What Motivates People to Change their Behaviours? (Public Health Research)

Through my experience of counselling and supporting people with substance misuse issues, I have learnt that change is something that we must choose to do, we cannot be forced into it through threats or punishment. Positive reenforcement is the key to success, once a person experiences positive outcomes from change, they are more likely to continue to take more positive steps. A person has to be ready to make the change, this is usually when the balance between the drug and lifestyle slips, so when the drug is effecting something like health, finances, relationships, housing then people are at a point where they might consider change. Sometimes tools can be used to help people recognise this decisional balance, i.e. making pros and cons lists. This is when I believe people are most susceptible to outside influences. Again, beating somebody with a stick and telling them not to do something or to do something, only causes that person to feel they have to justify what they are doing, therefore reenforcing the desire not to change. If a person is made to feel bad for doing something and told they shouldn’t be doing it, they are  more likely to go out there and do it. For people to be successful in making positive change, they need to have reached a decisional balance, i.e. the need for change outweighs the need to continue a certain behaviour. They need to have confidence that they have the tools and are able to make the change -self efficacy.

The Cycle of Change 

The Cycle of Change model was developed in 1982 by Prochaska and Diclemente.  It is a tool widely used in support for substance misuse and can be translated across many behaviour changes. Prochaska and Diclemente theorised that there were 6 stages of change, these are in a cycle, which you will stay on for sometime. It allows for people to make mistakes and learn from them, instead of feeling like a failure and returning to bad behaviours. There are different methods to initiate motivation to change depending on which stage of the cycle a person is at.

1. In ‘pre-contemplation’, the person does not see any problem in their current behaviours and has not considered there might be some better alternatives. At this point, a person may move on if they were to consider the pros and cons of their behaviour.

2. In ‘contemplation’ the person is ambivalent – they are in two minds about what they want to do – should they stay with their existing behaviours and attitudes or should they try changing to something new? This is when I believe a person can be suseptable to ad more likely to take on board health campaigns, they are considering and are open to ideas about how to change. This is a time when intervention is crucial in making someone decide to change.

3. In ‘preparation’, the person is taking steps to change usually in the next month or so. This person has made a decision, they are engaged and ready to change, they need information, where, how etc in order to move to the next step. They would now benefit  from making a plan.

4. In ‘action’, they have made the change and living the new set of behaviours is an all-consuming activity. This stage requires positive reenforcement, in order to stay here they need to be reminded that what they are doing is beneficial.

5. In ‘maintenance’, the change has been integrated into the person’s life – they are now experiencing the benefits of the change. This is the point when someone has learnt a new behaviour and the chances of a lapse have reduced greatly.

6. Relapse is a full return to the old behaviour. This is not inevitable – but is likely – and should not be seen as failure. The important part of this is that it should not be seen as failure. Feelings of failure can consume a person, they can lose confidence and often return to the original behaviour but possibly far worse than before. Often people will relapse several times before they finally succeed in making a (more or less) permanent transition to a new set of behaviours.

Lapse can happen at any point beyond pre contemplation, it is important that a lapse is not seen as failure, to avoid full relapse. If a person can recognise it as a ‘slip up’ and see no reason why they can’t go back into the cycle, they are more likely to progress to maintenance. Could using this theoretical model be beneficial in public health campaigns? Could dividing approaches to reach people at each stage of this cycle work to motivate change and reach people on a different level?

Classical Conditioning Classical conditioning is the theory behind behaviour and how we can be conditioned to subconsciously respond to a stimuli once conditioned to do so.

Pavlov’s Dogs

Ivan Pavlov discovered classical conditioning by accident during one of his experiments with dogs. He noticed that the dog would salivate upon seeing his assistant, the dog had learnt that the assistant = food and his body responded to this. Pavlov took this experiment further by introducing a bell, he would ring the bell every time he fed the dog, after conditioning was complete he would ring the bell without the food and the dog would still have the same response.

Unconditioned Stimulus (food) = Unconditioned Response (salivate) Introduce a neutral stimulus (assistant/bell) at same time of food = Conditioned stimulus

So why is this important when considering public health campaigns and motivating change? We are all like Pavlov’s dogs, if we have learnt that a certain stimulus, leads to another, our bodies respond accordingly. For example:

Unconditioned stimulus (cigarettes) = feelings associated when smoking Neutral stimulus (glass of wine) = the body will respond by preparing itself for a cigarette without the cigarette even being present, creating what is known as a craving.

This is why many people find it so difficult to give up smoking whilst other social factors continue. They are unwittingly conditioned to want to have a cigarette if certain stimuli are present, this could be a smell, sight or sound, i.e. a certain friend, bars, the smell of smoke. This behaviour can be unlearnt and we can  be ‘unconditioned’ but recognising our weaknesses or ‘trigger points’ can be one of the most important steps to success.

Operant Conditioning

B F Skinner further developed Pavlov’s theories when studying behaviour and came up with the theory of Operant Conditioning. Again, examples of this can be proved beneficial in dog behaviour, the same theories can also be used on humans. Below is a fantastic diagram of Operant Conditioning, which I think explains it really well.

Skinner believed that a good way to understand behaviour is to look at the reason for an action and its consequences. This was based on the work done by Thorndike in 1905, who studied animal behaviours using a puzzle box. Skinner’s experiments involved placing animals in a box, where there would be negative and positive consequences based on certain behaviours. From his studies with a rat in a ‘Skinner box’ he found that there were 3 outcomes.

Neutral Operants – Responses from the environment that neither increase nor decrease the probability of a behaviour being repeated.

Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase the probability of a behaviour being repeated. Reinforcers can be either positive or negative. Positive Reenforcement  –The rat would accidentally knock the lever and a food pellet would be dispensed, the rat soon learned that if he pressed the lever, he would be fed. This is positive reenforcement, which strengthens a behaviour.  As children we learn the same if we are rewarded for a behaviour, we are more likely to repeat it. Negative Reenforcement  – The rat would experience a shock, which would only be stopped if they pressed a lever. The behaviour/action removed an unpleasant experience, therefore was repeated. The rat would be shown a light, which would then lead to the shock but the rat learnt that by pressing the lever he avoided a shock.

Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated. Punishment weakens behaviour. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between a punisher and a negative reinforcer. Punishment can be to remove something good or by applying a negative stimulus. Unlike reinforcers this weakens behaviour, making people less likely to repeat a certain behaviour. This can be used when considering someones dependance on a substance, if people are rewarded for changing a certain behaviour, they are more likely to repeat it. Of course we would be unable to reward people for changing something we want them to, this would be bribery. But if people were able to experience something positive from making a small change it may reenforce the behaviour and they would begin to experience positive reenforcement naturally. Punishment is a difficult one but certain smoking campaigns aim to highlight what can be lost through smoking e.g. health, money etc but can this work without the person experiencing it? Negative reenforcement would be very difficult to use in a public health campaign.

How Can These Theories be Used in a Stop Smoking Campaign

So lets look at all these theories in context with some of the quit smoking campaigns.

These are using shock/disgust to communicate a point. This may work for someone who is in the contemplative stage, it could be considered negative reinforcement. However, strange as it sounds, the image of the cigarette could be a trigger for some people, having the opposite effect that they intended.

Aimed to appeal to parents, these would work on a person’s decisional balance, i.e. your smoking is not only effecting you but your child, this could help tip the balance and initiate steps to change.

These are examples of showing people a way, enabling them to make a plan, this would work for people in the contemplative or preparation stage.

This Australian campaign works well to highlight the positives of stopping smoking, it flips the ‘do not smoke because..’ statement and informs people of the benefits for every cigarette not smoked. This could be classed as positive reinforcement.

Many of the campaigns aim to tip the decisional balance, be it through showing the negative consequences of smoking, how it can effect loved ones etc.

In all this I haven’t considered prevention, i.e. stopping people from smoking in the first place. I believe a lot of the campaigns communicating the health complications associated with smoking help to educate the young and raise awareness. Hopefully this has prevented many young people from taking up smoking.

What is Public Health? And Where did it all Begin?

What is Public Health?

“the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting health through the organised efforts of society”

A concise definition taken from the 1988  Public Health in England report by Sir Donald Acheson. Or more recently the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organised efforts of society, organisations, public and private, communities and individuals Taken from ‘Securing Good Health for the whole Population’ Derek Wanless (Feb 2004) So what does this mean? It means that public health is everyones responsibility and the prevention of diseases through education is to everyones benefit. People should take responsibility for their own health but to tackle the issues on a global scale, everyone must play a part spreading the word. A quote which is as true today as it was in the 19th century, shows that public health is something that has been considered important throughout history.

