Concepts in good design: visual enhancing vs competing with

Here’s a thread for newer author’s benefit mostly… “concepts in making great ae projects and motion graphics design”.

- Main tip is, what you produce should, unless it’s a logo opener/title intro, be something that enhances vs competes visually with the buyers’ content.

For example, a project with video boxes where there’s huge big borders around the video boxes and a lot of too-strong distracting background visuals, is visually “competing” with the content that’ll be placed in the project, and isn’t as good.

On the other hand, something that is designed to showcase the buyers’ dropped-in videos/stills in a way that shows them off, makes the content the star, is much better.

I suppose I should show some examples at least of projects here that do it right; many do, especially from the more experienced authors. Seems though there’s many where the project is clumsy in that the video boxes and background elements themselves are the “star” at the expense of the users’ video to be dropped in…if that makes sense?

Subtle lines, lighter/thinner lines, thin chrome/metal or other frames, and backgrounds that don’t draw the viewers’ eye away from the video in the box that’s supposed to be the main showcase of the project is good design. Flipping the videos too often is distracting. Making humongous frames and lots of lines cluttering up the background, while it may be cool visually by itself, isn’t as good a project because remember it’s the clients’ video INSIDE the box that’s supposed to be the “hero”, the star, and the background project visuals play a supporting role, not the other way around.

as a buyer, that’s one thing I look at, is what’s the message I’m trying to communicate? and if the background project is too busy/too noisy just to be flamboyant and distracts the viewer away from the video that I’m going to drop inside the project, then I wouldn’t buy it… because I’m thinking, hey my customer won’t even notice the video I put in there because the background visuals compete too much with my video message.

tips for best sales in that guideline too above

make sense?

thx,

k

ps feel free to chime in, felt, others who are seasoned motion gfx/visual fx guys

example a project that gets it right, where the video is the star, with the help of outstanding ae project design, is this one

http://videohive.net/item/ae-cs3-white-corporate-showcase/71603

and this one

http://videohive.net/item/webpages/89659

both make the content, the video the star, not the ae backgrounds/frames etc.

Notice too how each of those has individually SOLD more than most total weeks’ worth of combined sales from everyone here, in each project, doing hundreds of sales? there’s a reason… hope I explained it well

kind of like web design, where back in the day everyone had noise animated gifs and flash stuff all over their sites to look cool (I did that myself back in the 90s)...but at the expense of content…

nowadays the web 2.0 look is large, simple colors, easy to navigate and see the main content, without being simplistic or boring… so that’s an idea for ae authors

Good stuff mate, It’s great getting feedback from the buyers. Relevant and in-depth, should help out a lot of people

Ben