Kurzgesagt – German for “In a nutshell“ is a Munich-based YouTube channel and animation studio with a unique perspective on design, color, and storytelling. We engage in information design projects of all kind, but are best known for our distinctive animation videos. We want our work to raise awareness for topics from the fields of science, space, technology, biology, history and philosophy. Our goal is to inspire people to learn – and we believe humor and a good story to tell are just as important as straight facts.
– Kurzgesagt.org
Kurzgesagt is one of my favorite Science and Technology YouTube channels and I have been following their work for years. Their content is very impressive and I have bought their book ‘Immune’ for my kids. Their drawings are in Adobe Illustrator and I believe that they use Adobe AfterEffects for video production. I have seen their course on motion graphics in SkillShare; but I haven’t attended it.
How to Make Friends
I really liked the above video published some ten days ago by Kurzgesagt YouTube channel. At the end of this video (as well as in the video description), Kurzgesagt announced that they are facilitating meetups around the world for people to come together and build friendships. They mentioned that this is an experiment. A temporary subreddit is setup with placeholders for the popular cities across the world.
I was happy when I saw that ‘Kochi’ city thread is already there and some early birds have already started discussions on organizing the first meetup. I also joined that Reddit thread and later became active in the WhatsApp and Telegram channels as well.
WhatsApp Status Poster
Immediately after fixing a date and venue, one of the members of Kochi meetup, Safvan M M, designed a beautiful digital poster for the event. On the morning of the event (18th September 2022 Sunday), I decided to design a WhatsApp status poster highlighting the time and venue of Kurzgesagt Kochi Meetup.
Content Design
First of all, I decided that the poster will be in Malayalam language as it is the mother-tongue of people belonging to the state of Kerala (INDIA) where Kochi is one of the major cities. The German word ‘Kurzgesagt’ (meaning ‘in a nutshell’) is a tongue-twister and I started the poster depicting an unsuccessful attempt in saying the name! The time, date and venue are also included in the poster.
Graphic Design
Now it is the time for finding the right ‘hero image’ for the poster!
While looking at the Kurzgesagt website, I stumbled on to a series of images involving bird characters depicting their design process. I zeroed in on one showing two birds engaged in a high five! The image got downloaded as an SVG file.
- Software used in this poster design: Gboard on Google Keep app in my Android mobile phone for Malayalam input; Adobe Photoshop for layout
- Image mode: RGB Color; 8 Bits/Channel
- Image size: 1024 x 1448
- Resolution: 300 pixels/inch (Since no printing is planned, 72 pixels/inch is sufficient)
- Background color: #0a053a
- Highlight color: #ffae2e (picked up from the beak of the bird on the left)
- Font color: #ffffff
- Typeface: Baloo Chettan 2 from Google Fonts
- Font: Baloo Chettan 2 ExtraBold 18pt for title (“Kurzgesagt Kochi Meetup”);
Baloo Chettan 2 SemiBold 18pt for subtitle (Time- “Today 11:00 AM”);
Baloo Chettan 2 SemiBold 14pt for bodycopy - Text alignment: left
While designing, to correctly render the Malayalam text, don’t forget to go to “Window” menu on Adobe Photoshop, Select “Paragraph,” click on the context ‘hamburger’ menu and select “World-ready Layout.”
The final poster was distributed among the members to be displayed as their WhatsApp status.
The First Kurzgesagt Kochi Meetup on 18 Sep 2022
I was unable to participate, but around twenty people turned up at the venue.
Photo: Kevin. Click here or on the image for a larger preview.
Kevin’s photo shared by George Martin Jose at Instagram, Twitter and Reddit.
For a very first meetup, this is a grand success! I’m now looking forward to the next meetup and I don’t want to miss that at any cost…
Peace!
UPDATE 20-OCT-2022
a compliment from Kurzgesagt on the very next day!
1 Response
[…] a movie or using a mobile app! Recently when I visited Kurzgesagt website for inspiration to design a poster for Kochi meetup, I thought “WHAT IF… I could come up with a design direction for a new Kurzgesagt […]