“We are not tinkers who merely patch and mend what is broken… we must be watchmen, guardians of the life and the health of our generation, so that stronger and more able generations may come after” Dr Elizabeth Blackwell (1821 1910), The First Woman Doctor

Public health has always been considered important, as our populations grew, health issues became more apparent, due to closer contact with each other and animals. We have learnt that stopping certain actions or behaving a certain way will prevent major health issues, such as disposing of our waste, not leaving dead bodies lying around, washing ourselves, eating clean food. Obvious to us today but this was something that had to be learnt and communicated in order to make everyone aware. Taking responsibility for each others welfare and for society is one of the reasons why we have survived so well and flourished as a species.

How was public health communicated?

Public health has developed and changed extensively from how it began to the type of campaigns we see today, here is a brief history of public health:

Biblical Health Laws

Biblical health laws were were the first documented ways in which health issues and ways to prevent them were communicated. The book of Leviticus details ‘laws’ assumed to be given by Moses about diet, keeping clean, sexual health and protection against contagious diseases. Although this was probably not written in a public health context, it did however prove effective in preventing the spread of diseases. Ancient Babylon and ancient Egypt both have evidence of religious codes to be followed regarding cleanliness.

Ancient Greece – Hippocrates

“Let Food be Thy Medicine Thy Medicine Shall be Thy Food”

Hippocrates  An iconic physician, whose theories were far in advance of his time. He revolutionised medicine and much of his work is still relevant today. His works include advice on diet, exercise and cleanliness. The ancient greeks were able to make the link between lifestyle and health. Under the Romans, people were much more proactive in cleanliness and health, introducing piped water, toilets and baths.

The Middle Ages

During the ‘Dark Ages’ illness and disease was commonplace and often illness was seen as a curse or a punishment for being a sinner, which caused stigmatism. Laws came into force to keep lepracy sufferers in isolation. The Black Plague created the need for public health strategies. Both science and religion was used to communicate the threat of the disease and prevent the spread.

The Renaissance

This was when people realised that anybody can become ill or catch a disease, good or bad. More specific measures to find out what was causing a disease and how to cure it were utilised. The anatomical  drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci helped people understand the science behind illness and disease.

The Industrial Revolution

The industrial revolution brought more people into the cities, creating overcrowding and more prevalence of contagious diseases. This was a time of change, knowledge of medicine and diseases was developing. Theories began considering the cause of epidemics, there were two schools of thought – Miasmic – that epidemics stemmed from atmospheric conditions and Contagion: Epidemics result from the transmission of germs. This was important for public health, as the causes were starting to be considered rather than cures, leading to better ways to prevent disease and illness.

1800 -1900 As knowledge of medicine and health increased, more and more focus was put onto the causes of disease and illness and how it can be prevented. There was some understanding of germs and how these effected the spread of viruses. Populations increased, hygiene improved, more and more public health reports were published. During this time the cholera epidemic effected britain, Florence Nightingale became the pioneer for healthy workplaces, making the link between unhygienic environments and infection. In 1878 medical examinations were conducted on everyone who entered the country.

1918-1920 Influenza – worldwide epidemic

1900-1920

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

Many different strategies have been used over the decades to educate people, make people aware and initiate action. These strategies include the more ‘Don’t do it!’ style campaigns from the 1920s and 30s, comedy in the 1970s to the shock campaigns which are more popular today. But what works? Is telling someone not to do something beneficial? Do shock tactics work? Or is more gentle persuasion needed, along with signposting for people to make their own choices about making a change? Following this research I have decided to focus mainly on the anti-smoking/anti drugs campaigns over the decades, I will compare specifically UK, USA and Australian campaigns. I will study different tactics over the decades and conversely also look at the advertisements for cigarettes and how these impacted people’s decision making.

Applied Design Project

Project Brief

You have been commissioned to conceive and develop the graphic styling for the Sheffield College magazine, and present your designs to representatives of the college ‘Enterprise Team’.

My Response

Initially I’m quite excited about this project and also a little frightened about getting it right. I have taken from the brief  the fact that this magazine needs to be student focused and incorporate Sheffield culture, entertainment and news, the magazine is not to publicise the college or its courses, but to promote the city. The magazine must appeal to a diverse and contemporary audience and needs to be creative and exciting looking. I am a big fan of the regional magazines, particularly ‘Exposed’, which is something I regularly pick up, I enjoy the majority of the articles and the mag is an excellent way to promote up and coming concerts and events in Sheffield. I feel the mag works well to appeal to a diverse audience, it has a variety of articles within in it to capture the attention of a diverse range of people, I often skip through the mag reading the articles which capture my attention or interest me. The mag is easily accessible and strategically placed throughout the city, this allows the mag to increase exposure and promote local businesses to a variety of age groups.

Research

I already had a few of the magazines at home, such as ‘Exposed’ and ‘Now Then’, I decided to go round the bars in Sheffield (purely for research purposes!) and pick up some of the mags, which are often found in the more ‘trendy’ bars on Division St, there are also mags such as ‘Beer Matters’, which promote local breweries, bars and real ale festivals. I also gathered some of the regional magazines which are delivered a specified postcode area, I have ‘Active8’, which is where I live and the Eckington and Killamarsh ‘Doorsteppa’ from my mum’s. The mags are very different in the way they target the area, due to the typical residents that tend to live in that community. Active8 appeals to a much younger audience, whereas the mags for the village community appeals to an older audience and tends to focus on local political issues. In addition to this I also visited the Sheffield Hallam University and picked up one of their magazines ‘Review’ which offers articles of events from around Sheffield, whilst also promoting the university. My brother is in his last year in secondary school, he gave me a copy of his school’s magazine ‘Derbyshire Youthing’, which is aimed at a younger audience. It focuses its articles on opportunities available for young people and promotes health and wellbeing. It offers articles on some of the issues which affect young people, such as bullying and online exploitation to create awareness of the risks, which is relevant to the target audience.

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The Sheffield College has a varied age group, so I need to consider my content to appeal to a diverse age group, although primarily the content should appeal to a younger audience (16-25) as this is the average age of students at the college. However, being a mature student myself , I also felt that there should be something within my magazine to help promote learning in later life, this is something I will consider for one of my articles.

Design Structure

I decided to pick out some of the more relevant magazines I had picked up and go through them one-by-one, evalute them individually as to how they are effective in relation to the target audience, also analysing the design structure, typographic styling/grid structure/production quality/stock etc.

Exposed

First impressions of the cover design of this magazine is that it is very hard hitting, eye-catching and edgy. The main feature is displayed very clearly and the use of a well known celebrity such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, captures people’s attention, making them want to know more. As it is established and well known magazine, they could get away with having Arnie’s head covering some of the title, the colour of the title typography fits in with the colour scheme of the feature photograph. ‘HEY ARNOLD’ is set at a slight angle in large font point to ensure the main feature title stands out to grab potential reader’s attention, then there are more features listed in a smaller font for the reader to see once picked up, these are shown with the use of typography and images. Most of the titles on the cover design are in uppercase lettering. The magazine works well to appeal to it’s target audience, which is young people and music lovers, the style of the cover is edgy and exciting. The magazine stock is a semi gloss paper, at an average weight but good quality. It would need to be printed to a good standard as this is the type of mag picked up in a bar, held in the hand for a period of time or left bustling in a handbag before it is read, therefore it needs be quite durable. Below is my analysis of the cover page, highlighting key points which I believe make this mag work effectively.

The Content of Exposed

I have chosen a spread which covers two pages to analyse, I have also chosen this one as I like the layout used.

The half circle in yellow centered at the top of the first page is consistent throughout the magazine, used to indicate the section. There is also a bold line underneath this set at 20mm from the top of the page. There is quite a bit of white space before the feature title, which starts at 55mm, which I think works well. The Feature Title says ‘Little by Little’ with the last Little in uppercase bold and a much larger font size than the first, the spread is about ‘Little Kehlam’ a property development underway in Sheffield, so this is a clever way to introduce this. (I also have the Oasis song stuck in my head after reading this! Not sure if this is intentional and ties in with the music theme of the publication!) The title is at an indent of 30mm and is aligned perfectly with the text beneath it, which I think gives a uniform, neat look. The explanatory text beneath the title is still in bold in a similar style type to the title and slightly smaller, with a faint line beneath. The text is set on three columns with a 30mm margin on either side and a 25mm gap from the bottom of the page. There are sub-headings within the text which are aligned left in bold in the same font as the rest of the text, which is around a 10pt type with a 13pt leading. The article is eye-catching and legible, giving enough away in the title to let the reader decide whether this is something that would interest them. On the second page the images are arranged in a tiled mosaic with white line spaces between. There is a quote at the side with the quotation marks significantly larger than the rest of the text slightly overlapping the images to entice the reader to read this after looking at the images, the type is set in a dark grey at around 24pt in a bold rounded typeface. The page has faint stroke borders around it with the page number and website address centered at the bottom of the page.

