the unicorn

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am Director (Operations) in YellowFIN Robotic Solutions - a customised robotic development Company based in Melbourne, Australia. We are a growing start-up delivering our services in Oceania region.

For what projects/services did your company hire the unicorn?

YellowFIN Robotics is a small and tight-knit set-up. We are keen to explore news possibilities and avenues as robotics & AI come to the fore front. For this purpose we launched a marketing campaign where an animation was a critical part. We engaged the Unicorn to befittingly present our concepts so as not to leave any gaps in understanding in a client's mind.

What were your goals for this project?

Although Robotics is catching up, it is still limited by our imagination. We find ourselves spending a lot of time explaining our vision to our clients. The Unicorn animation was expected to do this for us and also showcase our new concepts to high level decision makers in new regions where we want to expand.

How did you select the unicorn?

Our team did our research. The Unicorn came across as a reliable, experienced and creative option. They were engaged as they instilled a lot of confidence in us by explaining their process to deliver.

Describe the video(s) and the process in detail.

I have to admit that ours is not an easy industry to understand. Moreover it becomes harder for someone not within the realms of the industry to get a grasp of "concepts". It all boils down to communication, asking the right questions to form the base of the canvas we are trying to paint.

The Unicorn did all of this and more. Sofiia is a thorough professional and was very clear in communicating the process, information required, trying to understand our vision and also trying to make us understand what can be achieved. This helped us immensely in managing our expectations.

The animation style options were given along with different VO for selection. The Unicorn went through our published media including our website to make the animation consistent with what we were trying to project as a Company.

What was your vendors' project management or feedback process?

The milestones were well communicated. Storyboard was developed and feedback sought. Changes were made whilst we worked on an apt VO. The second stage story board and snippets of animation went a long way in our understanding and also to make timely changes.

The Unicorn sought feedback at every stage where there was a doubt. The animators and producer worked well in tandem to reflect the changes we desired in the end product.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The animation was really well received by our team. This animation is yet to go out to the desired clients but I am sure this will prove critical in our anticipated success.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project was managed well. Timeline was tight but it was achieved.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I am most impressed wither process. The leader is suave and professional. Their style is distinctive. Their animators are creative. The Unicorn managed to make us think out of the box when it comes to video production and showed us a very convincing alternative of storyboard which helped us make the right decision. I mean their portfolio speaks for themselves!

Are there any areas for improvement?

I cannot think of any.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm leading the marketing efforts at Oro Inc., the company behind OroCommerce, OroCRM, and OroPlatform solutions. Our company is developing flexible and robust open source solutions to help businesses in the B2B commerce industry grow, build their digital presence, and streamline their operations.

For what projects/services did your company hire the unicorn?

We hired the unicorn agency to create a short promo video for our OroCommerce product, a B2B eCommerce platform.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted to have a modern-looking compelling video within a very challenging timeframe. Basically, our deadline was a little over a week.

How did you select the unicorn?

They were recommended to me by my ex-colleagues. Their previous works seemed professional, modern, and smart to me. So we jumped on a call, and the approach to the project won me over completely - they were looking to deeply understand our company, our customers, and the industry we operate in, before actually starting to talk about illustration and animation styles.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

• Optimized and trimmed our original video script to fit a short and compelling format of the video
• Created custom illustrations for our video
• Created storyboard
• Worked with music and voice over
• Created the animation and put the whole thing together

What was the team composition?

1. Creative director
2. Project manager
3. Illustrators
4. Animation professionals
5. Sound producer

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

It's too early to tell if there was any marketing impact, but I'm very satisfied with the result, as well as the top management suite of our company.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Some small hiccups at the beginning, but everything was fixed and perfectly streamlined very quickly. Overall, the communication and organization of work on the project went extremely well.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their commitment to delivering a high-quality products and their diligence was impressive.

Are there any areas for improvement?

As I said, there were small hiccups in communications, so I guess this is one area that could be improved further. But again, it's nothing major, and overall I highly recommend this team for any creative marketing work.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm a brand marketing manager at Mira Fertility, the world's smartest, clinically-proven ovulation, and fertility tracker. You can find more information about us on a website https://www.miracare.com/

For what projects/services did your company hire the unicorn?

Improve a current brand book, develop new brand assets and templates for digital marketing.

What were your goals for this project?

1. Create visual brand language that would be applicable to all channels: digital-focused, flexible, recognizable.
2. Make all marketing channels look in one style. It should be easy to understand that it's Mira even without a logo.
3. Make future design process easier with style system and templates.
4. Create brand identity that is modern and align with design trends.

How did you select this vendor?

1. Having examples of branding design for the wellness field.
2. Easy in communication.
3. Budget.

Describe the project in detail.

We started from developing identity and visual references developed basis and worked on brand assets. After that Unicorn combines all guidelines to a brand book.

What was the team composition?

We worked with the head of the agency.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Great feedback from customers and the team on the new design.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Pretty effective, we completed all milestones in time and some even earlier.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

unicorn has a great design portfolio and are proactive and thoughtful in terms of identity. They are willing to go extra miles to get better results.

