and ideas welcome.

Discussion and updates


New task was created


I've been working on this a bit. We are doing some videos that are part of an online course. These are therefore integrated in the Education Hub. I have set up slides for the intro and outro. You can see them here. Feedback welcome. The idea is that on the third slide we would dynamically load the title of that specific video at the bottom part.


Also, that third slide WITH the title could potentially make for a good thumbnail because it shows the presenter, the title, and the design elements that demonstrate which series this is part of.


Thanks for pushing this forward Paul. I very much like the "Caveat" font that you used, which makes it very playful.

2 main things from my side: 1) We have not finalised the logos or branding of the subsites yet and I'm hoping to do this with Carlos in the sprint this week. Only looking at the slides does NOT tell me at all that this is from MoC if it wasn't for the name, there is nothing to recognise MoC instantly which branding should obviously help with. We either need to do something to bring our orange color back or also use our actual logo in addition to the subsite logo. I feel the current logos are too far removed to stand on their own without any orange to be recognised as being from MoC. 2) I'd like to bring the subsites colors closer to (a variation) of our colorscheme. I know that I keep banging on about it, but we did this exactly for branding purposes and so we should especially adhere to it in a format that is so wide spread as videos. Perhaps Carlos can also help here by finding some more colors that go with our existing scheme to satisfy the amount of colors we need for the many subsites?


Hi Carolin,

Thanks for your replies. I went with the subsite colors indeed so it would be good to raise this in the discussion about subsite design. I personally like the current colors quite a bit but let's go with consensus. When we settle on the final colors for the subsite we can redo the intro & outro based on that, so at least it will be relatively easy to replace things. Hopefully we can sort this out in the upcoming sprint indeed.


Sounds like the way to go. I will be sure to raise this in the sprint.