Bewegt Bild
2020 — 2021
Art history / Philosophy
Animation / Video production
YouTube / Branding
My bachelor’s thesis focuses on creating a YouTube channel called „BewegtBild,“ featuring video essays on film, art, and theory. Each video explores a specific image, artist, or film, aiming to provide insights into art history and philosophical concepts. The channel has a strong brand identity, with a visually appealing, cohesive presentation. Inspired by successful English-speaking channels, I aim to fill a gap in the German market for high-quality, scholarly video essays. My goal is to present content that is both academically rigorous and visually engaging, while avoiding personal bias to maintain objectivity and clarity.
I developed a system to classify video essays based on how they handle content and their formal presentation. This combination shapes the viewer’s impression of both. Content and form can be reduced to a binary formula: open (0) or closed (1), where content is the dividend and form the divisor.
- Institutional (0/1): represents videos produced with professional resources and often supported by formal institutions.
- Personal (0/0): includes creators who operate independently but still reach a large audience.
- Marginal (1/0): refers to smaller channels or those that deliberately choose to operate outside mainstream structures.
- Penning (1/1): Channels that effectively combine institutional quality with marginal content, aiming for a coherent presentation of complex ideas.
This dynamic suggests a significant opportunity for differentiation and growth in the market. A market gap that I indend to full with my Bachelor Project. It can be formalized as follows.
Brand
My project aims to merge marginal and institutional aesthetics through a clean, minimalistic design that enhances clarity. Unlike typical institutional aesthetics, which often obscure meaning, my approach uses straightforward geometric shapes and animations to eliminate distractions. This fosters coherent interactions among elements and avoids the “virtual vanishing points” common in institutional designs. The flat, scientific aesthetic minimizes emotional distractions and emphasizes the material’s essence. Furthermore, the use of strong color contrasts and smooth transitions supports a seamless experience, ensuring that the focus remains on the content while reinforcing the subject matter’s significance.
Logo
Channel Banner
Primary Brand Font
I chose the sans-serif font Helvetica Neue for their scientific and pure appearance, for its universality. It appears in the title screen, alongside a series description, and is used for number stamps and labeling figures or significant image elements. In contrast, Baskerville is reserved for gray cards containing profiles, locations, definitions, and the video title. This contrast highlights the title more effectively against the Helvetica text, clearly distinguishing it from other content.
Helvetica Neue
Light
Normal
Bold
Color Scheme
I selected primary colors—yellow, black, white, and gray—each serving specific functions that enhance a scientific aesthetic. White is the foundation for all graphics and text, contrasting with the darker, vibrant images in the videos and delineating forms within dynamic artworks. Gray is used for explanatory elements related to people, places, and concepts, particularly in definition cards. Black serves as the background for videos, enhancing visibility, while text and illustrations are predominantly in black with white highlights. Yellow is used sparingly for essential argument summaries, such as key aspects of Classicism and Romanticism.
Black
HEX: ##000000
RGB: (0, 0, 0)
HSL: (0°, 0%, 0%)
CMYK: (0%, 0%, 0%, 100%)
Pure White
HEX: #FFFFFF
RGB: (255, 255, 255)
HSL: (0°, 0%, 100%)
CMYK: (0%, 0%, 0%, 0%)
Bright Yellow
HEX: #FFED00
RGB: (255, 237, 0)
HSL: (56°, 100%, 50%)
CMYK: (0%, 7%, 100%, 0%)
Light Gray
HEX: #CACACA
RGB: (202, 202, 202)
HSL: (0°, 0%, 79%)
CMYK: (0%, 0%, 0%, 21%)
Videos
The Institutional category creates a closed diegetic world that appears whole and confirms the familiar, generating a false sense of objectivity. In contrast, the Personal uses costumes and humor to create a connection with viewers while neglecting the object itself. The Marginal category focuses solely on content through snippets of text and speech. My project aims to bridge the gap between Marginal and Institutional by presenting marginal content within an institutional form. This affirms a flat scientific aesthetic that emphasizes clarity and consistency while eliminating the virtual vanishing points typical of institutional aesthetics.
Narrative Struktur
The yellow-framing title cards start and end the video with a question and answer. Each card summarizes the introduction or content, followed by the legitimized question or answer, with an episodic marker at the bottom. The video structure is:
- Introduction: Facts highlighting the question's importance
- Question
- Main Section: Facts answering the question.
- Answer
- Epilogue : Emphasizes the answer's significance.
The cards, with rounded corners and holes, integrate visually into the video, and key statements are in bold for emphasis.
Dimensionaler Raum
The videos feature overlapping layers, with a foundational image layer shifting like a slide projector and other flat elements added on top. The cards, isolated from the slide projector dynamics, typically occupy a third of the screen’s edge, sliding in from the top and disappearing on the same side. This design reinforces a structured visual flow, ensuring clarity and focus on the content while upholding the scientific aesthetics I strived for.
Animationen
Movements in straight lines—either vertically or horizontally—are the most scientific and pure. Fade-ins feel overly personal and can create a physical dynamic that undermines the logic of the video world. I designed the diegetic world based on a slide projector, where slides transition from right to left. This foundation, enhanced with cards, typography, and lines, creates a lecture-like video while avoiding the drawbacks of a PowerPoint presentation. This approach effectively integrates the aesthetic of the marginal within a conventional institutional framework.
Reels
The videos featured short teasers on Instagram, where small snippets were recreated in a horizontal format to engage viewers. These concise previews highlighted key elements of the full videos, offering a glimpse into the content. Each teaser ended with a call to action, encouraging followers to explore the complete videos available through a provided link.
