How do you ID a character?

I had the good fortune to work with Bill Couturié again recently, on a film called Saving Eden from the Sixth Extinction. Bill has a great touch for visual treatments for his ideas, and a technique he used in Saving Eden seems noteworthy to me.

The film features some very well-known scientists, and rather than ID them with simple lower-thirds while they speak on camera, Bill chose to highlight their identities in a unique way. This is a clip (which is also featured on the "watch" page), but if you haven't looked at it, check it out here, in a section featuring the biologist E. O. Wilson:

Bill used this technique for every character, contributing to the film's stylistic unity.