Being Black Online

Client: Color of Change

Color of Change needed a video to accomplish two things.

1. Inform a non-technical audience about racial bias in tech algorithms.

2. Prime viewers to take action after reading the video post’s accompanied copy and link to a petition.

The Color of Change team had a tight timeline, so we also needed a design style that would be efficient to animate.

My role was to develop the creative direction as well as build and manage a team of artists to bring the vision to life. I also got my hands dirty, doing most of the design and a bit of the animation for the video itself.

The creative direction builds on the existing Color of Change brand, remaining within their color palette and referencing brand elements. Yet this video takes things a step further with a unique visual language developed to reinforce the ideas of the video: technology, while useful, has the capacity to replicate and even worsen racial biases we see in the world at large.

Here are a few slides from my design direction deck:

Here’s how the video turned out:

Credits:

Creative and Art Direction: Olivia Krishnaswami

Design: Olivia Krishnaswami, Kristen Best

Animation: Zak Tietjen, Grant Purdue, Olivia Krishnaswami