Health & Safety for the 21st Century

When you’re painting wind turbines, abseiling down a building or halfway up a skyscraper cleaning windows (we’ve all been there, right?) you want to be safe in the knowledge that the equipment you’re using is solid and isn’t going to fail. 'Cause that’d probably mean you’d die. FYI, that’s bad.

What Papertrail does is help companies manage their safety equipment by scheduling and organising their safety check process with a platform specifically designed to do the job and do it well.

Papertrail came to us with the requirement to make a video that helped people understand exactly how their system can benefit their company and how easy it is to use. Thankfully, the system itself is mega intuitive, so we didn’t need walkthrough upon walkthrough to get to know it, and that’s when you know it’s going to translate into a neat little vid.

We decided to go down the route of animation for this, due to the extent of the situations we needed to portray. The beauty of animation is that we can transport viewers to situations where someone’s up a tree, then to someone up a building, then actually falling to their (potential) death. That’s something that mayyyybe you’d rather not show in a live-action scenario without it being a bit too Castualty or 999 (God bless Michael Buerk).

Most videos around the subject were pretty dry and lacklustre, so we decided to draw up some original characters and developed an art style that lead to a little more warmth than you’d often see in videos within the industry. Plus, a character-focused approach is often more relatable and impactful when talking explainer videos, especially when the product itself involves an element of human interaction.

We designed a simplified version of the UI to help viewers quickly understand what was going on and get a good feel for the system, rather than bombarding with a load of text and images that cause eyes to flick around madly trying to take it all in. With a more focused approach, it means the viewer’s journey is more controlled and helps to convey the selling points a lot clearer.

We were pretty pleased with the outcome—an entertaining and engaging video that illustrates how easy it is for users to keep on top of their gear and maintain the safety of their people.