The Keys of St. Valentine
Summary
Along with being the patron saint of lovers, St. Valentine is also the patron saint of epilepsy. Legend says that he would travel the land and give magic keys to children to ward off epilepsy.
I pitched this idea as a way for Merge to use a holiday to amplify a client message about epilepsy awareness (Supernus) and also give us an opportunity to do a less traditional digital experience.
More people engaged with this experience than anything else Merge had ever created.
Client
MERGE
Roles
Creative Director
UX/ UI Designer
Animator
The Idea
We imagined St. Valentine had a magic tool that allowed him to conjour keys of protection and reinvented that as an online experience. We wanted it to feel ancient and alien to the user. They should feel like Indiana Jones stumbling upon an ancient artifact. Since we have modern medicine and no longer rely on magick for serious ailments, we kept the experience light and focussed on less tangible and serious ailments. The result was a digital spell the user could cast to summon a key.
the magic of
Automating Photoshop
The site features 300+ magical protective keys. Users picked 3 sigils which would summon one of the 300+ keys. The keys needed feel special and there was no time to handcraft that many keys and their corresponding social assets, so I used Javascript and Photoshop to automate the key and asset creation process. Keys were broken into pieces which were mixed and matched to create all permutations needed.
Key Piece Breakdown
Final Key Output samples
Assembling the Final Pieces
Once all the assets were created, we used insipiration from how video games allow players to open loot boxes to create a seamless, immersive experience that is more game-like than a traditional web experience.
