Sharing Knowledge Through Videos
I recently designed a banner and some supplemental graphic art to help promote the Firefox Screencast Contest which launched on May 19th. If you haven’t already heard, the contest is a great opportunity to apply your creative talents towards the SUMO knowledge base by creating videos for the top 100 support articles. This community-powered project already has an extensive library of tutorials and troubleshooting information, a valuable educational tool written by thousands of volunteers in the Mozilla community. But technical concepts can be hard to explain in words and static images alone. Therefore the Screencast Contest aims to visually translate the most popular of these articles through a more powerful and effective medium: Video!
When Seth approached me with this project, he provided a brief background of the contest and a few visual references – leaving much of the creative direction in my hands. I knew through experience that producing a screencast is relatively simple, but also that the process reflects upon the classic art of filmmaking – the ability to visualize and communicate a series of events into a story. This thought conjured up images of vintage film reels, animation frames and motion picture cameras – familiar references to the concept of video which were then used as inspirational art for my designs.
We have a talented pool of freelance designers that work with us on most of our projects, but on occasion I also help respond to various design needs. Visual expression and graphic design are among my many passions, so I really enjoy these design challenges. Its part of what makes my job here so great!
These images were used as promo spots on the main contest website, the prizes page, and the Facebook group. I also wanted to thank Chris Bewick, designer of the exclusive Firefox t-shirt prize used for this contest.
June 2nd, 20088:39 pm at
nice work, tara! it was a pleasure working with you on this. after providing you with really little guidance in the form of a creative brief, i think you nailed what david and i were looking to capture with graphics. great work.
June 3rd, 20086:38 am at
Just saw your blog pop up on the traffic sources page of my google analytics, thanks for the link!
Nice blog, keep up the good work :0)
x
June 6th, 20084:01 pm at
[...] I created the contest rules with Catherine Brady (one of Mozilla’s legal gurus) and wrote a lot of the content you see on the contest pages. David chose all the articles that are featured in the contest and wrote a lot of the content for the site as well. Finally, Tara came in and designed some really great art for us to use. [...]