Evaluation

Obviously, I would say that this magazine works well to capture the readers attention as this is a magazine I regularly pick up and read myself. After looking more in detail at the design style, I can see why it is so effective, the designs are funky, catchy and colourful, the content of the magazine is relevant to the theme of the magazine and the content style is very varied, whilst still keeping some consistency throughout. Exposed is very well-produced, enticing magazine, which I believe promotes Sheffield and its culture extremely well.

Now Then

 

Now Then magazine is a much more art focused publication, the statement in the first page of the magazine states ‘Now Then is a free, independent magazine published in Sheffield and Manchester, It is all about supporting independence in art, trade and citizen journalism’. They encourage local people to contribute to the content of the mag. The paper stock used for this magazine is matte rather than glossy and is much better quality, more like a luxury mag, this maybe to show the artwork in the best possible quality. The cover design for this mag is mainly focused on the image with simply the name and details printed in the bottom right. The image is very powerful and clearly demonstrates the type of magazine it is, attracting the right audience who would find the content interesting.

The content has quite a simple, yet effective layout, focusing more on the artwork and images than the text. You can see that the designers of this magazine use a more contemporary, art-focused style in their articles, with the use of bold simple shapes to incorporate the typography and the images set at aesthetically pleasing angles. The magazine is consistent throughout, all articles having the coverline in white, large, uppercase font within a rectangular shape in subtle colour. The text is set at a 15mm indent and 2 columns are used to present the text, which is set at around 12pt. The first letter of the first sentence is set at a much larger font size at around 48pt, and in some articles the first explanatory  paragraph is in bold, I really like this style and will consider using some of the design styles in my mag.

Evaluation

Again, I really like the design layout of this magazine and I think it works effectively to capture its target audience and promote local artists. The style is consistent and in-keeping with the theme. The articles are eye-catching, a lot of effort is made to present the artwork within it at its best and it makes for a very interesting read and visual experience.

Toast

Toast promotes itself as ‘Sheffield’s Biggest Little Magazine’, this is because it is printed in A5, half the size of the more common A4 magazines. However, the size does not take anything away from the effectiveness and content of this magazine. The cover design immediately grabs your attention, its colourful, vibrant and youthful looking. The main coverline is presented in a way that makes it stand out from the rest of the cover. The cover indicates to me that this is a much more fashionable, trendy mag, appealing more to young people and students.

The articles promote bands and local concerts and events in Sheffield and are generally quite indie. Unlike ‘Now Then’ the content does not really have a set theme or consistency, each article has its own eye-catching, vibrant style, although the layout does appear to be consistent throughout generally working to 2 or 3 columns with the text set at around a 10pt.

I decided to analyse an interview spread in this magazine, as this is something that is required in our brief. This is an interview with a local Sheffield band.

Evaluation

The design style of this magazine works effectively to capture a youthful audience. I like the vibrancy and colours in the articles.

Sheffield Hallam University – Review

I decided to look at a student focused magazine for the Sheffield Hallam University, to get an idea of what they were using to appeal to students. This magazine is more focused on what has been happening within the university rather than Sheffield as a whole. The article is much bigger than the others h34cm x w23cm, the paper stock is a heavy matte quality. The cover page has an illustration of an explosion, portraying the beginning of something. The cover is not as busy as the others, this is because it is more of an academic publication.

The content is very much about the university, so is not really relevant to the type of magazine I will be doing, so I decided not to look into this mag any further.

Ready for Stage 2…

I feel I have learnt a lot from my research about what works and have got some ideas about how I would like my magazine to look. I feel I would like to adapt the styles used in Exposed and Toast magazines. As I feel a more funky, fresh, vibrant theme appeals better to a young audience.

THE MASTHEAD

The names of the other publications tend to be quite short and to the point. As the magazine is to feature Sheffield and is to be aimed at students, I decided to make mind maps of words associated with Sheffield youth/students.

I really like the idea of making the title related to Sheffield/Yorkshire dialect, to make it appealing to people who live in Sheffield, so I did a mind map of local terms and Sheffield dialect.

When looking at the brief, the publication is intended to promote local culture, entertainment and news, it also a chance for students to get involved and express their opinions. So I did mind maps of words associated with culture, entertainment, magazines, news, reading and express.

I’d had from the beginning an idea in mind that I wanted the title to be a play on words, reflecting Sheffield’s dialect and humour.  I also wanted to incorporate The Sheffield College and what the publication is about, which is entertainment and local culture, so that it would appeal to a diverse range of people. I sat down with all my mind maps around me and started to write down ideas as I read through them.

Out of the names I had come up with, I really liked ‘Edlines’ it relates to a publication as in ‘Headline’, there is a play on words using Sheffield dialect for ‘Ed’ and Ed could also be short for ‘education’ or ‘editorial. I looked on the internet to see if it had been used before and unfortunately it has! I decided to think of other words with head in them, I did a Google search for this, I wanted to find words that linked with the theme of the magazine.

• ‘Edfirst’ – some link to studying and being young (going headfirst into something)
• ‘Edlight’ – Headlights, moving forward, seeing, viewing.
• ‘Edspace’ – The mag is a ‘space’ for students to read or voice their opinions.
• ‘Edstrong’ – aspiration to be headstrong.
• ‘Edliner’ Links to education, publication and promoting local entertainment (headlining bands etc).

I put the names to friends and family and Edliner was the favourite, which I was pleased about as its mine too! ..and its not been used by anyone else! I’m not sure whether to call it ‘The ‘Edliner’ or ‘Edliners’ at this stage…

‘ED’LINER – I am really happy with my masthead, it took me a while to get here! I feel it reflects all that I want the magazine name to portray – Education, Youth, News and Entertainment, whilst also having a cheeky little ‘Sheffieldism’ within it!

MASTHEAD DESIGN

First I needed to choose the typeface to use for my masthead, I had in mind I wanted something ‘funky’ ‘hardhitting, something similar to a style used in posters for concerts. festivals etc.

As you can see, I tried out quite a few! I looked through them all, then narrowed it down to these..

The fourth one down was the one I liked the best, which is Kosmik-BoldOne. It has the edgy look I wanted and appears torn around the edges making it look like it is breaking through the paper, I like that it is a little rough around the edges. Once I had chosen my typeface, I needed to work out how to have the masthead laid out. For this I tried out different variations in InDesign.

I wanted to try out lots of different variations, as I didn’t want it to just be on one line, as this would stray away from the edginess I would like my mag to portray. I liked the idea of making the ‘ED’ bigger and having this as the focal point of the masthead, so I tried out different ways of having the type. I picked out two of my favourites below, I like the idea of having the liner, lined up with the’ED’.

At this point, I still couldn’t decide which one looks the best so I decided to try it on my cover, I have chosen a picture of Annie Mac, as I am considering reviewing the Tramlines festival, which she is in the line-up for. Using what I had learnt from my research, it is a good idea to have a famous figure on the front page to grab the reader’s attention. This will also help me to figure out where best to place the masthead.

 

After doing this, I could see which of my mastheads is most effective. I prefer having the ‘LINER’ to the right of the ‘ED’ with the type facing vertical and going upwards. At this stage I think the masthead would look best at the top right of the cover.

Now that I have the basics of my masthead, its time for a bit of fine tuning. I used guides to ensure that the edges of ‘LINER’ line up with the ‘E’ in ‘ED’. I reduced the kerning slightly between the apostrophe and the E and between the E and D. I then adjusted the height of the letter L to give a bit of a frame effect at the bottom and  to keep in with the ‘edgy’ theme and ensured that the spacings between the two words and the lettering matched.

The masthead is now a rectangular shape, I decided to try putting boxes around it so that it can be on a white background and not be interfered with by the feature image.

 

I’m not sure at this stage whether to have a box around the masthead or not, this will be something I will decide later in the project.

THE SPREADS

For this project, we are required to do 3 magazine spreads. For my first I have chosen to do an interview with established artist James Coates, after arranging a time for the interview, I got my questions together. I began by looking at other interviews with artists to get an idea of what to ask him. I also wanted to keep in mind what a typical Sheffield student may want to have the answers to. As James is an entrepener and has set out on his own to produce and sell his paintings, I wanted my questions to allow him to give advice to anyone out there wishing to take up painting professionally or as a hobby. I plan to record the interview, as James is quite a witty character, I wanted this to come across in the interview spread and will try to keep to exactly what he says in the interview. I already have some good images of his artwork, which I will use to display in the spread, I plan to get more at the interview and some of him in his studio. I am also hoping for some good quotes from James so that I can also display these as part of the presentation. I  wanted to keep my questions quite simple and broad, so that they could be elaborated on whilst in the interview either by myself or James so that the content of the spread is not too rigid or boring and flows well for the reader.

