Design 101: Creating Quality B2B Videos… FAST

In the line of design work, it’s important to know how to create quality videos for your clients. From using live client footage, using stock b-roll or drawing your own vector animations you’ll need to make them interesting. In this article I will share with you some things I believe makes a video more interesting to watch. With the right animations, transitions, soundtrack and sound effects you can make a great video for your B2B clients.

Making Your Animations and Transitions Awesome

By nature, B2B subject matter is going to be a bit drier. Adding physics to your animations and transitions are a great way to make your videos look awesome. You can watch this TED video to understand how to apply physics to your animations.

Another trick is to move animations and transitions to the tempo or elements of music or sound effects (like drum beats, guitar, etc.). Make sure when you’re creating animations and transitions that you mix up the animation style and speed throughout the whole motion. For example, notice in this video how the objects move and expand at the same time, then push to the left and build the next object. By adding a variety of speeds and motions, you can make things more interesting to watch.

Add a Soundtrack and Sound Effects

Having a good soundtrack can make your audience feel more engaged to watch your video. Make sure to pick a soundtrack that fits the content of your video, though. If you’re showcasing a product, use more uplifting and inspiring soundtracks and if you’re showcasing an event, use music that has a pump-up feel to make the audience want to attend. Sound effects are a good way to emphasize a message, motion or even an emotional presence of a logo.

A great example is the 2-key piano introduction of the Honda logo in Honda commercials. It gives the logo/brand a happy or friendly presence. Make sure you either purchase your soundtracks and sound effects or make them with Garage Band so your videos have a higher level or professionalism.  An amazing website we use here at Red Branch Media is the Envato Market. Here, you can purchase professional-grade soundtracks and sound effects on AudioJungle. If you’re in a time crunch, you could also purchase pre-made transitions and motion graphics as well from VideoHive.

Compress Your File

When you’re done creating your video, you’ll need to know how to provide it to your client in the smallest form possible. When exporting your video, make sure you export it from After Effects or your preferred video editing software in H.264 format. This format exports at a very low file size and will play audio and video. Sometimes if you export a video in H.264, the file size may still be too big to email or upload to YouTube or Vimeo. When this happens, it’s nice to have good video compression software. At Red Branch Media, we use Easy HTML5 Video. This software allows us to compress a video into other formats such as MP4 for smaller file sizes and WebM for placing videos on websites such as video headers.

Creating an interesting video is pretty easy if you know what you’re doing. Always remember to give your animations and transitions plenty of physics, various speeds, variety and even sound effects when necessary. Give your video a soundtrack for a more engaged audience and make sure to compress your file to the smallest form possible for sharing. Before you start animating your next video, watch this recent commercial from Verizon to get inspired and notice how they used all of the tips I listed in this article.

Kyle Christensen

Kyle is the Brand Director at Red Branch Media.

Kyle leads our Graphic Design Department at Red Branch Media. His ability to manage incoming tasks, collaborate with the design team, hit deadlines and keep our file storage system well-organized has helped to shape the design department clients love today. While he’s away from the branch, he spends his time playing drums, video games, cranking the latest emo, pop-punk and screamo songs on Spotify, drinking local Omaha brews, and enjoying life with his wife. Kyle has a BASA with a Concentration in Graphic Design and a Minor in Art History from UNO.