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Common Craft

Open Culture

Common Craft is a company that makes videos which are “short, simple and focused on making complex ideas easy to understand.” These videos range in topic – from Twitter to social bookmarking to electing the U.S. President – and are made using a technique Common Craft calls Paperworks, a whiteboard-and-paper format that they believe “is designed to cut out the noise and stick to what matters.”

Common Craft make their videos available online for businesses to license as educational tools, but also share the videos widely under a CC BY-NC-ND license. There are definite advantages for businesses in getting the licensed versions, most notably portability and quality. Outside of this, the CC licensed Common Craft videos have garnered heightened popularity on YouTube and other sharing sites, increasing their name recognition and ubiquity – two factors that have hopefully been instrumental in expanding their growing list of custom-video clients. Common Craft have a great video posted on their licensing process that explains it all clearly and simply – making it not only informative but also a great example of their production style.

Posted 15 September 2008

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