Editor’s Note: Coat of Arms is an award-winning post-production firm and Frame.io buyer. They do superb work so we wished to share with our readers a few of their processes when serving Fortune 100 purchasers.
What is Brand?
Brand is persona. It’s a semblance of a soul or spirit we attempt to give our services or products to make them extra relatable. The irony of this wrestle lies within the cliché criticism, “Advertising is soulless.” If this sentiment is true, how apropos {that a} soulless trade searches endlessly for a soul.
But the reality of the matter is that firms must mission a transparent identification, together with a simple voice, story, and message, in the event that they want to succeed. And it is important for each artist working for that firm to painting that identification of their work.
Artwork credited to Dreambox
Brand giants like Apple, Nike, Volkswagen, and Google, typically have probably the most concise however recognizable branding on the market. These manufacturers use distinct colours, visuals, copy, and messaging. But how do they do it? Where do they start? This weblog explores model identification and the way we, at Coat of Arms, strategy branding. Specifically, we are going to define our course of in creating an explainer video for Google BigQuery, and methods to specific a model precisely.
Brand Guidelines
When we start scripting and designing a video, we ask our purchasers to ship their model tips or model requirements: an index of fonts, colours, guidelines, and exceptions firms use to stipulate their model identification. Some model tips are a single web page and a few are pages lengthy, expressing minute particulars like the corporate’s historical past, core values, persona, coloration codes, brand proportions, and branded typeface.
Coat of Arms’ easy, one-page model tips give designers the important thing data they should get began on branded content material for our post-production firm. It contains our brand, a brief description of our model philosophy, font, coloration codes, and a few common guidelines pertaining to the design, coloration, texture, and shading of our icons.
On the opposite hand, the model tips from Google are way more detailed. You might imagine, “But Google’s brand is so simple and recognizable. Why do they need so many details in their standards?” Although Google’s branding seems easy, its tips are rigorously crafted in order that their designers and distributors, like Coat of Arms, can hit the slender goal that’s their identification. American graphic designer Paul Rand put it greatest:
Design is so easy, that’s why it’s so sophisticated.
Paul Rand
Rand, who designed many posters and company identities, together with the logos for IBM, Apple, UPS and ABC, understood the artwork of minimalism and the way tough it’s to harness simplicity and restraint.
To assist their designers and subcontractors harness that “simple” Google identification, Google created a really clear, albeit prolonged, algorithm. In truth, Google has distinct model tips for a lot of of their merchandise and platforms (e.g. Google Cloud Platform, Google Chrome, G-Suite, and so forth). While some guidelines overlap inside these tips, every product has particular guidelines and exceptions. Here’s an excerpt from the Google Cloud Platform model requirements.
This excerpt is just one web page from a sixty-one web page model e-book. Within this guideline, it describes guidelines pertaining to model technique, functions, promise, voice, brand, icons, coloration, illustration fashion, typography, tagline, proportions, and way more.
All of this might be fairly overwhelming. So, what do you do when you’ve obtained the model requirements? We like to start out with coloration.
Color
Colors convey meaning. Brands communicate to you subconsciously as they mission feelings by shades of sunshine and darkish. For instance, BP needs you to assume they’re environmentally pleasant similar to Whole Foods with their robust inexperienced logos. Coke and Target invoke pleasure and youth with their vibrant reds. Dell, IBM, Intel, and HP invite you to see energy or intelligence of their blues, which simply occurs to be probably the most distinguished coloration utilized in branding. Color is vital, and in response to Column Five Media, coloration is the very first thing a shopper will discover about your model.
We had the chance to work with Google once more. The first time was an explainer video for his or her Google Docs showcase. This time, we had been tasked with serving to model Google BigQuery with their first video. Google BigQuery permits customers to run queries and analyze knowledge utilizing the processing energy of Google’s infrastructure. Without its personal set of brand name tips however with a purpose to uniquely clarify their service in underneath two minutes, the Google BigQuery crew requested that their video maintain some model allegiance to Google Cloud Platform’s colours and voice.
Google Cloud Platform’s Color Codes
Using Google Cloud Platform’s tips as our map, the Google BigQuery crew gave us permission to discover accent colours utilizing Google’s Material Design palette. The coloration palette begins with main colours and suggests a whole and usable palette for accents.
Style Frames: A Test in Brand Comprehension
Testing our model information and our understanding of the video’s mission, we moved on to fashion frames. We selected to discover a scene that depicts the advantages of Google BigQuery’s relationship with Google Cloud Platform. In these early styleframe explorations, we performed with colours and textures whereas sustaining a comparatively easy tone that might nonetheless reside inside a Google branded world.
