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.