How to Design a High‑Impact Launch Video: Step‑by‑Step Case Study

Opening Video Design Process

The opening video is a crucial part of a launch event, serving to warm up the audience, quickly capture attention, and convey the event’s theme.

The production was divided into five stages: story content arrangement, video style exploration, animation storyboard creation, video animation production, and music & sound design, taking roughly five weeks.

Story Content Arrangement

The video combines two themes: education & technology, and artificial intelligence. The first part showcases years of effort in online education, while the second highlights the upcoming intelligent learning platform and the uni intelligent learning system.

These themes were broken down into three narrative points.

Video Style Exploration

Designers researched domestic and international tech product launch videos and identified three style types: visual impact, concise narrative, and live‑action shooting.

We chose the concise narrative style for its visual expressiveness and concept communication, while also being cost‑effective.

Animation Storyboard Production

Storyboard creation transforms text into graphics, ensuring smooth transitions between elements. For example, the learning‑mode transition from offline to online to mobile classrooms required careful visual continuity.

Physical‑behavior transitions were used to depict human‑machine dialogue, ultimately adopting a simple scanning effect for speech recognition.

After several iterations, the final storyboard used a "snake" motif to illustrate personalized learning paths, replacing an earlier maze concept that conveyed tension.

Video Animation & Music Production

Animators received the high‑fidelity storyboard and collaborated closely with designers to align on pacing and duration, iterating to resolve misunderstandings such as the snake concept.

Sound designers added music that built momentum, with violin entering at 1:00 and a climax at 1:32, creating a psychological warm‑to‑hot transition.

After all animations were finalized, the sound engineer layered music to create multiple rhythmic peaks, guiding the audience from a warm opening to an intense climax. At 1:32 the video reaches its highest tempo, delivering a powerful emotional impact.

Video Design Summary

The opening video received positive audience feedback, effectively warming up the crowd within a minute and a half. Key recommendations:

Designers should follow the project from start to finish, participating in both content planning and post‑production evaluation.

Adopt dynamic thinking when drawing static frames, ensuring each transition reflects motion.

Maintain frequent communication with animators and sound engineers, involving them early to avoid misalignment.

We hope this two‑part series inspires and assists other designers and product teams.