Storytelling for the mechanical engineering sector

Twelve topics from our everyday lives

The main menu in a motion graphics design brings the “fascination of mechanical engineering” to life. Interactive icons are realigned with each visit to the platform and invite the visitor to keep on exploring new facets of the world of mechanical engineering. A total of twelve multimedia reports that bring core topics like Work 4.0, medicine or transportation to life in a creative and fascinating way will be published in German and English by the end of 2017.

The content for these topics is provided by experts from various trade associations within the VDMA that have joined forces to form topic-specific, cross-specialism teams to work together on this website. “In creating this content platform, we wanted to initiate a project with its own very unique character that required a completely new form of networking within our organisation”, Holger Paul, Head of VDMA Communications, explains.

The appropriate format for each story

Profilwerkstatt is mentoring this collaborative project not just in editorial terms, but it has also developed a highly flexible module system that enables each individual multimedia report to be customized. That means that the stories can keep on being told in different ways and perfectly matched to the information needs of the heterogeneous target audience.

Other details that provide specialist information were developed for this purpose to complement standard modules like picture galleries and videos. Thus, for example, digression modules elaborate on more complex content in the form of a kind of sideshow for the benefit of readers, who want to delve deeper into the subject matter. Explanatory boxes enable the user to access more detailed explanations or additional abstracts selectively and quickly. Specific animations that deliver a special, multimedia experience of the topic, like sliders with animated images or 360-degree panoramas, were also conceptually designed for some multimedia reports.

This combination of large, emotional images, modern design, and subtle parallax effects transforms complex topics into a world of multimedia experience that reaches out to a broad target audience. It is a concept that works. “Our ‘Man-Machine-Progress’ anniversary motto is brought to life superbly here”, says Holger Paul.

Stories that fascinate

The new content platform already appeals, given an above-averagely high dwell time of three minutes per article. Per month the website attracts 3000 unique users at 7000 impressions and is intended to bring the role mechanical engineering plays in our innovation-driven society to life beyond the anniversary year of 2017.