SameYou wanted our help with a few videos they were releasing as part of their latest campaign. They’re a charity working to develop better recovery treatment for the survivors of brain injuries and strokes. They know how powerful charity video is at education, raising awareness and most importantly raising funds. It became clear that as well as help on the specific videos, they needed video brand guidelines and assets to be able to give a consistent look to other content being created for the campaign. So we created a series assets:
What are the essential elements of video brand guidelines?
Titles
This is a short 3-5 second clip with the title of the series. This tends title tends to be big and bold, so the view knows what kind of content they’re watching.
Subtitles
Another 3-5 second clip, this time with more copy, as this gives more details about the specifics of the clip. This doesn’t have copy burnt in, as it will change with each episode.
Name straps
Sometimes known as Astons, these animate on, and then the text is put on over.
Text boards
These are blank boards which you can put copy against, or photos or… pretty much anything.
End frames
These are usually a reworking of the title, only they contain a call to action or website to point people to more information.
Set font sizes
Pick a headline, subtitle and body copy font size, and whether they are centred or left aligned, and then only use these sizes.
Thanks for following up and getting in touch with us. Having those video assets has been really helpful and has simplified and standardised our work tremendously. At times, we have had to adapt slightly from the guidelines you provided, but as a whole, it’s worked really well. We have a new volunteer on board who is a video editor so I think it’s made things quite easy for him.
Veronique, SameYou
The key things to remember
- Build the assets so they can be used across landscape, square and portrait video
- Use a creative style where you can easily cut the assets short, or extend it
- Create colour variations – a quick way to vary your output, and make sure the branding doesn’t clash with the content
- Write up clear notes which detail how the assets are to be used, including things like the duration of dissolves used so that no matter whoever uses them, your output is consistent.