Initial suggestions was constructive, however the common consensus was that we wanted to refine and simplify. Colors had been correct and inside model, however the Google voice wasn’t spot on. So, whereas we simplified the backgrounds, decreased texture, and refined colours, we explored and honed the voice.
Voice
Google Cloud Platform’s model e-book explains, “Voice is more than writing. It’s the tone of everything we do.” Branded voice ought to exist in all branded supplies from promoting and advertising and marketing to directions and internet copy.
For Google Cloud Platform, their voice is described as “Ambitious (But experimental. It’s not all about the Benjamins), Authentic (We’re developers, not robots), Communal (Not competitive), and Witty (Never goofy).”
Even we, a post-production firm, have a branded voice. Coat of Arms’ tagline reads, “The true cowboys of post-production.” Our model voice pairs this rugged cowboy of the Wild West with the heraldic heritage of knights who created the primary coat of arms. Knight meets cowboy, we, at Coat of Arms, attempt to infuse our voice into our personal branded content material, and we perceive the significance of defining and adhering to that voice.
At the graduation of the Google BigQuery mission, we obtained a tough script. While I labored with the BigQuery crew to refine the voice for his or her identification, we found that the voice used for Google Cloud Platform (described earlier) wanted to vary with a view to extra appropriately relate to Google BigQuery’s area of interest, “tech” viewers.
For instance, unique scripts describe how briskly queries can run, so at first we tried to be witty (not goofy) and slowly scaled our means again to a extra refined voice.
Rough Voiceover: “We’re talking seconds not hours. That’s Flo-Jo, rocket fast. You can analyze TeraBytes of data in seconds. PetaBytes in minutes.
Final Voiceover: “We’re talking rocket fast. Fast enough to analyze TeraBytes of data in seconds. PetaBytes in minutes.”
Revised Style Frames
As we outlined the voice, we explored the particular design and illustration kinds utilized by Google Cloud Platform up to now. Keeping textures, depth, shading, and icons comparatively easy, we had been aware to stick to the foundations Google Cloud Platform put forth.
Google Cloud Platform’s brand is a hexagon with the Google colours alongside its edges. The Google BigQuery brand can be a hexagon however with a magnifying glass at its middle. According to the Google Cloud Platform model e-book, “[The logo] is a space to imagine possibilities, celebrate creators, and demonstrate customer impact. Images may visually burst out of the hexagon, suggesting ideas and impact that break boundaries.” With the colours, voice, and design/illustration kinds outlined, we took one other stab at depicting the “connection” between Google Cloud Platform and Google BigQuery.
Storyboards: Representing “Data”
With approval of our common coloration picks, textures, and magnificence, we proceeded to storyboarding the introductory scene. This opening showcases an ever-expanding universe of knowledge. As we thought of numerous shapes to symbolize knowledge, we selected to save lots of the hexagon for the Google BigQuery and Google Cloud Platform logos. We proposed different geometric shapes with distinct texturing and shading for “data.” See under.
After reviewing our explorations of knowledge, the Google crew found that circles had been used to symbolize knowledge by one other division. They most well-liked to maintain continuity throughout departments. So, we proposed that fully-formed circles symbolize full knowledge, whereas hole circles or circles nonetheless forming may symbolize the processing of a question.
Ultimately, we needed to simplify additional to lock into that simplified voice for Google BigQuery. It was decided that circles of knowledge might be completely different colours, however every circle must be an entire coloration.
To uniquely model BigQuery and simplify even additional, all knowledge representations modified to principally Google blue and gray. And there you’ve got a locked storyboard representing “data.”
Branded People
One of the ultimate hurdles in our design part was tackling the illustration of individuals. We initially used circles however clearly needed to nix that when knowledge representations moved to circles. We wished to incorporate one thing geometric that match into the general visible language of the video. Check out a few of our explorations under:
In the tip, Google Cloud Platform instructed that BigQuery use related folks to these they used of their current video marketing campaign. BigQuery gave us permission to regulate their coloration palette. And so we did! We love these little guys:
Time to experiment and refine voice are paramount to the event of brand-specific movies. An excessive amount of analysis, exploration, and experimentation went into the design of this video. In truth, creating Google BigQuery’s benchmark video was thrilling and felt reasonably soulful. Like dressing a buddy for his or her first date, we relished the chance to offer Google BigQuery a little bit assist out of the gate.
Check out the total video under. A little bit of Google’s “wit” and a few physics carry this animation to life. Give David Stanfield, lead designer and animator, and Fe Ribeiro, illustrator, a shout out. Enjoy!
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