The interview went well, I went home and transcribed what was said word for word into a document.

I’d already had some ideas about how to have the layout, as I wanted to display his artwork at its best, I decided to have the spread over 4 pages so that the images and text arn’t too small or squeezed together.

 

I then created a layout on InDesign to work with. I decided I wanted to work to 3 columns but I set the document to have 6, so that I had to guide to add quotes at the side of images or text. I wanted the main title to be the artist’s name, I adjusted the size to fit, which ended up at around 134pt, I was tempted to fill the space above the name or have the name at the top of the page, but resisted as we had been advised to not be afraid of white space!

Then I transferred each question one by one into its own text box in the document.

I then picked out quotes from each of the questions which I thought would be good for the reader to get an idea of the content. I chose sentences, which were short, funny or inspirational. I put these in font size 17pt and chose pink and blue colours, as these are the colours mostly used in James’ paintings.

Now it was a case of arranging it all! It was like doing a big jigsaw! I kept in mind the advice regarding having white space and had to stop myself several times from having all the text bunched together with no spaces! I soon realised, as it was coming together, how much more professional it looks with space around the quotes. I put all the images I wanted to include in my workspace and arranged them around the questions as best I could, trying to maintain my original layout design. After feedback from Matt, I changed the title to be stacked on the right page as it didn’t work going across the spine, I resized the picture of James and took a couple of the images out as it looked a little too busy.

 

I’d seen during my research how some magazines will have pages of different colours in spreads of more than one page, I chose Grey, as I didn’t want to colour to clash or takeaway from any of the artwork, I decided to leave the second page white.  I opted to have the writing in white on grey and the reverse for the other page, which I think works well, I chose Today-Shop Bold typeface for the questions and Today-Shop-Light for the answers both set to 10pt. I toyed with different ways of laying out the questions, I knew I wanted the Question to be in bold and the answer light, I chose Typeface Today-Shop, which is used throughout the spread, I used the italic version for the quotations. I wanted the colours to link in with the questions so I decided to set Q and A’s in fontsize 16pt, Today-Shop-Bold, I had to change the leading between the question and the answer to 14pt to reduce the gaps. Once I had finished the design, I thought it needed something else, so I tried out different lines in-between the text, I liked the dashed lines and I used a variant of the blue and pink colours I had used.  Once I had done my first 2 pages, the 3rd and 4th were much easier, as I already had my layout design.

 

I decided to feature the painting of James’ face, as the questions on this page were him giving advice. I placed the quotes randomly, whilst still keeping them in the area at which the relating question/answer was on the page. I  purposefully put the quotes about strawberries next to the painting of the strawberries and  chose to place the marmite picture on the 4th page, to reveal to the reader why there was a question about Marmite on the previous page. The marmite image was taken in 2 halves, so I had to do some editing on photoshop. I deviated from the original layout slightly in order to fit in all the quotes and images, also I didn’t want it to look to uniformed, as this is a fun, youthful magazine.

I am really happy with this spread, in the beginning I felt like I couldn’t do it and it wasn’t looking professional enough, but once I started piecing it all together, I found it easier. I really like the colour scheme and the way the quotes are presented, I think these are what makes the spread stand-out to me.

Right, 2 more spreads to go! Oh dear..

SPREAD 2

Right so for my next one I decided to do a review of a pizza takeaway …stick with me! Its a new restaurant opened on Abbeydale Road and their speciality is stone baked pizzas, as there are so many pizza places around who do big greasy pizzas with rubbish toppings, I thought this one deserved a review, as the toppings are fresh and good quality and the bases are thin and crispy. I know that most magazines do reviews of restaurants and such like but I thought as this is a student magazine, for students living on a budget who can’t afford to eat out,, this would be a fitting review. I got to speak with the managers and they were happy for me to take pictures and write a review, I even got a big fat 15″ pizza for free, so its gotta be worth it!

First of all I went to the restaurant and got some pics, I took pics of them making the pizza and got shots of it in the clay oven which is their USP, I took the pizza home to try (for review purposes!) and made notes of what I enjoyed about it. (I have eaten from this place before so I knew it would be good). I then decided to work on my layout, when I first started to put text onto the document, I wanted to put key words such as delicious, tasty, stone baked etc, after trying to arrange this, I thought about doing a word cloud, ya know those things that are in at the moment where the words are set in different sizes, with the most relevent/true more prominent. Now this wasn’t an easy task! I first opened a new document and typed all the words I could think of about tasty food and pizzas, then I drew a circle and set about fitting the words into the shape of the circle, I chose colours associated with the colours of a pizza and chose only a few so as not to make it too busy. I changed the sizes of the words, picking out the ones I wanted to come across and making them the largest. It took sometime and again it was like doing a jigsaw, heres what I came up with.

I chose a picture of the pizza coming out of the oven,  did some editing in photoshop to make it look better and blurred the background so that the focus was on the pizza, I had taken a picture with space to the right purposefully so that I had space to put my review, I placed it on the page and drew around the edge of it so that mt text could wrap around it. Then I added my word cloud

Now I’d learnt from my previous spread that it best to get the dialogue down before on a separate document so that I know what I have to work with. I wrote a short review, with questions and answers that I thought people would like to know.

I tinkered with the images a bit, at first I had thumbnail images at the right side but after feedback from Matt, he thought more could be done with them. I first put the images in the shapes of circles, then I decided to try to be a bit more inventive and I tried to cut out the shape of a pizza slice, I added text wrapping and arranged them around the text, I also added ‘Just Eat’ and ‘Hungry House’ Logos at the bottom, I had to do some editing on Photoshop to remove the white background. I also made the first letter of each question a larger typeface to the rest at 16pt, as this is something I found to be quite effective in my research.

 

I am quite happy with this spread, I wish maybe I’d chosen a different subject but working with what I had I think it has come out OK. I’m glad I was a little more creative with the images, doing this has further developed my skills in using the pathfinder tool. I am also really happy with my typography pizza and am considering doing something similar for my next spread. At this point for each spread I added a footer of page numbers centred and a header with the masthead and subject eg. food.

SPREAD 3

I wanted to do something informative for students in this spread , I considered doing a festival guide or a guide to tramlines, then I considered the fact that summer holidays are approaching and looked into ideas for a guide of what to do over the summer, I considered fashion, books, games, days out, nights out etc.

I liked the idea of doing a festival guide but figured most students can’t afford to go to a lot of the festivals around as they are so expensive. I decided to look specifically at events in Sheffield, I looked into things that were relatively cheap or free, as this was to show that you don’t have to spend a fortune to have a good time. I looked into local fairs etc and I wrote out a big list of everything that was listed over the summer, trying to keep in mind the target audience (young people) and what they would like to go to, so no gardening exhibitions or knitting contests! The list was quite extensive!

There was far too much to fit into a spread, even though there were some good events happening in Sheffield, it would take away the practicality of it if there was too much for the reader to take in. So how could I reduce this list down?.. I decided it needed to be filtered down to one particular genre, I picked music, so I eliminated anything that wasn’t music, there was still quite a lot, so I then took out anything that cost over £20. Now I had a list that could be worked with. I decided to sketch out the events I would like to include on a a3 sheet of paper to get an idea of the layout.

I then started to sketch out how I would like the layout to look, I had in mind the idea of a calendar of the events, with the focus being on the dates, I tried out lots of ideas. I then got images of the bands from the internet, getting the best possible quality, I then started laying it out in InDesign. I originally had the bands as thumbnail images and a write up of each band but then after looking at other mag spreads decided to have the image as the main part and less text. I wanted there to be an introductory page as the first page, explaining what he spread was about. I first put an image of a concert in and tried adding text but it wasn’t looking right. I’ve got to admit at this stage I became a little stuck! I wanted to do something typographically, like the one in the pizza review, I considered doing another word cloud like the one in the pizza review, thinking this could maybe be a theme of my magazine. I decided to look into other ideas, I had in mind a quote about music or some key wording which I could design with typography making it edgy and eye-catching. I wrote down some ideas, I liked the idea of having stacked relevant words with the first letters spelling out something else, like music or rock, so I toyed around with this idea. It wasn’t really working for me.. I then listed all the words I could think of associated with music and concerts to see if I could come up with anything else.

I decided I would do a typographic word cloud in the shape of a guitar, sticking with the original idea of having this as a theme and also to challenge myself to see if I could do it. I began by downloading an image of a guitar and opening it in photoshop, I selected the shape of it then filled it with a light grey colour, I wasn’t too concerned about how this looked as I just needed a stencil to work with.