Are there any areas for improvement?

If we will have more time, we would like to create prototype for some tasks and test them before drafting the final version of design.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder & CTO of Nice Photon, an app development company. We specialize in business utilities. We just launched our first business utility which is a PDF scanning app and is currently ranked in the top hundred business apps around the world.

What challenge were you trying to address with the unicorn?

For our iOS app launch, we hired the unicorn to create our marketing materials.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They created a number of ad assets for us based on the designs and marketing copy we gave them. For the App Store, we needed a thirty-second app previous video clip that shows the app, as well as advertisements and 4–5 screenshots, which they designed and localized.

They handled the whole concept for that and worked on all of the animations. Some copy for that was done by their team, too, and they integrated some existing copy, as well. 

What is the team composition?

I had one main contact there who I contacted directly. Sofia (Head of Agency) leads the design team and 2–3 other people supported the video and screenshots.  

How did you come to work with the unicorn?

I followed a referral from a friend who I’d worked with before. They knew of the unicorn, so it made it a much more personal contact. 

How much have you invested with them?

We probably spent around $2,500, in total. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from May–June 2020. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

They did a fantastic job and the final product was exactly what I wanted. After the creation of the video, our conversion rate for our ads went up by 10%, which is huge and saves us a crazy amount of money. We do about $10,000 in ad spend per month, so moving that needle 10% for that price was unbelievable. We definitely intend on working with them again in the future. 

How did the unicorn perform from a project management standpoint?

It was incredibly easy to work with them. I met with Sofia a couple of times, let her know what I was thinking and envisioning, and then we had a couple of check-ins. Everything was turned around incredibly quickly —they turned the work around in 3–4 weeks. We mostly communicated over email and Telegram. We also had some FaceTime calls, here and there. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to take my general concept without too much direction and nail it was impressive. I come from a design and programming background, so I’m very picky when it comes to this type of stuff. Even with that, they were able to fully understand what I wanted, which hasn’t been the case with other designers in the past. 

Their hand touch for animations stands out from others, which can look like they were scraped together and not personalized. the unicorn put together a totally custom solution and I was blown away by it. The way it tied in with our look and feel, as well as our marketing direction, made it a nice contiguous piece. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s not something they could have done better. They need to bump up their team several folds because they do amazing work. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

We’ve only worked on one project so far but come in with more or less a general idea of what you want. Having the general copy done and the feel that you want is good, but they can also help you with those. 

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a co-founder of Prodigium Pictures, LLC. Prodigium Pictures is a social impact-oriented digital cinema and video production company. Our mission is to foster critical thought through high-quality entertainment. We were founded by an international team in 2011, and have impacted millions of viewers globally with our content since. We pride ourselves on proactive diversity, environmental efficiency and technological pioneering. We work with some of the best talent in the world, right in the heart of Hollywood.

For what projects/services did your company hire the unicorn?

We hired The Unicorn to produce computer generated 3D world of futuristic cyber city landscape in 1920x1080 (16:9) to project the image as a backdrop of an online event for our client.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to create three completely different scenes from scratch. Each scene was uniquely independent from each other but the world view and the feel of the view needed to feel similar as they belong to the same universe. The unicorn was also assigned to create a flow-less transitions from scene to scene so we can play the video in loop without being caught of "CUT"

How did you select this vendor?

I have carefully gone through multiple vendors of VFX agencies and The Unicorn's work stood out amongst them. Also I already had a working relationship with the manager which made my decision rather easy.

Describe the video(s) and the process in detail.

I put together some visual references from the Internet. Then The Unicorn took these images and incorporate them into pretty elaborate drawings as vision board. Then once the camera angle and elements are decided, we selected multiple 3D materials and purchased these licensed 3D stock materials. We then created the world almost from the ground up, applied texture, applied lighting, and animated characters. Lastly we made sure they can loop independently and added transitions in After Effect to complete the project.

What was your vendors' project management or feedback process?

They were very imaginative and collaborative process. I gave them my feedback and sometime they returned their own feedback as well as new ideas. We bought more materials as we moved onto the later stage of the production because we both sensed that the video would have benefitted from buying additional content. And it did. They asked some additional budget sometime if my feedback was more than what was originally agreed upon, but I thought it was completely fair and I never felt the process was boycotted in any way.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The outcome of the project was fantastic. My end client loved it and I loved it as well. We had such a tight schedule but we were able to power through the project in a month. It was really time consuming project for them but they would work hard on weekdays and weekend if necessary. And because of the tight deadline, we did not have a lot of time to do many feedback loop in the animation stage of the production but by that point I have trusted their creative skill as well as quality control so it did not worry me at all. And again they did tremendous job.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We only communicated online via Skype and call, so we could always scroll back the thread to make sure what we have agreed on. They made sure to make themselves available anytime I wanted to speak with them if I suggest it. Both of us were in different timezone so we checked in each other in the morning and in the evening to follow up on the process. It was painless and smooth operation.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The quality was more than impressive but at the same time the precision of the communication was top-notch. It is very difficult to find someone who could understand nuances of VFX projects, which will translate as feel and look of the video directly on screen. So having a manager from The Unicorn who could understand the vision precisely and could do high level of quality control as well as project management is the most valuable and the impressive thing about The Unicorn.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The area of improvement is not something I would like to impose on them. We think we can keep making our process more efficient by understanding the VFX process more so we do not throw a curve ball to them but right now I am pretty satisfied with the working relationship and professionalism.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Brand Designer in a company from the Information Technology & Services Industry developing a mobile-first communication platform built for frontline employees that reaches every shift, location, and language through real-time messaging, targeted streams, and automated workflows.

