When this monthly pop-culture themed mystery box start-up contracted me to help produce and manage their kickstarter campaign video it was a marriage of my two passions, design and nerdcore. Through the process of developing the animated video, I was able to prove myself in other areas of design such as branding, concepting products, production design, layout and process improvements for production. The whimsical, yet clean, brand I helped to develop appealed to both kids and inner-kids alike. The end result of all this hard work was something I am incredibly proud of and think about often.
Mystery
Shirts
The cornerstone item of each box was a mystery themed t-shirt with an original design on it. Being a small six person start-up we had to brainstorm each design to ensure it did not infringe on any copyrights, met the near atmospheric standards of the most hardcore geeks, and could have a box themed around it still. This meant organizing and planning as many idea iterations as possible months in advance to meet tight product shipments and production deadlines.
Geek Fuel Magazine
Understanding the collector culture and marketing, we knew it was important to convey just how special each item was in the box without making it solely about the monetary value. The vessel, a monthly Geek Fuel Magazine in every box, featured artists bios, insight on games inside, and eventually sponsored pages to offset the curation of the boxes. Each month, I was charged with the design and layout of the elements that would be showcased in this 20-page booklet.
Branded
Items
Being a start-up, margins were lean when it came to curating a geeky collectible box that would satisfy hardcore collectors, which meant getting creative. The two most effective ways we were able to do this was by partnering with artists and Steam game developer. We would routinely reach out to artists/developers to collaborate on an item to feature in our box. In the case of artists, it was typically easy to package or brand the item. However, Steam games were significantly more involved as games were just an alphanumeric code. I would help to identify, design, and package a tangible item that aligned with the theme of the game. Giant candy worms for The Original Worms game, a branded bookmark for a pixel-based 2D puzzle game, and a clamshell box for star candies just like the main character collected in the game are just a few examples.
Kickstarter
Video
This kickstarter video was created using Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Media Encoder, and Audacity as well as additional tools. The storyboarding process was highly collaborative between the founder, CD, copywriter, and me. We wanted it to look and feel (like the Saturday morning commercials we loved as kids)like the commercials we saw growing up on Saturday mornings. I organized and vectored the CD’s hand drawn stills for easier upload to After Effects, for animating, and staging in Premiere. The whole video process was about 30 hours in total and helped reach the kickstarter goal in one month and the following push goals within two weeks.