Democratizing human-centered tools.
Team
Nathan Ritter
Luke Westra
Chris Givens (CD)
Katie Mazikins (CD)
Kris Leigh (VO)
Amanda Sanchez (VD)
Who
IA Ventures
Type
Video Creation
Marketing Assets
Timeline
2 Months
OVERVIEW
At IA, our Ventures program has one goal: to make things we believe in. We take great ideas – which can come from anywhere or anyone in our company – and turn them into commercially viable business ventures. Harnessing the collective power of IA’s entrepreneurial minds, IA Collaborative Ventures is an “in-house incubator” that enables employees to collaborate, create, and pitch their own ideas. Passion projects are given time, resources, and initial funding to move past the idea stage to design, prototyping and through to commercialization.
Humanscale was one of those pitched passion projects. It has been out of print for quite some time but IA Ventures has made a promise (and delivered that promise) to bring these back! These are essential to any designers toolkit. We decided to democratize this tool, buy the rights to it, mass produce it and sell it at affordable price-points.
My job on this project was to create the video that introduces the product and our idea on kickstarter. It’s the first thing people see when they land on the kickstarter page. I produced and shot most of the imagery seen on kickstarter and social media. My hands (even my eye!) make a lot of cameos in this video.
SHOOT & SHOT
We worked with William (Bill) Crookes. He was the owner of the rights to Humanscale. He was one of the core owners of Henry Dreyfuss Co. We drove up to Michigan to understand the history of Humanscale more.
Bill was full of history and knowledge. It was a total honor being in his presence and getting to know him more!
BILL IN MICHIGAN
We needed to tell a story that was informational and inspirational. The tools we wanted to reprint were tools that could help any designer start their process. And! Most importantly, design with the user in mind. This aspect was important. The historical aspect also needed to come through. That’s where Bill came in.
THE VIDEO
We reached our goal and then some. We were able to print and ship our product and it is now commercially available. Humanscale was also featured in many high profile design publications which was super cool! My hands are all over the internet!
KICKSTARTER
