“An excellent use of humans. Beginning university is a huge life-step and this interactive piece knows exactly how to reach new students: through video interviews. It adds a human touch to what is often executed in a dry and ‘scholarly’ way.” —juror Craig Swann

“The presentation is personal and inviting and the use of video is well-executed. In addition, the navigation is clear and the design delivers the message of technology in a clean and straightforward manner.”—juror Bryan Finke

Overview: This CD-ROM was provided to all new undergraduate and postgraduate students at enrollment. Its primary objective was to increase attendance at Orientation Week activities (a week-long program including lectures, concerts, BBQs and markets).

• Squeeze-compressed video
• CD-ROM based
• 2 months, 7 people

Comments by emeryfrost:
“Our challenge was to create a promotional piece that would appeal to students and sell the benefits of attending orientation week at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Since the audience was broad, the structure needed to be clear and accessible and the information had to be engaging while still encompassing UTS brand values—clever, dynamic and real world—both in content and medium.

“To achieve this we created an interactive CD-ROM with supplementary booklet, called ‘START’ (the name indicates the beginning of university life) that consolidated all of the information into one accessible item.

“The CD uses video as the primary content, and gives personality and life to large amounts of information. (The fact that it utilizes Flash MX 2004 Professional for video playback performance makes transfer to the Web quick and easy to achieve.) We created a style that’s intentionally candid and natural, cast actual students to make it more engaging for our audience and structured it so that the viewer maintains complete control while viewing content. Although each section features video as the primary content; secondary content is presented as copy with links to additional online details.

“Despite tight schedules, this was actually an inspiring and fun project. Our client gave us the freedom to create a truly fresh and dynamic piece that’s been extremely well received within the university community.”