Client: Cloud5
Agency: SmartFish (producer/writer: Johnathon Allen, animator: Jen Van Horn)
Roles: Design, illustration, storyboarding, and custom font design for animated data streams
I designed storyboards and style frames for this marketing video for Cloud5 Communications' Managed Wi-Fi solutions for apartment buildings. Growing up watching Brady Bunch reruns, I always thought the architect dad on that show had the coolest job, so this project was a fun opportunity to channel my inner Mike Brady by designing some cool buildings (without all the pesky engineering details that real architects have to worry about.)
I wanted the building designs to reflect the types of upscale residences that Cloud5 serves, and be varied in their shapes and silhouettes, while remaining unified with shades of the brand colors.
Below you can see the early sketches beside each building's final design.
Below are some style frames I produced for the project. Besides striving for attractive designs, I'm always trying to make sure the visuals are communicating not only the ideas expressed overtly in the script, but also the subtext of the client's message, as well as looking for opportunities to imply movement in the static boards.
Cloud5's logo incorporates a cloud icon that consists of a mesh of parallel lines. Picking up on that, I used a similar visual motif of swooping, twisting ribbon-like meshes to represent the various types of data streams carried by the WiFi systems they install. The movements of these mesh ribbons could also serve as a way to direct the viewer's attention to specific parts of the frame.
At the beginning of the video, I also created three custom fonts in Adobe Illustrator: one of dashes of various lengths, one of vertical lines resembling an audio waveform, and another consisting of musical notes. I was able to package these as font files and provide them to the animator so that she could keyframe the offset of this custom "type" along curved text paths in After Effects, resulting in the different types of data streams traveling along their mesh ribbons.
