January 25, 2021

Kindle Paperwhite Inspired

I got my first e-reader when I was 14.

As Kait Rokowski once said, «Nothing ever ends poetically. It ends and we turn it into poetry. All the blood was never once beautiful. It was just red.» In may case it was a beginning, but just as simple and practical.

I was never a bookworm, and seeing me with a book in my hands was as rare as a sighting of a Blue Moon. However, I was always an opportunist, so when I found out that I could download all my school textbooks onto an e-reader which would make my bag 80% lighter, I went to the nearest tech store and purchased my first Kindle. Soon after that I was hit with the ginormous amount of ebooks available on the internet, and being a proud owner of a device made specifically for them I dove straight into reading and never resurfaced. A new hobby was developed.

One can argue that an e-reader is just a tool for reading, unnoticed but necessary. However that is not what e-readers owners would say. Yes, the main focus of reading will always be the book, but no matter how insignificant, we still get attached to the tools that we use, especially when they offer a lot more than their print books alternatives. Having the ability to change fonts, look up words in dictionaries while reading, adjusting brightness when it’s dark, have thousands of books that are portable and weigh close to nothing, buy books online and start reading them straight away among other things tempt paper book enthusiasts to join the dark side and switch to an e-reader.

I myself am very attached to my reading tool, it currently being a Kindle Paperwhite. Kindle has been the most popular brand among e-readers for years, and still is. And Paperwhite is its most sought after model, so choosing what e-reader to buy wasn’t a struggle for me. It’s been one of the very few constants in my life. Whenever I wanted to forget, to remember or to learn it’s been by my side, taking care of my intellectual needs.

When I discovered a magical world of motion design, and embarked on the path of learning, my main task was to make a short motion video. I firmly believe that as long as you do something that you’re passionate about, you’ll succeed, so for the theme of my first video I picked Kindle Paperwhite.

Obviously my video won’t be the first nor it will be the only video about Kindle, but it will be one of a kind when it comes to its concept. If you want to advertise a device, your first logical idea would be to show what it has to offer. Because when you buy a piece of technology one of your main concerns will be its qualities and features. However if we learn from the Apple marketing, a certain brand’s well established and advertised presence may overshadow any features other companies offer. The most popular and powerful companies on the market have learned long ago that what interests people more that technical characteristics is the experience behind the brand. The Experience Economy teaches us that in order to catch the attention of your future customers you need to engage them in a way that creates a memorable event, make them associate an object with a certain emotion. In that way when contemplating what e-reader to buy, they’ll see plenty of different brands trying to entice them with a showcase of technical details, and this one brand that makes them experience their device through a range of emotions and feelings.

I came up with an idea to create a video that will make the viewer experience Kindle. Which is something that hasn’t been done by Amazon Kindle. Kindle means to set alight or start to burn, to arouse or be aroused, to make or become bright. The word’s roots are from the Old Norse word kyndill, meaning Candle. It has deep roots in literature. “From Voltaire: ‘The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others and it becomes the property of all.'” No other name could hold a candle to Kindle.

I believe showing the potential customers what kindle feels like, is an excellent idea. I came up with some concepts correlated to kindle that I could portray in the video.

To follow up on the nature being one of the kindle associations, I decided to create 3d graphics of moving plants that surround Kindle Paperwhite.

sceenshot of my blocking

To portray the abundant life I'm interested in using small coral-like objects that are bright and colourful.

Another scene will be focused on the name "Kindle" to tie all those correlated concepts to to the meaning behind the e-reader.

sceenshot of my blocking

One of the factors behind Kindle's success is the ability to buy ebooks off Amazon and reading them straight away. And I'd like to display Kindle Unlimited on my video as a reminder.

Some more screenshots of my blocking down below:

I'd love to use all kinds of simulations and close up shots in my video. Detailed scenes with flowers and leaves growing. However as a complete beginner, I'm sorry to admit that I can't do that yet, or that if I set my mind on doing it, I won't be able to finish before the deadline. Hence why my journey into the world of motion design starts with a compromise.

Every single creator out there learned the hard way, that when you start a new project and find inspiration/references for it, the final result usually ends up looking drastically different from what was planned. I'd like to think that my video will look/contain exactly what I mentioned above and more, but I won't hold my breath. And now it's time to make the magic happen, so that I can show you more later. Until then, stay tuned.