The company has about 170 employees and we are a truly international team with offices in Zurich, the Bay Area, Berlin, and Kraków. Our product has enjoyed global adoption and is now used in over 137 countries.

For what projects/services did your company hire the unicorn?

We wanted to create a 30-seconds animated video for our end-users to understand what the product is about and the benefit of using it. This meant to be the users first touchpoint with the brand after they download the app. The main challenge was to keep it simple, but still explain the big picture the best way possible.

We do not have any in-house animation/motion designers, so we needed to outsource the project, but still make it a strong collaboration with our Brand Team to make it consistent with our visual style.

What were your goals for this project?

The goal was to create a more engaging onboarding experience and help our end users to understand what this product is about and how it fits to their needs. We wanted to use the video both in our product and for marketing purposes.

How did you select this vendor?

Out team were looking for freelancers to help us out in the project, we selected the agency based on the quality of their previous work and proposal they gave us.

Describe the project in detail.

Together with the agency we first defined the milestones and the timeline for the project. We provided a script and some ideas for the storyboard.

In a few days we already received some sketches and drafts about their ideas for our animated video. We needed a couple of weeks to finalise the storyboard and then we got the final illustrations.

After a few iterations and discussions with our marketing team the agency started working on the final animation which we needed in two formats (horizontal version for web and vertical for mobile) and in 3 languages.

What was the team composition?

We had our main point of contact, Sofia to support us throughout the project. I mostly talked with her via messages and sometimes in calls when some further explanation was needed. I am not 100% sure how many people were included from their side exactly.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

The onboarding video is shown to customers when launching the app for the first time, with information on the app and some of its key advantages.In a first phase, we launched the video for free trial customers.

This turned out to be a success, after which we launched it for new customers that still needed to go through onboarding. We have a 50% play rate of the video (the other 50% skips the video immediately). This is a big number in today’s fast-paced world, where people don’t want to waste time!

What’s even more impressive: the majority of the users watched the video until the end. In the meantime, we have collected feedback on the video content and we started working on an improved version.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The project manager was easy to communicate with and provided us frequent updates. Overall, we were really impressed how fast they could deliver a high quality animation design.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I find it most impressive how frequently we got an update on the project and the quality of the work. We appreciated how patient they were with us, flexible, and open to feedback.

Are there any areas for improvement?

The project took a bit longer than we estimated it, but we were changing the content of the video and the technical requirements. In the end we were very satisfied with their work every step of the way and ended up with a beautiful video.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the creator of Airith, a post-apocalyptic, 80s inspired, cyberpunk animated series.

For what projects/services did your company hire the unicorn?

Needed a team to not only deliver concept art but be able to take those to end animation. With The Unicorn, I was also honored to work directly with Sofia, who made sure all items and visions were met with extreme professionalism and accuracy.

What were your goals for this project?

Have a 7 min animatic for a pitch on Kickstarter,

How did you select this vendor?

Sofia presented us with an AMAZING concept design at no charge to prove her team's interest in our project. Based off that, we knew The Unicorn was the team to use.

Describe the project in detail.

a 7 min animated demo for a Kickstart project and provide concept art for social media postings.

What was the team composition?

I only dealt with Sofia, which I enjoyed as it keeps us as the client, focused and on task.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We had many studios and networks contact us due to the work from The Unicorn.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Very effective. I can't think of one time there were any hiccups or issues. It was a very fluid workflow. This was the easiest project and team I've ever worked with.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Sofia is the star here. She made sure tasks were on time and always had a way to increase the quality of each piece of the project.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I can not seriously think of any.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Head of product in cybersecurity and Machine learning startup in Switzerland

For what projects/services did your company hire the unicorn?

A product offering video for our website (animation) and our website design.

What were your goals for this project?

With the video we wanted to better explain our offering and with the website we wanted to make it easier to understand out technology, our solutions and create more inbound leads.

How did you select this vendor?

I went through upwork and I liked their design style. Afterwards of course, after seeing the good work I went directly to them

Describe the project in detail.

We wanted an animated vidoe that explained comprehensible but also simply our solution. Our solution is a complex cryptographic product at heart but we wanted to make it simple and extract the value for the customer. Unicorn helped with this

What was the team composition?

Can't disclose

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Both the Video and the web design after that were of great quality and the Unicorn team really took the effort to understand our technology and came up with original ideas that helped us better our offering.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Great workflow, clear and concise

What did you find most impressive about this company?

It is impressive how deep they are willing to go to understand what your unique selling proposition is and help you bring it out in simple forms.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nope, all is great.