The salespeople called - they had a meeting with a few potentially huge (and I’m talkin’ HUGE) clients, and what they needed was an example of our various media players featuring specific content.

Diag 1: RMM Media Players Datasheet

We were able to get some information from the clients about specific properties they wanted to see featured. My goal was to come up with a design that would showcase Red McCombs Media, the players, and the client’s data. But by this point, our collateral had all been relatively ad hoc and the sales team had been using generic templates for all of their collateral.

Swooshgasm!

I played with a few designs. I threw them away. I tried a couple more and started to see something forming. Our corporate color was red, as that is the name of the company, but red wasn’t the right color for the piece. It’s too powerful and would overshadow the content we wanted to them to focus on - namely, our players and how awesome they were.

On previous designs for the RMM website, I’d used an interesting shade of blue-green that went exceedingly well with the gradient in our logo. After applying this to the datasheet, though, I found that it instead printed more green than blue. No good. So I played with the hue some and found a nice blue with enough gray to calm things down, but keep the edges of the logo from vibrating.

We needed a tagline. Something to the point, but not too silly or markety. Well, All Your Videos, One Click Away was perfect. Absolutely true, showing off what made our network enabled video player so special. After playing with the text on one solid line, as it did fit, I realized that by breaking the phrase and removing the comma, I was able to draw more attention to the headline and help give the piece an additional defining element.

To break up the monotony of the background, I used as simple radial gradient and created a soft, ethereal “swoosh” play on the background. This worked like a river or a road to pull the viewers eyes through the piece, while also making things exciting without being busy.

Call it out

Little aspects of the players needed to be paid attention to and explained. I created a clean, visual language of callout or diagram lines that added personality to the design while also serving the right purpose.

Caddycorner is great way to keep very blocky elements from coming across too boring, and it let me make better use of the space. It also looked fancier, and frankly, isn’t that what it’s all about?

At the time, RMM was in a transition of brands, and I hadn’t yet discovered the Gotham font. BellGothic, however, added that clean, strong edge that I wanted, while also being inviting enough to bring users into the piece.

This piece, more than anything I’d done before, resonated with me as the proper direction for the Red McCombs Media brand: hip, professional, fun and tech savvy. It would serve as the basis for the design for the upcoming RMM homepage…