Common Craft Blog

People often ask about the origins of what has become known as “Common Craft Style” and what inspired us to use paper cut-outs, hands and a whiteboard.  The truth is, it was a solution to a problem. 

I had been experimenting with drawing on a whiteboard in live action videos and found it frustrating. I felt like such a dork trying to draw and look at the camera at the same time. It felt forced. Sachi, always the problem solver and adult in the room, suggested our current format.  She had seen me reach for paper and use drawings when trying to explain something and saw the format as a natural extension of that tendency.

Many years later, here we are.  The original format of that first video, RSS in Plain English, is still very close to the videos we make today.

As it turns out, our videos use the same principles of some of the very first animations. They are live action recordings, with stop motion and other visual effects that create animations.  I was amazed to see the video below, which was recorded in 1900, 111 years ago:

According to the entry on Roger Ebert’s blog, which calls the video the first American animation called The Enchanted Drawing:

American animation owes its beginnings to J. Stuart Blackton, a British filmmaker who created the first animated film in America. Before creating cartoons, Blackton was a vaudeville performer known as "The Komikal Kartoonist." In his act, he drew "lightning sketches" or high-speed drawings. In 1895, he met Thomas Edison. Can you guess what this meeting with the famous inventor inspired him to do?

There is amazingly little difference between the animation above and what we do at Common Craft. It's a simple process of holding the camera still and changing what appears on a frame-by-frame basis.

For another example, consider Terry Gilliam’s work on Monty Python, which doesn't use video, but photos.  He was the creator of the colorful animations that became one of the most memorable parts of the show.  Here’s a video of him talking about his process in 1974 (via CartoonBrew).

Again, it’s very close to our process.  It’s just stop-motion with cut-outs.  Take a look at the example of his storyboards from the video above:

We start each project with “thumbnail storyboards” that look like this:

Here’s his lighting a set-up

And ours:

His hand moving the cut-outs...

And Ours...

So what we do has roots that go back to the very beginning.  While these examples came to us recently and were not a part of our early process, I think it’s fascinating that the simple idea of live action animation has changed so little over the years.

To get a feel for our process, check out this time-lapse footage that shows the entire production of Twitter Search in Plain English:

A while back we realized something interesting about Common Craft videos: they travel well.  We can replace my voice with the voice of a Spanish or Japanese speaker and the videos work.  This set us on a path to take over the world.

Let me explain.  

Educators and trainers in over 40 countries have licensed our videos since 2007 and we receive email regularly asking to translate the videos for their non-English speaking audience.  If we could give these good folks a dependable resource for educating in their native language, it would mean reaching a global audience.

So, we built the new Common Craft to be a global resource, with videos and whole pages in multiple languages. Here’s our approach:

Making Common Craft Videos Global

For a small company, this was a big and complex project.  About 30 videos in our library could apply to a global audience and we identified eight languages that cover much of the e-commerce globe.  The list below links to "home pages" for each language:  

• English
• Spanish
• French
• German
• Italian
• Dutch
• Portuguese 
• Japanese 

That’s 240 videos files and translated scripts.  It’s 240 individual video pages on our website. In addition to the video files, we had professional translations created for titles, transcripts and descriptions on each video page as well. Here's the Japanese page for Social Media in Plain English:

But that’s not all.  We needed to have a way to introduce these non-english speakers to our website and subscription service, so we created translated home pages, which are abbreviated versions of the information on our home page, along with a list of videos in that language.  We even had our "Common Craft Way" video translated.

Is It Working?

Based on the first 30 days that the new Common Craft was up, yes.  People in 7 countries have become members. 

This gives us confidence that we could be onto something.  According to this chart of Internet languages, we’ve accounted for about 50% of the world’s languages.  This also offers English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers and multinational corporations who have a global workforce multiple language options. 

Now our goal is to be discovered. If you’re interested in using Common Craft videos or helping us gain visibility in other countries, let us know or become a member.  

You may have seen these little codes around.  They're in newspapers, on storefronts and products.  They're called Quick Response (QR) Codes and they're meant to used with your smartphone. They could be a very big deal in the future.  This video is one of our most requested titles and explains how QR codes make the real world clickable.

This video, like most in our library, is available with voice-overs in 8 languages. The languages are:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Dutch
• Italian 
• Japanese

This video and our complete library is available via Common Craft membership. As a member, you can display the high quality versions of the videos in person, embed them on websites or download the videos for offline or internal use. 

In fact, our members learn about new videos before we announce them to the public.  Common Craft member Lee Kolbert was the first to use this video in a blog post and break the news. 

Watch the video.

After noticing a Twitter conversation mentioning Common Craft, I met Chris Johnson of Simplifilm.  

Last week Chris posted a blog post that provides a look at his position regarding Common Craft and Common Craft Style videos in the context of other producers. The post is called: Have Your Own Style (What Happens When We're Asked to Make a Common Craft Video).  Chris writes:

They have their niche and nobody good would ever copy their style. Common Craft should be the only people that make a cut-out-videos-that-explain software or web services. Anything else is an echo.

and

If a client asked, we’d say no. It’d be an admission of creative bankruptcy to try to mimic the very clear, original style that CommonCraft uses. 

