Creating Engaging Content for Synchrony Bank: Animation for Treasury Department Employee Engagement
In my current position, the main client I work with is Synchrony Bank. They are a consumer financial services company headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut. The company offers consumer financing products, including credit, promotional financing, loyalty programs, installment lending to industries, and FDIC-insured consumer savings products. I have worked on this account for years now and have become very familiar with the company as well as the people from Synchrony we work with daily and have been extremely fortunate to work with such great people. They have been by far my favorite client to work with in my career.
We produce so much content for Synchrony. At times it can be overwhelming, but it makes for a fast-paced environment which is not only what I am used to but have come to prefer over the years. I've never been a big fan of downtime. I like to stay busy.
So our main goal for Synchrony is employee sourcing and retention as well as HR branding. We produce everything from presentations to video as well as animation. Myself and another designer were allowed to develop an animation for Synchrony's Treasury Department. The purpose of this animation was to educate not only their employees on what the department does but also encourage people to want to work for the department.
Animations always start with brainstorming. We like to kick around ideas as a group and then work together on a storyboard. Due to the time constraints on this project, we weren't able to produce the illustrations needed for the animation so we had to source illustrations from iStock to fit the needs of the animation. This became my responsibility. I found an artist whose illustrations would pair nicely with our storyboard and align with Synchrony's brand standards.
Once we had all the elements we needed we were able to start building the animation. We split the animation in half. I took the second half while the other designer took the first. I like to start by organizing all of my content. I get my After Effects file set up and I start bringing in content little by little to begin. I am a huge proponent of organization, file naming, and utilizing CC Libraries. Whatever helps me to streamline my design process is paramount to my success and the success of whatever project I am working on.
Animating Success for Synchrony Bank: A Collaborative Treasury Animation Project
After separating my vector files into layers in Illustrator, I can bring them into AE and start rigging and animating them. I usually have an idea in my mind how things are going to work beforehand, but sometimes they just don't work out that way. That's one of the things I love about animation is that always keeps you on your toes. I find I'm always having to find ways to get a movement, sequence, or transitions to work the way I want them to. Sometimes I can refer to a previous animation I've done. Other times I have searched the web to find answers to what I am looking for. YouTube and LinkedIn learning have been huge tools for me in learning and becoming a better animator.
It took around a week for me to complete my half of the animation. Some tricky transitions took a while to work out, but they turned out great. After several reviews by people on the team, my animation was ready to be paired with the other designer's animation and it paired well. Sometimes when you work with another designer on a project things tend to look a little different or it's apparent that more than one person worked on the project. Fortunately, that wasn't the case on this project as the other designer and I would touch base regularly to discuss each other's projects and what we could do to make them look cohesive.
Below is the final animation that was a huge success for our team and was highly praised by the client so much so they wanted us to do more animations for them.