Bonfire Labs - San Francisco, CA
Google creates incredible products, experiences, conveniences and all of that needs content to sell, educate and entertain. Over six years, I have been Creative Lead on several Google Projects that range from Google Cloud, Google Pixel, and Google Essentials Certificates. The list includes: product launches, user education, social campaigns, internal pitches, and conference centerpiece videos. All with a laser focus on what seems like a simple Google brand, but requires making every choice count. Most recently we worked alongside Grow with Google to develop a 27-part Coursera series on prompt design for AI.
My Role: Creative Lead, Designer, Editor, Compositor & Motion Graphics
All Produced by: Bonfire Labs
Google Prompting Essentials
My Role: Creative Lead
My most recent work with Google has been to develop a full course meant for both YouTube and Coursera. Over 8 months our team worked to define the structure, look, and behavior of almost 2 hours of video content as 4 modules. While the wonderful writing agency, Codeword, wrote the script we tested and designed everything from transitions to fully diagrammed lessons and prompting.
Our focus was on keeping the learner moving and engaged from start to finish through whiteboard-like experiences to lighten the text-heavy lessons. Multiple test shoots, visual experimentation and the construction of a robust graphics package yielded an efficient shoot and breakneck post-production scheudule.
The result was a huge draw to Coursera for Google and pushed the use for Gemini, Google’s LLM.
Live Action Director: Velvy Appleton
Producers: Heather Bernard & Huyen Pham
Designs & Concepts: Elizabeth Starkey, Pamela Tuazon, Anthony Clune, Olivier Chetelat
Animation: Matt Taylor, Logan Johnston, Dax Silva, Ed Pritz
Editorial: Grant Mentzel & Totianna Weekly
Big Moments
The creation of this course could be another website all on its own, however here are a few key moments and ideas that were crucial to the success of our work.
Better Together
My Role: Creative Lead
There’s a saying when designing for Google, “start with white…add only what you need”. While several projects have stuck to this guiding principle, there have been a few that dare to venture out.
We were given the opportunity to help tell a future-looking story about devices and people that was informed by a whole lot of thinking and research done by the Google UX team. Show people going about their lives moving from device to device effortlessly. Use the best device for the job and don’t rely on the phone.
From concept to delivery I worked with a talented team of artists, animators, writers and illustrators to tell a simple yet complicated technology story…that never stopped moving.
Design & Animation: Loris Alessandria & Pamela Tuazon
The Process
A collection of designs, tests and boards that kept us moving.
Pixel 2 & Chromebook Launch
My Role: Creative Lead
Inspiring a new customer enough to leave their current device that is the key to their social connections, work life, entertainment and even creative expression is huge challenge. However, once they have made that leap you must keep them excited because the urge to just go back to the familiar is ever present...especially in the first couple weeks.
Google and Bonfire created a series of videos to speak directly to their new customers to forge a connection between them and their new device and OS. Who better to do that than YouTube celebrities who expertly talk directly to their audience on a daily basis. They speak to the viewer as if they are inside the phone touching icons and pulling up menus.
These 15 videos (one of my favorites to the right) rode the wave of the Pixel 2’s success and collectively had over 2.3M views.
Live Action Director: Adam Patch
Post Production: Bonfire Labs
Google Next: Developers
For Google Cloud’s yearly Next conference we were tasked with creating an opening film for the 2nd day that spoke to developers…not the masses. It had to be a stark contrast with the corporate and cinematic opening film for Day One (that Bonfire Labs also created). We attempted to speak developer language with innovations, code, visual gags, and some quirky music.