Crisis Guide: The Global Economy is the fifth in a series of guides produced by MediaStorm and CFR that look at major international issues. Produced in the wake of the worst financial crisis in decades, the guide through multimedia had to explore how this crisis came about and what it might mean for business and international affairs in decades to come.

2009 Emmy (Winner)
New Approaches to Business & Financial Reporting

Crisis Guide: The Global Economy is the fifth in a series of guides produced by MediaStorm and CFR that look at major international issues. Produced in the wake of the worst financial crisis in decades, the guide through multimedia had to explore how this crisis came about and what it might mean for business and international affairs in decades to come.

Our mandate was to present analysis of complex issues in a clear and engaging manner through multimedia that would be featured on the website.

Crisis Guide: The Global Economy is the fifth in a series of guides produced by MediaStorm and CFR that look at major international issues. Produced in the wake of the worst financial crisis in decades, the guide through multimedia had to explore how this crisis came about and what it might mean for business and international affairs in decades to come.

Technically, CFR wanted to be able to update the content in the guides themselves and move away from Brightcove, the online video platform used in previous Crisis Guides. They also wanted components of the guide to be templated so that they could be used again on the site and stay current by moving from Actionscript 2.0 to Actionscript 3.0 in the coding.

Visually, CFR wanted a design update that was consistent with the look of past Crisis Guides but was more in line with the cfr.org’s recent redesign.

The narrative of the global financial crisis was achieved through six different chapters, each approaching the topic through a different form, from cinematic overview to historical interactive timelines to video analysis by experts.

The guide was successful in achieving more independence for CFR in maintaining and producing their content. Each of the six chapters of the guide was built in Actionscript 3.0 to work as a standalone template or packaged within a flash wrapper. CFR staff update the content of the templates through external XML files and customize certain features like color. All the video in the guide is hosted on CFR’s own servers and played through a custom player.

The guide’s design maintains the aesthetic branding set by previous Crisis Guides but has a more streamlined interface and better fits cfr.org’s redesign in dimensions, typography, and colors.

The guide was well received by CFR and the timeline template has been used repeatedly on cfr.org. In 2009, the guide won an Emmy for New Approaches to Business & Financial Reporting. MediaStorm continues to work with CFR on the Crisis Guide series and other multimedia features.

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