Behind the Scenes: Chimps Should Be Chimps iPad Story

At Manning, we believe that good work comes from a very simple formula: hire talent, plan well, work hard.

Good work comes from good planning. Good planning comes from the right questions. Take our current bundle of fun for Project ChimpCARE.

First question: “What do they want?”

The Lincoln Park Zoo wanted to make a piece promoting Project ChimpCARE .

Next question: “No, what do they really want?”

ChimpCARE wanted a piece that illustrated how chimps were mistreated in entertainment, showed why people shouldn’t support chimps in entertainment, and showed how zoos are integral to rehabilitating those chimpanzees.

So we pitched an iPad children’s book.  It was a different way to get to the target audience and achieve all the goals of the project. Even though it wasn’t what they had originally envisioned for this project, the zoo embraced the idea and let us run with it.

That freedom allowed us to throw ourselves into crafting something that both reflected the objectives of ChimpCARE and let us demonstrate what we could really do as a company.

We started pitching story outlines back and forth. Versions and versions later, we had our outline.

We started writing. Seventeen drafts later, we had our story.

We started storyboarding. A hundred chalkboard drawings and digital sketches later, the book was starting to take shape.

We had a solid month of illustrations (24 illustrations in 25 days. Keep an eye out for Natalie’s post about exactly how much work that is.)

Then, after all of that, we can get to work on the iPad. All of the interactive design and development that goes into turning a story into an app is, according to our estimates, about a million hours more.

That’s a lot of work.

Every single step of the process was deliberately planned, everything was approved by the zoo as we went so there were no surprises, and every person on the project knew exactly what was happening and who to ask if they had any questions. Most importantly, we kept the project goals in mind while we worked through each part of the process.

Last question: “Was all that work worth it?”

Absolutely.