Netsafe Education Videos
Digital safety campaign, presented through a video series.
MOTION
ILLUSTRATION
BRANDING
2026 • As part of their ongoing work to build resources into their Digital Guardian Guide, Netsafe requested a video series that would help parents, guardians and educators understand how kids are interacting in online spaces. In particular, the videos needed to provide a way to show the sort of incidents that are increasingly being reported by schools and families, while offering expert advice on how to manage these scenarios before, during and after they occur.
Client:
Freelance work in partnership with Supergood.
Role:
Art Direction | Motion Design | Illustration | Branding
Favourite Detail:
Designing the series from scratch, on a topic I think is super important!
Inspiration
The framework of these videos is an animation showing an incident (to avoid using real children), followed by a talking head segment with a real expert addressing the issue. After a few visual styles were optioned, the chosen animation concept uses line drawn illustrations that allow direct, simple storytelling. Dramatic changes in colour are introduced for emotional emphasis, and environments are adapted to more complex or simple depending on situation and mood.
Components
The series logo highlights chat based digital incidents, where tagging everyone with an @ symbol can summon a quick audience. The chat bubble outlines reference the stages of an online incident guardians may need to identify and respond to (before, during, and after).
It was important when designing the characters that they represent diverse people and family dynamics, showing all types of guardians. The client liked the Netsafe branded lower third created for the expert talking heads enough they requested it for future projects.
Building a world to play in
Art directing this project allowed me to fully create the spaces these characters occupy. Through a combination of lived experience in Aotearoa and researched visual references, I was able to craft an immersive world from the project outset.
Designing from Canada, I was aware the videos needed to feel automatically familiar to the target audience of New Zealand whānau (families). There are details throughout that help create this context, from visual cues seen here to the correct birdsong (such as tūī) heard when the characters are outdoors.