Toast came to my team at Explainly in search of demo videos for several new products to be used by their sales team. As Creative Producer, Co-Writer, and a Storyboard Editor on this series, my team and I have grown familiar with the punchy style developed for Toast over the span of several years.
However, these 2 needed to be particularly fresh to match their company’s updated visual style. Our goal was to continue this compelling and engaging informative series, while sticking to Toast’s hyper-specific design guidelines, as well as their partner Google’s brand guidelines.
Our first few videos produced together have been used to convert leads and add to the rapidly growing roster of restaurants using Toast—but since then, our series has expanded even further to match Toast’s evolving brand guidelines and new collaborations with Google. Our ongoing partnership has yielded a fun, graphic series that was obsessively perfected and designed to appeal to restaurant owners nationwide.
The three key elements of Toast’s brand voice-- welcoming, bold, and dependable-- were visually interpreted with a graphically bold, solid, modern look. Very slow, smooth, sliding transitions were utilized to convey a sense of elegance and premium quality.
These bright colors also lended themselves beautifully to our goal of hyping up our audiences! By leading with clear illustrations of Toast’s uses and innovations, the software’s capabilities are instantly evident.
My favorite motif in this series are the simple restaurant-focused line illustrations that draw onto the background of each frame, giving these tech-focused scenes a subtle flavor of the food industry.
Note: All preparation, materials, visuals, and sketches, including all electronic files used to create the project remain the property of Toast and Explainly.