As you can see from the title, I have abandoned the attempt to label these blogs chronologically. I think the last one was sometime around the end of August, and it just didn’t seem right to pick up the numbers again here in November.
Anyway, that’s enough waffle for now, let’s get on to the topic at hand – I have been working a lot with words, and paper, and documents, and other bits and bobs of information recently. And it got me thinking about creative ways we can present such things.
Now let’s start by saying there is nothing wrong with a plain old word document, or an email for that matter. They are both simple things. And they both work. But what about thinking about doing something just a little bit different?
Thankfully, if you have never ever thought of doing that, I have you covered with some different examples.
First up are some interesting animated infographics.
So hopefully what you have just watched was a little fun animated infographic for the creative agency Dare based in London. It was used many moons ago [or five years ago if we are being proper] to help attract graduate students to apply for the Dare Graduation Scheme. And it’s lovely.
Did they need to make an animated video talking about themselves? No - Chances are they could have designed a nice email with a blurb about the company and still have gotten a response. I don’t think there is any doubt about that. But would they have received the volume or quality of entries they doubtlessly got from this video. I certainly would have applied.
What if you don’t have a graduation scheme you want to promote? What if you just want to talk about the history of your company, and you want something a bit more exciting than an ‘About Us’ page? What about something like this then:-
It’s a long one. I’ll give you that.
But it holds your interest – And I don’t think I would be alone in saying that I would be more inclined to watch, or indeed re-watch, that Johnnie Walker video than I would be to re-read the walls of text you’ll find on certain companies ‘About Us’ pages - Perhaps I’m wrong on that one though…
…Okay so we have had a quick look at some options for company histories and the like. What if you’ve got all that sorted and nice, but you want to do something creative for one of your products. Well you could photograph it. Photographs can be nice. Or you could do something like this:-
A bit strange? Yes.
A bit surreal? Yes.
Do I suggest you animate everything under the sun? No.
But you could at least give your products a certain new lease of life. Maybe instead of it just being a still picture, it’s a 3D object that can be rotated. Or it’s a gif that shows something off a bit…I don’t know, I am entering waffle territory again so I’ll quickly move on.
Last up let’s talk about sharing news or tips or interviews. You could do what I am doing here and write a blog, and make it all look nice and fancy. Or what if you took it one step further? What if instead of just writing a few words you recorded your thoughts and made something like this:-
Obviously you are not going to have the time and resources to make an animation for everything. That would be a massive ask. What you could do however is pick a topic that is important to you or your business, and do a ‘creative’ version of that. Or if you want to make it a slightly more ‘formal’ event you could consider the idea of making a video-essay like this:-
That’s just one example out of many. Video essays could form an entirely different blog, and they might just do so in the future…
…Like I always try and say at the end of these blog-things, if you want to discuss any ideas, or you want to find-out how Nine Twenty can help you out creatively then don’t be afraid to get in touch.
My email address is as follows gmorrison@weareninetwenty.com
Thanks for getting this far.
Grant Morrison, Marketing Executive (Creative), Nine Twenty
**Bonus**
Almost forgot the little Friday bonus video I have been including in these things. Well here’s an interesting one for you. Enjoy.