When I worked at Blackstone Academy Charter School in Pawtucket, Rhode Island I would often design posters for the school events. They were expensive to print so we considered buying an expensive poster printer. But then I had a better idea... buy a few inexpensive HD TVs and mount them vertically as video posters. I created the workflow (Keynote, iMovie and QuickTime on the Mac, mostly) and started making animated posters.
The video posters were far more dynamic than the printed ones and didn't become invisible “wallpaper” like printed posters and billboards tend to do. Instead, students would often go out of their way to see what was new on Monday morning. In addition, changes were easy to make when event details were altered and GIFs could be shared by email, text and social media by student organizers with their peers, generating buzz.
I found the intricate details of motion design to be fascinating. Timing changes of a tenth of a second were very noticeable in the “flow” of a video poster.
Video Posters
Design Notes
Welcome to Blackstone - The school’s logo was always tricky to work with, but here I used gradient shading to give the trees and buildings depth.
Under the Stars Dance – I really like the transparency in the heading type here and the blue color scheme.
Fashion Show – The stock art used here was nearly symmetrical, which allowed me to use Photoshop to make another layer of the model's eyes and flip them. It's a subtle effect but adds mystique to the design. The background also changes color multiple times to add visual interest, as does the slowly pulsing glow around the model.
Prom – The gold look here gives gives a richness to this poster. The raised metallic script works since it’s such a short heading. Cascading “sparkles” and highlights on the text box add visual interest.
Yankee Candle Yearbook fundraising – I had a PDF of the catalog to work with here and tried to show as much of it as possible so that viewers would understand its importance to the fundraising effort.
Born2Run 5K Road Race – I like how the Born2Run logo rises as the sun here as the sky turns from black to blue. I’m not as sold on the halftone pattern I used for the image of Pawtucket. I’d probably go sepia tone if I did it over.
April College Visits – As this is a multiple page section, the pages rotate from right to left instead of from bottom to top as the video does between segments.
Polar Express – The train GIF looks okay at the top, but more imagery from the film would have made this one work better.
