Empower Parkinson Promotional Video
Goal: To create a promotional video for a non-profit organization in 48 hours.
Role: Worked as part of a team to determine the needs of the organization, create a script, develop a storyboard, and develop animations and compile them into a short video.
Background
This project was part of Syracuse University’s Pixels and Print, an annual workshop in which design students work in teams to rebrand for nonprofit organization. For the 2025 workshop, Syracuse worked with Empower Parkinson, an organization that helps people with Parkinson’s Disease. They provide a myriad of programs, including boxing, yoga, and singing.
I was on the motion team, which was responsible for creating a brief video to explain Empower Parkinson’s mission and philosophy. I worked with a team with several other designers.
The video’s voiceover was provided by Quinn Carletta, one of the designers who worked on this project with me.
Process
The first step for this video was ideation. We wrote down several key ideas that incorporated the philosophy of Empower Parkinson. It was important to make an energetic video, as the leadership behind the organization was full of energy and spirit. A lot of the ideas behind this video came directly from words said by Patrick VanBeveren, the organization’s founder.
The organization’s original branding utilized tulips, which are seen as a symbol for Parkinson’s Disease. However, the organization did not seem to like having the tulip in their branding, and the team working on the logo opted not to include it in the new logo. Therefore, we decided to exclude the tulip from our video.
Every team member then developed their own version of a script, and the best ideas were taken and compiled into a new script. It then went through several rounds of revision and refinement, before eventually being finalized as the version in the video.
The team then split into two groups. One team, including me, developed a storyboard while the rest of the designers worked on creating a visual style board. When these teams came back together, we were able to definitively figure out a visual identity for the video and create assets, such as the frequently appearing hands.
With a completed storyboard and a developed visual style, we broke the video into parts, with some of us working on the animation of segments of the video while others refined the assets. The part I worked on most heavily is the segment from 0:23 to 0:31, consisting of the rotating circles and the animations of the words “take control,” “step,” “punch,” and “victory.” The circles represent a community of people; initially just one appears, but others emerge, forming a supportive group. As the circles spin, the original circle changes color to match the others, and eventually they all combine, symbolizing an individual person joining the group and becoming a part of the community.
The animations for “step” and “punch” were designed to look as though they were being stepped on and punched respectively. For the more abstract “victory," I wanted to emulate a person jumping for joy and confetti being pumped from a cannon. The animation for “take control” was added later, and I chose to animate it in a way I felt looked assertive.
After each segment of the video was complete, they were assembled into the final video. We had designed each segment to transition into the next, so we did not need to go back and add transitions between segments. Then, after adding music, we had a completed video.
We also developed some other animated assets for the organization to use in their branding. Below is a transition I developed for their social media, designed to introduce video content.
You can learn more about the Empower Parkinson here.
