Cultural Tourism Accelerator

Simple, Professional Animation for Regional Awareness

In late 2021, Regional Arts Australia, a not-for-profit with more than 80 years of support and advocacy for the arts, was tasked to deliver $5 million in Federal Government grants to promote regional tourism through the Cultural Tourism Accelerator program. The program involved distributing grants ranging from $2,500 to $15,000 to be used on marketing, promotional deals and similar costs, with a focus on bringing more attention to remote areas of the country.

With only a short timeframe to prepare and run a social media campaign before the application opening date, Regional Arts Australia decided that a set of simple typographic animations would be best. I was engaged to take their existing design collateral, script and voiceover, and create 5 animated explainer videos - one for an overview on the Cultural Tourism Accelerator program and one for each grant category.

Since the program already had a distinct visual identity, my focus was on presenting the information with clarity and breaking up the heavy word density with branded icons and smooth animation effects. From the scripts provided, I storyboarded and then animated each video, incorporating branded designs to appeal to their existing audience while maintaining the simple visuals to support the voiceover. One unique focus was to ensure that each animation equally conveyed the program details for non-audio viewers, which was a requirement from the client.

The overall outcome of the campaign can be seen in just how successful the program turned out. From the project summary on the Regional Arts Australia website, the $5 million in Federal grants supported 321 events across the country and generated income of over $300 million - more than 60 times the investment.