CareerReady ATL: explainer video
The United Way of Greater Atlanta approached Sol Design to develop a marketing strategy and content to promote CareerReady ATL program. To quote their own description of the system:
“CareerReady ATL is a youth-centered workforce development ecosystem powered by United Way of Greater Atlanta. Through this innovative youth apprenticeship program model, CareerReady ATL creates, funds, and supports paid apprenticeships in high-demand industries, helping young people become career ready with real-world experience, professional skills, and clear pathways to economic mobility and long-term growth.”
Research led art direction
A short-form video that delved into the intricacies of CareerReady as an apprenticeship intermediary, showcasing the role of youth, employers, funders, and educators in the ecosystem was a part of the strategy proposed by Sol, who then reached out to me to develop narrative concepts and art direction for the video. The first step in this process was to facilitate and record the results from a focus group of CareerReady alums and active participants, the program leadership and the Sol content team. My personal role was to help mediate the conversation based on an outline of questions and hypothesis developed by the Creative Director, content team and myself acting as Art Director. It was a highly successful discussion that revealed to us the struggles and successes the youth participants and CareerReady ATL team faced. With that information, I crafted two visually narrative arcs that explained the CareerReady ATL experience.
The Journey
This concept visualized the journey of a young person navigating the challenges and obstacles they faced (represented metaphorically as a treacherous path, a dense forest, or a heavy backpack they're carrying). CareerReady ATL would be portrayed as a guide, mentor, or map that helps them find their way, providing support and clearing a path toward a brighter future. The video would show how the ecosystem helps lighten their load, remove barriers, and pave the way toward meaningful employment as they work to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.
Building Bridges
This concept focuses on the idea of bridging gaps and creating connections. It could show how CareerReady ATL acts as a bridge between youth and employers, between education and careers, between potential and opportunity. The video could use visuals of physical bridges being built, symbolizing the ecosystem’s role in connecting different elements and facilitating the transition from disconnected youth to productive members of the workforce.
Storyboard and styling
After an internal review of both concepts with CareerReady ATL, they chose the “Building Bridges” concept. From there the content team, the animator, a junior designer and myself hashed out the logistics of the project and in subsequent working meetings wrote the script, created a storyboard (a process led by myself) and began generating the visual components of the video. After the storyboard and script were approved with minimal edits, I sat down with the junior designer to build a strategy for completing the illustration elements needed and guided them to work independently with style and format guidelines.
Open on composition of Atlanta skyline, pan up from bottom with “sun”, texture and color behind city like in illustration on next panel. The city begins to pan away into distance, showing hills around it.
Hill with text pan up from the bottom, with the youth. Youth looking into distance, emphasizing the gap between them and the city. Pans out from single youth, he’s on one of the hills in one of the situations then we pan to the next scene, showing all hills and situations, from there they start connecting.
These young people face daunting challenges: Stats/landscape pan of whole scene for sense of scale inaccessibility
Each hill crops up as the challenge is listed
Someone struggling up a hill on a bike to get to top and can’t make it due to the grade of the hill.
Panning back out to the full scene
Pivot to aerial/map view , atlanta rises in the back ground above the challenge hills
Stat populates after map
On map, see screened back pathway to success, bridges get dotted in/ghosted in to show a plan is in place
We see highlighted pathways all going to the same place, connecting the unconnected. Gaps closing! Train Scene, pan out and see train bridge and train pulling into top of financial struggle hill, people can be different(due to consistency issues with stock footage) People get on the train by getting in on other. Train pulls away with no one left on the hill, they are on the trill, not raptured. <
Train goes to prospects island, where they leave the train and enter a building with a banner that says welcome trainees. If possible, more people exit the the building and get back on the train <
Mentorship Scene, group gets out of the train, mentors are hanging out on the island as we zoom in to see who they are<
We are on the Mentorship island and we zoom in to who these mentors are, they pop in one by one. OR instead of zooming into group, show group with photo collage of each field offered over the scene. Show a single youth with rotating/changing props and mentor representing each field of training. Construction Film, media, and entertainment Healthcare Information Technology Manufacturing Transportation, distribution, and logistics
Full group walking to city
Thunderstorm interrupts the path, storm is made of challenges, paper evidence of trials/self-doubt, and emotional challenges, scraps of paper in a tornado,
Group busts out CR umbrellas and keep walking.
Team gets through it and you see them run into the distance reaching Atlanta. Vignettes from existing footage of mentors, apprentices etc.
Closing scene from pitch meeting, group happily in front of skyline, pictures of apprentices
Skyline with plane flying, logo and website
The Final Product
Ultimately, both CareerReady ATL and the Sol team were extremely satisfied with the final iteration of the explainer video which years after its first publication is still being used on their landing page. As planned, the video serves as a recruiting tool not just for young adults looking to join CareerReady ATL, but more so for funding partners and sponsors of the program. Today CareerReady ATL is still going strong with a cohesive, interactive and effective visual identity and marketing suite including the video we developed.
