To convey a single word, we produced a motion graphics video full of them.

How ridiculous was the show “Name That Tune?” They played songs with a house orchestra, or worse, a lone piano. Your success on that show was entirely dependent on your encyclopedic knowledge of twentieth-century sheet music. All that aside, sometimes it IS possible to distill a value proposition down to a single word. In the case of NetSort from Bell & Howell, that word is flexibility.

Scott Evans, from Evans Brand Design, brought us a request for an online video consisting entirely of motion graphics, with some narration and music layered on top. Without turning on a camera or buying any stock footage, how could we communicate the advantages and benefits of NetSort in a minute or so? We accepted the challenge and, working with Scott, Bill Cokas and Chris Griffin wrote and storyboarded out the video front to back, at which point Chris took over and built the entire video from scratch.

The “joke,” of course, is that one word isn’t possibly enough to do justice to a proposition as complex and feature-rich as NetSort, but in the process of stripping away all the “other” words, we get to trot out a whole dictionary’s worth, each one applicable in its own way. The use of kinetic typography, along with carefully chosen icons, kept the pace and momentum brisk and in the end, NetSort comes across as a vibrant offering viewers will definitely want to know more about.