Great Big Story was born out of the mind of the VP of video development at CNN. He had been thinking of this product for years. So with buy-in from leadership at Turner, the idea finally had funding to become real. Over the course of 5 months, we worked with the executive creative director of CNN Digital, VP of video development, and VP of technology.

We kicked off the project with a series of workshops to define GBS' competitive space, voice, audience, value prop, personas and scenarios. Given that we were building GBS from the ground up, we needed to align on attributes for the brand, content and product realms. Brand and product would be our team's responsibility, and content was a realm the CNN team would expand upon.

Through a competitive audit of two dozen competitors in video, media, news and entertainment, we aimed to identify the “why” of this new company. We evaluated these companies and their products on a variety of criteria points, and used our rankings to give depth to our personas and audience segments.

In close collaboration with the ECD of CNN, we developed the brand and visual language of Great Big Story. We brought in about 15 outside designers at Moment to sketch on themes, then refine, expand and iterate on selected directions. The final mark had elements that could be animated in video, and also pulled back for a more professional touch. We imagined the rocket to be a playful element used throughout the experience, and strong, clean typography would pair well with any type of video produced.

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