For my current day job, I’ve been tasked (since 2005, when I started) with creating animations for our big conference/workshop. The animations played, with video, in front of the major sessions at the workshops, for between 700 and 1200 people at a time.
They needed to accomplish several things from the design perspective. First, they needed to represent, at least in a short way, the area where the workshop was taking place. Next, they needed to be “flashy” (pardon the pun, they were done in Adobe Flash), so that they would get the attention of the participants in the room. This included active animations and usually louder music.
Lastly, they just needed to have that “cool” factor. If people were talking about them, and were generally interested in them, then that usually meant that the keynote afterwards would have an easier time with the crowd.
I also thought it was very cool to get nice comments about them, and to see people tapping their feet as the animations were playing on the big screen.
Below are three of the animations I did, beginning with 2007’s workshop in Wichita, Kansas. Then 2008 in Portland, Oregon, and the last one (it wasn’t budgeted for 2010) for the 2009 workshop in Hartford, Connecticut. I also have one for our 2006 workshop in Albuquerque, which should show up on this site soon.
As always, opinions would be great.