I then opened the image in InDesign and began adding my words one by one onto the document, I chose Kosmik-Bold-One, as I feel this has a rocky feel to it.

I then began to arrange these into the shape of the guitar, I picked out the words I would like to be more prominent like Sheffield and Talent and placed these first, then I picked out words that began or ended with letters that were shaped similar to the edges of the guitar.

Once I had all my words placed into the guitar, I had to think up some more to fit some small gaps, then I zoomed into each one individually to check that none overlapped. I had the guitar outline on a separate layer so that I could hide it occasionally to see how it was looking. Heres the finished typographic guitar.

I am really pleased with it, I put the words MUSIC, TALENT and SUMMER at an angle so that it looked like the hole thing in the guitar.. don’t know what its called! I did the text in black with a view to change the colours but actually looking at it, I think that it looks good just black, I may play around with colours at a later stage, maybe Red and Black.

The spread

 

I tried out different ways of having the dates and I found this to be the best, I stuck with black and Red colours and reversed these out to differentiate from each section. I decided not to include August as there arn’t many listings out at present and the August page would have looked a little sparse compared, I figured this would be done in the next issue! I kept the text down to a minimum, as I wanted the images to lead, I varied the sizes of the images so that it didn’t look too uniform.

I really struggled with this one if I’m honest and I’m still not happy with it entirely. However whilst creating it, I learnt a lot about the benefits of designing a layout. This was actually the first one I started and then went back to after I’d finished the others. I didn’t design the layout as well as the others in the beginning and instead I kind of just plonked everything on the page and tried to arrange it, which took a lot longer than the others did, as I was trying to design it as I went along. I now know this is the wrong way to do it!

..I decided to add colour to the Typography guitar, I decided just to stick to red and black, as I didn’t want it to look too messy and it also fits in with the colour scheme. I think it looks much better this way.

BACK TO THE COVERS

Now that I have my spreads, I have a better idea of how to have the covers. I already had the layout set out from before, so it was just a case of adding the features and cover titles.

I decided to do 3 as I wanted one music orientated and the others to have art as the feature image. I’ve kept the same layout for all, slightly changing the colours to match with the feature image.

FINAL EVALUATION

I have really enjoyed this project and have learnt a lot. I’m not overly happy with my final spreads, if I could do things differently I would make the layout much more simple and not as busy. I’ve tried to fit too much content into too little space, although I do think that my content is good. For the interview with James, I wanted to feature some of his best work and I think this ruined the design, maybe I should have had the spread over more pages, having one painting filling a whole page. I think the area I have developed most in, is typography. This is something that has always frightened me a little! I feel much more confident now and have learnt what techniques work best to present the type and its not just a case of plonking some words onto a page. I am really pleased with my word clouds, these are something I will develop more on.

 

Advertising Media

ADVERTISING MEDIA (newspaper, magazines, posters why would you choose one rather than the other?)

There are more types of advertising media available today than there has ever been and more options to reach people worldwide. Below are the types of mediums available and the benefits of using them:

TELEVISION

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Television us a very powerful way to advertise, products can be targeted to the type of people who tend to watch certain shows or can be played at certain time of day or night to target a certain type of audience. Eg. Teatime – hungry people! Here are some of the advantages of advertising on TV:

• It reaches a large audience – people on average spend 50% more time watching TV than they do listening to the radio and ten times more than reading newspapers or surfing the net. The average viewer watches 47 advertisements on TV per day.
• It’s highly influential media
• Highly emotional medium – TV is the best way to communicate emotions, emotional campaigns are much more effective.
• Multi-sensory – with the use of text, images and sound it is far more effective than other advertising mediums.
• Long-term strategy – an advertisement that is showed regularly over a period of time works to create awareness, tests show that a product will become recognisable to a person on average after they have seen an advertisement between 6-9 times.
• It helps build brand fame – TV adverts are the most talked about campaigns.
• The best medium for reaching young people/children.
• Reaches your specified target audience – You can target certain audiences based on the types of TV programme the adverts are shown between and the time of day.

NEWSPAPER/MAGAZINES

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Newspapers/magazines can also be very effective at capturing a certain type of audience based on the type of magazine/newspaper and the typical type of person which chooses to read them. They usually work better when done in conjunction with other advertising media. Here are some of the reasons why this medium can be effective:

• It can evoke trust in the reader towards the brand/service being advertised – People often choose a certain magazine/newspaper and stick with it, the person has a trusting relationship with the magazine/paper of their choice, this relationship can often transfer onto the brand being advertised when done in the right context.
• They can help draw more attention to the product – magazines/newspapers are often shared, left in waiting rooms/public places and can often be a topic of conversation between friends, family and colleagues. Word of mouth is a very powerful tool in advertising.
• They can be a bridge to further interaction – the mag/paper is a tool to access people’s natural interest, they stimulate a person’s interest in a topic then direct readers in other ways to explore.
• They generate online purchases.
• It is cost-effective marketing – magazine/newspaper advertising is a 1/3 of the cost of TV.
• It is a good medium for creating eye-catching, creative campaigns, targeted at specific audiences.

RADIO

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Radio advertising is a low-cost convenient way to advertise a product or service. Obviously, as it is done purely through sound, care needs to be taken to ensure that the advert makes people listen, grabs people’s attention, melodies or jingles are often used in radio advertising, the more repetitive, catchy and annoying the better! Here are the positives of advertising with radio:

• It can capture a large audience  – sometimes without them even being aware!
• Its cost-effective – it usually costs less than other forms of advertising.
• Radio is intrusive – it communicates and influences people wherever they are – car, home, shower, work etc.
• It reaches people at work and when they are out, which makes it more likely that they will go out and buy the product.
• It can be emotive – radio is about talking and listening, a very intimate and important aspect of our lives.  It is how we interact, learn and make decisions.
• It’s great for word of mouth.  – radio IS word of mouth.
• It demands attention – everyone who has a car is likely to listen to the radio whilst driving, people are in their cars on average around 15 hours per week, with the average commute to work and back around an hour.
• Its free – people don’t have to pay to listen to the radio.
• It raises awareness.

INTERNET

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It is an increasingly digital world and online advertising is becoming one of the most popular mediums the promoting products/services. There are a variety of ways to advertise online, such as search engine results, banner ads, social network advertising and email marketing. Below are the benefits of online advertising:

• It is immediate – internet advertising can be immediately relayed to the specific target audience without any time or geographical restrictions.
• It’s globally accessible – the web is accessible to everyone all over the world, making the product/service able to reach people globally.
• It can be interactive – internet advertising can allow the consumer to click directly onto the website after seeing the advertisement.
• Its relevant – advertisements can be placed on certain websites or through typical searches to target the relevant audience.
• It is cost-effective.
• Creates brand awareness – people are spending more and more time online and the amount of internet consumers are rapidly growing, an online marketing campaign can capture a large audience and create new custom.
• Internet video streaming is replacing TV – more and more people are choosing to watch videos online rather than watching live TV, there is a great opportunity to advertise and target specific audiences through this.
• Word of mouth – social networking sites such as Facebook have  dramatically changed word of mouth through the internet. Popularity can be easily monitored and measured to find out if an advertisement campaign is working or not.

MOBILE PHONES

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I have decided to not to include telephone sales in this, as it is becoming redundant, people are much less likely to be convinced to buy a product through cold calling. However, with the increasing use of smart phones, advertisers can capture a large audience through advertising on smart apps and games for the same reasons listed above for internet advertising.

BILLBOARDS AND POSTERS

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Posters and billboards are the traditional way to advertise and although are not as globally accessible as other mediums, can be used to target specific audiences locally. Here are the benefits of this:

• It can be BIG – large billboards on roadsides or at train stations can capture people’s attention and make them think about purchases.
• It can create brand awareness – a poster campaign in an area, can create awareness if the posters are placed strategically allowing the consumer to recognise the brand.
• It has a creative opportunity – a billboard if done correctly can be eye-catching and capture the viewer’s attention.
• It is a less intrusive method of advertising – posters placed in waiting areas or on public transport can be seen as a welcome distraction to some people, the advertisement stays in one place and does not require the consumer to do anything to access it.
• It can catch people at the right time – outdoor advertising captures people’s attention when they leave their house, it can have more impact when seen when the consumer is in ‘shopping mode’ and they are out intending to purchase something.
• They can be seen for longer – this can allow to convey more information, rather than fitting everything into a 5 second ad, contact details etc can be included and are available for the consumer to take at any time.

