Chloe Meister Design

The Daily Orange: Donation Video Project

Working at The Daily Orange was my favorite part of being a student at Syracuse. I began working there two weeks into my freshman year and it has been a home ever since. It has served as a learning institution for generations of reporters, editors, photographers and designers.

Since 1973, The D.O. has been independent, which means it receives no funding from the university. Because of this, it relies heavily on donations to supplement its ad sales. As my final contribution to the paper before graduation, I decided to produce a video about how and why to donate.

The Daily Orange: Donation Video

Storyboarding

The first step in this process was creating a storyboard. I worked with the paper's management team to develop a map of the key points that the video should hit, and then I sketched out a rough plan for the animations.

The final storyboard

Illustrating

After I had the storyboard in place, it was on to illustrating. I decided to use a vector-style to keep the video consistent with what The D.O. uses in the paper most of the time. Drawing the house was the most difficult part, because it's so iconic to the paper's staff and alumni. I wanted to make sure that I got all the details just right.

I also had to gather all the old D.O. flags that have been used on the paper.

The Daily Orange in vector form

Illustrations for the $10 challenge

16 of The D.O.'s logos from its 113 year history

Putting it all Together

In the course of about two weeks, I produced and animated the video. I wrote most of the copy to try to give the video and informal voice, while still getting the important points across. Because the video is rather text-heavy, I decided to keep the typography and animations very simple, as not to overwhelm or distract the viewer.