Building a narrative when designing for cross-channel digital projects

Video Transcript

Jose Caballer, The Skool: “One clarification question for Chris Do, one of the things that you’re doing recently is doing cross-channel design projects, from TV to mobile to physical location. Has it changed how you’ve addressed design because of all the different platforms or are there still some basic elements that are important, whether it be typography, whether it be identity, whether it be brand. What do you feel is the most important thing now that you’re designing across so many platforms?”

Chris Do, Blind: “Whoa, that’s a heavy-duty questions there. For me, I don’t know if I look at things as compartments and I think the way things are moving, the lines are blurring. So when we’re doing a traditional broadcast project, that’s going to live on TV and that’s going to live on the web and so to me, it’s still the basic principles of design that I would apply, whether it’s print, video or web-related. And the two things I was thinking about when we’re creating a motion project is clarity and drama. And I think those same principles can be applied to whatever you’re doing. So clarity, the enemy of that is confusion, you have too many things on the page and you can’t figure out where to look first and that’s the same thing in motion. The other thing is creating something that has some drama to it. The enemy of that is boredom because now it’s clear, but nobody cares. So when we’re looking at a site: How are you drawing the user in? What kind of story are you telling? And how does that build a narrative? I think that’s where it kind of blurs together for me.”

Jose Caballer, The Skool: “Interesting. So you’re bringing up the issue of not only building a narrative across the different content types but across the entire experience so there’s a narrative art that has to live across device, across screen, which does make it a little more complicated. We can come back to that in regards to what’s important.”