CONCLUSION

I believe that in order to have a successful advertising campaign, a mixture of the above should be used in conjunction for maximum impact.  The main goal is to create brand awareness and ensure that the advertisements are placed strategically to target the relevant audience. Therefore the types of medium chosen need to be relevant to the type of people you are wishing to reach.

Advertisement Campaign

INITIAL IDEAS

Looking on the websites for the D&AD awards and the Roses Student Awards, the briefs that initially interested me were the National Trust, Cats and Dogs and Time Travel.

NATIONAL TRUST
Reconnect our relationship with nature and beauty. Reposition the National Trust away from its current perceived image; make it relevant to the modern visitor. Put the Trust firmly at the center of a drive to re-establish the importance of place in our lives. Create an integrated campaign that makes their brand stand for a positive impact on people’s relationship with nature and beauty, forever.

CATS & DOGS
BRIEF: Brand a weather condition.
THE MESSAGE: People love to moan about the weather – this brief is all about changing perceptions. Find the positive and promote it. Put a spin on a tornado, or make the rain shine!
OUTPUT: Brand and campaign to promote a weather condition / natural disaster, output can be anything; poster, outdoor, tv, radio, direct mail, guerilla etc…

TIME TRAVEL
BRIEF: Just imagine being able to travel back in time! Time Travel package holidays allow you to do just that. You pick the year and travel back to experience whatever you want: Woodstock, the first ever Olympics, the first Viking invasion, the fall of the Roman Empire. You can go as far back as you want. Of course you can’t change history, only travel and see. But how do you sell it?
MESSAGE: Time travel holidays are here. Book now. Book then.
OUTPUT: You can name it. Brand it. Sell it. Use any media you feel appropriate. A website, an app, short film, any promotional material, print or digital.

I got quite excited about the time travel brief, I am a self-confessed geek and my favourite film is Back to the Future! Although the subject excited me, the nagging doubt in the back of my mind was that maybe it might be too much of a challenge.  I’m quite fixed on creating my own images and without paying out for fancy dress period costumes and dressing up all my friends and family, it would be difficult. I considered ideas for targeting schools, and considered the different eras that could be visited.  I did have mind maps for all of this but I lost my sketchbook, which was annoying!

>>>>insert sketches here when found!<<<<

Cats and Dogs initially disappointed me when reading the brief as it wasnt anything to do with cats or dogs as I first thought! However, I quite liked the idea of advertising a weather condition, the first condition that came to mind was the rain/drizzle. I decided to make a mind map of all the different weather conditions that are considered negative, rain was still my favourite as it could be considered bad taste to promote disasters such as tornadoes, tsunamis, hurricanes etc.

WHY RAIN IS GOOD:

•  It makes plants grow.
• You can wear wellys.
• It gives umbrellas a purpose.
• Wet cats look funny.
• It makes things beautiful.
• Spiders webs look pretty.
• Condensation – you can draw on the window.
• Its good when you’re inside – rainy days in playing board games.
• Make rain and umbrella hats fashionable.
• Its fun to jump in puddles.
• It makes ducks happy.
• You can splash people when you drive.
• It keeps your car clean.
• Without rain there would be no rainbows.
• inside-out umbrellas
• It cleans your windows.

I figured that the 2 best ways to advertise the rain would be through humour and through promoting the beauty it creates, such as rainbows, nature, greenery, water droplets etc.

I decided to look more into the D&AD briefs, as these are more in depth and most are based on actual companies, I printed out the Sky, Uniliver, DCM and WPP, none of these jumped out at me and I was really struggling to come up with ideas, wow this is really hard!! Based on my experience with previous projects where I have had to make a choice, I had planned to make a decision early on and spend more time on the actual project.  This did not go to plan, as I am now well into March and I still haven’t made a decision!! Agghhhhh!

I decided to go back to the drawing board and look through all the briefs again, I considered the Uniliver brief more, I considered using PG tips to promote wellbeing in London. I found it difficult to come up with any ideas for this. I also considered the promote local libraries brief..

I decided to go back to my original first choice – Time Travel, if only I’d have just stuck to that in the beginning, wish I could go back in time! Ha!

TIME TRAVEL – THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME!

OK so to begin with, I decided to do a mind map of any initial ideas, I also asked others for their input. As this is a fictional product, I felt it was important to establish some ground rules for the time travel in order to make it easier to visualise. One of the most important rules of time travel is that we must not do anything that would affect the course of history, the time travel experience could be a visual experience maybe so that the travelers are not able to interact with anyone from the past. Safety would also be an issue that would need to be considered. Ways to get round these issues would be maybe avatars, some kind of viewing station, holograms or ‘Total Recall’ style memory chip. I considered making the deal bespoke so that people could pick anywhere in time but decided that actually it may be best to have a variety of package holidays for people to choose from, with specific time periods and places, aimed at specific target audiences, such as children, families, couples etc. Also I considered having ‘time cruise’ a package experience, with a tour of various themed destinations, such as ancient Greece, Roman empire and medieval Britain.

TARGET AUDIENCE

I considered the type of groups I would be targeting and whereabouts in time these groups would choose to travel to for a holiday.

• CHILDREN – prehistoric, see the dinosaurs, also option for schools to book trips.
• FAMILIES – ice age, mmm this is a tough one…! possibly a choice of options of destinations for the family to choose from to make up their holiday.
• COUPLES – French Renaissance, Roman Baths, Shakespeare, poets
• SINGLES 18-30 – psychedelic trips 60s, 70s 80s, music themed holidays
• PENSIONERS – war, travel back to see themselves younger

TYPES OF PACKAGES

• Music/band themed trips, see the Beatles, Elvis etc
• Prehistoric
• War
• Speeches, martin luther king, Lincoln etc
• Famous battles

THE STYLE

To get an idea of the type of advertisement I would like to design, I did some research on how holiday companies advertise.  I would like my company to appeal to a large audience and appear luxurious but affordable.  Holiday companies generally use a mixture of blues and yellows – beach colours, they often have a photo of the kind of destination they sell and will show pictures of people relaxing or enjoying themselves. They usually imply that you will be getting a bargain or a good value deal if you purchase your holiday with them.

ADVERTISEMENT MEDIUMS

Holiday companies do most of their advertising through TV and the  internet, they also advertise in newspapers, magazines, posters, on sides of buses, pop-ups, internet banners, social media, mail, leaflets, brand sponsorships, displays on mobile devices

The types of medium I would like to consider for my campaign are:

• a poster/leaflet
• internet banner
• magazine/newspaper advert

HOW DO YOU ADVERTISE TIME TRAVEL?

I would like to adopt a similar approach to holiday companies, with photos of people enjoying themselves on time travel holidays, ie someone sitting on Henry VIII’s lap, riding a dinosaur…

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SCRAP THAT!!  ..LETS START AGAIN!

After comparing ideas with Paul regarding the Cats&Dogs and the Time Travel campaigns, we decided that promoting the weather was the stronger of the two. Time travel is quite a difficult subject to promote and I had more ideas about how to promote the rain. This is when I discover how advertising can be so frustrating at times, you can get so far and then have to start all over again!

CATS AND DOGS – CHANGE PERCEPTIONS – PROMOTE A WEATHER CONDITION

I began by putting my ideas down on paper. I did a mind map of all possible weather conditions that could be used in this context and considered ideas for each.

 

Taking from the brief the idea of ‘changing perceptions’, I decided to go with rain/drizzle, as this is often regarded as a negative weather condition and one that we all love to moan about! It is also the condition that actually has more benefits when considered and therefore much easier to promote the positives of. From this, I created more mind maps and sketches focusing on just the rain.

From these ideas I sketched out some possible image ideas.

THEMES

I had ideas to either go with something visual, a simple image such as a pair of Wellington boots or a rainbow with an explanatory slogan about why rain is good or something purely typographic ie; a saying or a poem about the rain.  I liked the idea of going for something visual, this could either be a set of 3 posters promoting the rain or maybe a set promoting 3 different weather conditions such as snow, wind and rain.

Focusing on some of the ideas I had considered for promoting the rain, I began looking for images, ideally I would like to create my own but this may not be possible. Whilst researching, I kept in mind what theme I could consider to link the 3 images, such as nature, beauty, family etc.

THE BEAUTY OF RAIN

Rain in nature can be very beautiful, the UK is so green due to the amount of rain we have, it is good for nature and plant life.

RAINBOWS

Without rain, we wouldn’t have rainbows.  I also considered the fantasy stories about rainbows having a pot of gold at the end of them or holding some kind of mystical power and maybe using this somehow in my campaign.