First, I want to thank Chris for standing up for our work so publicly. I like that Chris’ perspective is not about legal ramifications so much as recognizing another company’s work and making a conscious choice to take a different creative direction.  In some ways, it’s how the world should work. 

The fact is, there are many videos out there that could be called “Common Craft Style” - we see them all the time.  Like Chris, people sometimes expect us to be up-in-arms about other producers who take inspiration from, or even directly copy our work.  While plagiarism and trademark infringement is unacceptable, we recognize that there is a gray area and always appreciate attribution if our work is indeed an inspiration. It's this gray area that makes our position on Common Craft Style a bit complicated.  

Example: Educational Use

Teachers and students are currently working on what they call “Common Craft Style” videos in classrooms.  These are often middle and high school students making videos that help them learn about history, for example. While we are not involved in any way, we have always encouraged teachers to take inspiration from our work in school projects. 

Here's an example created by Wendy Drexler:

Here's another made by 8th graders that makes me LOL:

There are 100s of examples on YouTube and even a Common Craft Style video explaining how to make Common Craft Style videos in the classroom.

As we mentioned, the existence of these projects makes having an absolute position on Common Craft Style difficult, as we are very supportive of these educational, classroom-oriented videos. 

Years ago, we decided that the best thing we can do is focus our attention on building our brand and making the best possible videos.  Our goal has always been to create a brand of videos that speaks for itself and I think we’re getting close. 

There will always be the company, producer or agency who chooses to make a video in “Common Craft Style”.  Sure, you could say they’re copying us. You could say that we need to stop them. But as Chris’ blog post shows, the market has a way of recognizing and even protecting unique and valuable creations.  Here's what I mean...

Rock and Roll

Chris quotes Scott Ginsberg in his post, “There are no cover-bands in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”  While this may be true, that building is filled with individuals who were inspired-by and copied the techniques of others. Even though Chuck Berry inspired Elvis Presley, there will only ever be one Chuck Berry. And maybe that’s the lesson here.  

More than anything, we want to see video explanations become the next rock-and-roll. We want our little industry to grow and for talented producers to build careers on using videos to explain and educate.  And for that to happen, the environment needs to encourage producers who take inspiration, but also find responsible ways to make their own creative contribution.  

We’ll always protect our brand and appreciate attribution where it's appropriate. But at the end of the day, we want to be the people who help inspire the next Hall of Fame inductee, not stand in their way. 

If you’re considering a Common Craft video, please contact us. 

We've been lucky over the years. Our videos tend to speak for themselves and have helped to build a little buzz and help our brand without too much formal PR.  But with the launch of the new site, we thought a little buzz would help get the word out about the our new direction. Below are links and excerpts from a few blog posts about the new Common Craft.

Seattle’s Common Craft video firm has built a business out of simple, explanatory online videos made of paper cutouts — most famously the “Twitter in Plain English” video that was featured for more than a year on the Twitter home page. Now the small company is trying to carve out a new business model — switching to a membership approach and moving away from pay-per-download videos.

Three years ago we wrote here about how the two person team quit doing client work and moved into a model based entirely on licensing rights to the educational videos they produced. Their videos were available for free online, but corporate customers happily pay to have the rights to show the content to their employees. This week Common Craft changed models again. From an iTunes model to a Rhapsody model, co-founder Lee LeFever says. Customers will now buy subscriptions and have access to all the videos Common Craft produces. It's an interesting twist in a story that any independent content producer online could find inspiring.

All in all, I think it’s a great move. Today more than ever, teachers and businesses are looking for ways to incorporate video into their educational practices. But there’s a shortage of quality video to choose from, and for many, creating their own videos is simply not feasible.

Enter Common Craft, who already has a reputation as a top creator of short, practical educational videos. Says LeFever:

“We’re building a platform that will allow us to understand the needs of our members and grow our video library significantly based on that relationship. It’s a win-win.”

If you use video to education clients, employees, or students, I’d recommend giving Common Craft’s video subscription service a look. You’ll be hard pressed to find many other sources for videos that entertain and charm as much as they educate.

But I also think the two videos above just prove one thing, Common Craft cannot be copied. No one but Lee and Sachi have the pixie dust to turn 3 minute videos into something magical. I totally agree with this piece of the press release:

"The simple format, clear communication and lighthearted attitude connects with people on a fundamental level. They make people smile in three minutes."

As the pay-TV industry has learned over the years - and Netflix has more recently - the pay-once/watch-as-much-as-you'd like aspect of subscriptions is very compelling. The purchase decision needs to be made just once up-front and thereafter the provider can focus on delivering value. That's the approach Common Craft is now using and it looks like a smart move.

There are a lot of reasons I'm delighted by this latest evolution, not the least of which is my happiness at seeing friends succeed. But maybe the biggest one is this:

Nearly every traditional business model for content creation is in turmoil these days. Books, newspapers, television, movies, music — all of those industries are scrambling to cope with the challenges of a new and dynamic digital world. So when someone comes along who can create something terrific, who can do it really well, and can turn that into a viable business, it offers real hope for anyone who wants to earn a livelihood from their creative talents and skills.