WHY RAIN IS FUN TO BE OUT IN

Splashing in puddles is fun and takes adults back to their youth.  Dancing and singing in the rain can be quite liberating, forgetting about how we look etc and just having fun.  Couples can also have quite a lot of fun alone in the rain…

RAINY DAYS INDOORS

Board games are often played on rainy days, I considered using scrabble pieces to create something. It’s always more cosy indoors when its raining outside, cosy fires, cups of tea etc. I considered having something about spending your ‘rainy day fund’. Condensation on the windows was also something I considered using to communicate something. Also taking off those wet clothes when you get in can be good for couples….!

RAIN  CAN BRING US CLOSER TOGETHER!

During this research, I had a brain wave! A good theme for my campaign could be that rain brings us closer together, I made a list of possible reasons of why this could be:

• When its raining we huddle together under a brolly or under shelter.
• Rainy days indoors are a good time for  families to bond.
• Love and sex in or out of the rain.
• Fun outdoors in the rain, losing inhibitions, splashing in puddles helps people to bond.

IMAGES

SHELTER

Possible images for this could be people, couples or animals huddled under shelter.

FAMILY BONDING

Days in or out in the rain.

LOVE/SEX

Getting out of those wet clothes on a rainy day – an image I had in mind for this could be wet male and female clothes discarded, image of steamed up rainy window in the background. Bringing couples closer together in the rain – huddled under a brolly, kissing/sex in the rain, or cuddled up indoors.

FUN IN THE RAIN

This could be for any age group or status – having fun brings us closer together, splashing in puddles, singing, dancing etc.

THE CAMPAIGN

I  need to consider my typography, I have some sayings/slogans in mind

• “ITS RAINING ITS POURING….”
• “ENJOY THE RAIN OR JUST GET WET”
• “THE HEAVENS HAVE OPENED”
• “IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS”
• “LET THE RAIN WASH AWAY THE PAIN OF YESTERDAY”
• “NO-ONE CAN SEE YOUR TEARS IN THE RAIN”
• “LIFE ISN’T ABOUT WAITING FOR THE STORM TO PASS, ITS ABOUT LEARNING TO DANCE IN THE RAIN”
• “I KNOW THERE’S SUNSHINE BEHIND THAT RAIN”
• “EVERYBODY WANTS HAPPINESS, NOBODY WANTS PAIN BUT YOU CAN’T HAVE A RAINBOW WITHOUT A LITTLE RAIN”
• “ANYONE WHO SAYS SUNSHINE BRINGS HAPPINESS HAS NEVER DANCED IN THE RAIN”
• “SAVE IT FOR A RAINY DAY”
• “RAINY MONDAYS”

Although there are some good slogans that can be used for this campaign, I feel I would be better to gather my images and then try to fit a slogan with the picture.

OK, so now I’ve got some good ideas in mind for the types of images I would like to use, I now need to get on with creating or finding these images, luckily for me its raining so I better get out there!..

RESEARCH

I wanted my poster campaign to be simple, eye-catching, with a message that would make the viewer want to explore more, I did some research on campaigns which used this simplicity effectively. I found a campaign for the oscars, the images used are very emotive and do most of the talking, with the typography detail minimal. I think this style works effectively to grab the viewer’s attention and make them want to know more.

The images I have chosen for my campaign are quite emotive, in that they are intended to make the viewer think about their own emotions and loved ones, I did some research on other campaigns where the power of emotion works to deliver a message.

  

These use a powerful image with simple typography, I looked into more poster campaigns which used simplicity to relay the message.

POSTER DESIGN

RAINBOW

I wanted an image of a rainbow, I searched several images on the web but none were big enough to use in a poster, so instead of going out and searching for a rainbow, I decided to create my own. I used one of my own images, taken during the Visual Communication Assignment. I chose this one due to the clouds and sky looking like the right climate for a rainbow to appear in.

 

Using Photoshop, I rotated the canvas and stretched out the image, using the tutorial http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/rainbow/ I created a double rainbow effect onto my image. This was done using the gradient tool and layer masks.

 

The final image, I’m really happy with this image, the rainbow looks quite effective, I now need to come up with a slogan.

 

FROGS

I found this image during my research and loved it, the frog is using a leaf to shelter his partner from the rain, I thought this would be a good image to use to communicate ‘Rain Bring us Closer Together’ Below is an idea of how I would like the poster to look, I need to do more work on the typography.

I added the website address as I would like to have a go at designing a website for this..

 

EUREKA!

I went away and had a think about this, I gathered images from the net and even tried to create some of my own, I chose some favourites and edited them to try to fit with the theme of ‘rain bringing us closer together’ and felt like I was getting nowhere… It felt like I had been thinking of possible outcomes forever and not coming up with anything!

I took a break then began looking through my images and somehow it all seemed to come together! With the help pf my darling husband, we looked through some of my favourite images and tried to think of words to describe the image. I was amazed at how quickly it all came together! For a while I had felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere and was just searching through images and sketching ideas to no avail and then I created the following posters in all of 5 minutes! Thats the deal with advertising, a concept can grow so quickly and become a campaign in minutes!  As said previously,  I wanted to make my ads simple, one word to catch the eye then details of my website underneath.  Heres what we came up with.

FAMILY

Target market – families, parents

After asking my mum to find our old scrabble board and searching through every charity shop in Sheffield I decided to bite the bullet and look on the web. I found this image of the scrabble pieces, I cut them out and put the image of the rain behind them using Photoshop. This is to symbolise staying in with the family playing board games, whilst its raining outside. Bringing the FAMILY closer together.

 

FRIENDSHIP

Target market – Young people

 

I found the picture of the bird in the rain, I duplicated and adjusted him using Photoshop to make his friend, isolated the shelter and reduced the saturation in the rest of the image.  This image symbolises sharing with a friend, getting close under shelter, sharing the nuts etc

KINDNESS

Target market – Adults

 

I thought this image beautifully depicted kindness, the frog is such a gentleman! The rain has brought them closer together.

LOVE

Target market – Couples, any age group

 

 

I reduced the saturation of this image to tie in with the theme of the others. The couple getting close under an umbrella in the rain demonstrates love in the rain.

 

NURTURE

Target market – parents

 

I thought this was a lovely image, I had to do some patchwork to make it fit A3, I isolated the umbrella and reduced the saturation to make the umbrella stand out, I kept some of the pinkness in the flowers to add depth. This symbolises a father and daughter getting close under an umbrella in the rain.

PASSION

Target market – women

 

Sex is a very powerful tool in advertising, this couple are clearly making the most of the wet weather!

SACRIFICE

Target market – young people, cat lovers!

This is one of my favourite images for obvious reasons! It seems that the larger cat is a little displeased about the other cat sharing his umbrella space but he’s putting up with it! He’s making a sacrifice for another in the rain.

The typeface used is Helvetica Rounded- Black, set at 118pt on A3. I wanted to use a rounded typeface to give a friendly, cuddly effect. If this was a real campaign, I would take more time perfecting these posters.

The persuasive elements I have used to convey the message are emotions and humour, to capture a wider audience as possible. As the brief is to change people’s perceptions, it is not to sell to a particular type of consumer, it is to deliver a message to as many people as possible. As I have been able to choose the website name, the website address explains what the campaign is about. If I were not able to obtain a web address similar to this, I would consider using a # hashtag or simply saying ‘I love rain’ above the address to create the same simplistic effect. I want the posters to create intrigue in the viewer, to prompt them to find out more, this is why I have chosen not to give too much away in the posters, this technique works for some people but not for others, which is why it needs to be an integrated campaign.

WEBSITE

To tie the whole poster campaign together, I designed a website. The idea is that the posters will be dotted around all over to capture people’s interest, the details of the website appear at the bottom. I would also have web banner ads, with a link to the website.

INTERNET BANNERS

To lead people to the website, I decided internet banners would be effective, the different images would be placed strategically on certain types of websites/search engines to target the audience they are intended for ie friendship on Facebook, family on children’s clothing/toys sites, in order to reach a large audience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is a leaderboard banner size 728 px X 90 px.

Above is a large rectangle internet banner, size 336 px X 280 px.

POSTER DISPLAY

I figured a good place to place my posters would be on bus shelters, as often this is where people will shelter from the rain.

OTHER ADVERTISING MEDIUMS

The campaign could include distribution of umbrellas with the website details printed on them, this would be at a low cost and create awareness via a relevant medium.

 

BILLBOARDS

 

As this is a local campaign, to promote the rain in the UK, banners would be effective to catch the attention of drivers in the rain.

In addition to this, I would place the posters on the side of buses and in newspapers.

CONCLUSION

I have found this project very enlightening and enjoyable. I feel I have learnt a lot about advertising and the different mediums available. I have also found that advertising can be quite a challenge, the ideas can be flowing, yet I found it often felt like I wasn’t achieving a great deal. However,after some perseverance, the ideas came together and I had a ‘Eureka’ moment,’! All the sketches, research and ideas I had been doing for months came into fruition, I found that everything fell into place and the campaign came together in a matter of minutes. The main thing I will take away from this is that the research, idea building and background knowledge is crucial and this work becomes the essential building blocks to any advertisement campaign.

 

And my chosen subject is….

We have been asked to consider a subject that interests us and gather relevant research and information regarding, whilst considering contextual studies. My chosen subject is.. (drum roll) …Animals! I really couldn’t decide what subject to chose, after discussing this with Mark he suggested that I look into art through the ages and how animals have been used/portrayed over the years.  I decided to start with the renaissance and work my way through the art movements, researching animals within art. Whilst I was doing this, I was pleased to discover cats featured quite a lot in art history! So now my subject will be my favourite things in the world – CATS!!  Yes I am the craziest cat lady in the world and I’m not ashamed to admit it!

CATS IN ART

Cats feature regularly in art history, this reflects the changing perceptions of these creatures and what certain cultures believed the cat symbolised. I have decided to work through the artistic movements in history and show how cats are portayed by the artists.

 

CATS DURING THE RENAISSANCE

During the Renaissance period, cats were often seen as familiars to witches

 

Animals Throughout Art to the Present Day

Animals have appeared in art throughout history, dating back to The Stone Age, where caves were decorated with etchings of animals being hunted, to the present day where deceased animals are used in modern art. Animals have been highly symbolic in art, representing various emotions or periods in time. When looking through art history and the use of animals it is clear that they have always played a big part in our lives, humans have always embraced and enjoyed them, whether as pets, hunting companions or a food source. They have offered the artists a chance to represent what they are trying to portray in their art and often have a hidden meaning. Art gives us a good idea of how animals were viewed dependant on the period in which the pieces were created. Tribal art from around the globe signifies the bond between man and his natural environment.

STONE AGE

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These images are from the Caves at Lascaux, France, they were discovered in 1940 and are thought to have been drawn as early as 15000 BC. The images include horses, bison, bulls, deer etc often shown being hunted. The images represent how civilisation was in this time, hunters and gatherers who sheltered in caves.

ANCIENT EGYPT

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Animals were used in Ancient Egyptian religious art to illustrate gods, often images would be seen with people wearing animals heads, which represented their goals. Animals were sacred to the ancient egyptians, they were reared for food or kept as pets. Animals are highly symbolic features in early Egyptian art, they were often depicted as being magical or possessing powers which humans didn’t. The Egyptians understood and admired animals, recognising those which were dangerous and studying the survival and hunting techniques of them. Cats were significant in ancient egypt, they were domesticated pets and also a symbol of cat gods, they symbolise grace and were admired for their hunting abilities.

MEDIEVAL

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Animals in Medieval periods are often depicted as mythical beasts, animal motifs were popular in this time and animals were often used to illustrate bibles. These images portray the power and the beauty in animals.

RENAISSANCE

PIERODI COSIMO – A SATYR MOURNING OVER NYMPH – 1462

Animals in art were highly symbolic during the Renaissance, sketching from life was part of it and it seems dogs were happy to pose! In the above image the dog symbolises companionship. Dogs often appears in Renaissance art beside their masters, the loyal companion.

PISANELLO – THE VISION OF SAINT EUSTACE – 1455

Here the little terrior is displayed as the family pet loyally beside its master whilst hunting. The elegant greyhounds depict them as the luxury pet they were in this era.

THE ARTISTS

I have picked out some of the most influential artists over history who have used animals in their work and looked into the reasons behind this.

ALBRECHT DURRER 1471-1528

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German renaissance artist Albrecht Durrer included animals in a lot of his work, he recognised the beauty in animals and saw them as something to be admired and worthy of attention.

LEONARDO DA VINCI 1489-1490

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Da Vinci had a real love for animals and nature, this is documented in his early biographies, he even questioned the morality of eating animals and was believed to be a vegetarian, which in his time would have been unheard of. It is beleived he hated the idea of taking life for the purpose of food. His love of animals is apparent in his art and the studies of animals. Leonardo wrote this is his notebooks, it appears that Da VInci was one of the first known animal activists.

“If you are as you have described yourself the king of the animals — it would be better for you to call yourself king of the beasts since you are the greatest of them all! — why do you not help them so that they may presently be able to give you their young in order to gratify your palate, for the sake of which you have tried to make yourself a tomb for all the animals? Even more I might say if to speak the entire truth were permitted me.” (MacCurdy, Edward (1956) [1939]. The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci)

LADY WITH ERMINE (DA VINCI)

This painting is an example of animals used as symbolism in art, the woman in the painting is identified as Cecilia Gallerani, a mistress of Da Vinci’s employer, she is painted holding a ermine or weasel. Her identity was confirmed when they discovered that the first 2 syllables of her surname matched the Greek word for weasel.

GEORGE STUBBS 1724 – 1806

George Stubbs was mostly known for his lifelike paintings of horses,Stubbs was interested in anatomy, which he studied at York County Hospital,  he also spent 18 months dissecting horses, which is probably why his horse paintings are so accurate. He was popular with horse-riding dukes and lords, commissioned to paint pictures of individual horses. He had a strong interest in nature and believed it was superior to art. The pictures of the wallaby and dingo, native australian animals are interesting, as Stubbs only went as far as Rome in his lifetime, so had never laid eyes on these animals, the accuracy is amazing.

EUGENE BOUNDIN 1864

Boundin’s paintings often featured dogs in the foreground of his paintings of tourists on the beach. He also did many landscapes featuring cows.

PAUL GAUGUIN – 1888

Paul Gauguin painted whilst living in Brittany, a lot of his art was inspired by Van Gogh when he introduced him to Japanese prints. Gaughuin abandoned the naturalistic colours and depictions.

VINCENT VAN GOGH 1853-1890

Van Gogh included animals in much of his work, the painting of the 2 crabs was thought to be painted after his release from hospital in the later years of his career, it was inspired by Japanese prints.

JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID 1748-1825

Perhaps one of Jacques most famous pieces is  Napoleon Crossing the alps, painted on an Arabian Stallion. In his neoclassical style he shows the elagance and power of the horse.

GUSTAV KLIMT – 1862-1918

klimt was known for his symbolistic paintings during the art nouveau movement. His paintings were very deep and often had hidden meanings. Klimt was controversial in his time, was, his work was highly erotic, he spent his days in a robe and no underwear with cats in his studio.

PABLO PICASSO 1881 – 1973

Known for founding the Cubist movement, among Picassos paintings are images of cats, Pablo loved cats and they often found their way into his art. The last picture ‘La Columbe’ (The Dove 1949) was designed to be a symbol of peace and hope during the cold war, it was peace movement that made him famous. The image was actually originally intended to be a pigeon.

SUZANNE VALADON 1918

Suzanne Valadon was known to be a bit of an eccentric surrounded by her beloved cats and these feature often in her work. She was one of the first successful female artists, in a male dominated period.

SALVADOR DALI 1904-1989

Master of surrealism Salvador Dali often depicted animals in his artwork with long, arachnid type legs, in particular elephants, which were often painted with long spindly legs carrying a heavy weight, symbolising the strength these creatures have. Many of his paintings are of surreal images of animals, like the elephants reflecting swans and the burning of the giraffe. Dali also had a pet Ocelot wild cat named Babou and he was a great lover of animals.

FRIDA KAHLO 1943 – SELF PORTRAIT WITH MONKEYS

Frida’s work consisted of 55 self-portraits, and this was before selfies and facebook! She has many paintings of her with monkeys.

DOVIMA WITH ELEPHANTS – RICHARD AVEDON 1955

In the age of Haute Couture, the picture of model Dovima in a Doir dress with elephants became an iconic picture. The dress was the first evening dress designed by Doir and the elephants were circus elephants.

ANDY WARHOL – COW 1976

One of the first screen prints created by Warhol is The Cow.

JEFF KOONS – BALLOON DOG – 1994-2000

Jeff Koons 12 foot sculpture broke records as being the most expensive piece of art sold at auction for $58 million.

DAMIAN HIRST

Damian Hirst member of the YBA is famous for his controversial artwork of animals preserved in formaldahide contained in steel and glass. The Tiger shark ‘The Physical impossibility of Death in the MInd of Someone Living’ 1991 weighed in at 23 tonnes.

KEHINDE WILEY – OFFICER OF THE HUSSARS – 2007

Inpired by the hip hop generation Wiley blurs boundaries between traditional and contemporary styles.

BANKSY

Banksy’s most recognised stencil art is that of the rats in various humerous poses. One of his latest controversial pieces’ Sirens of the Lambs’ in New york is a slaughterhouse truck filled with stuffed animals, bringing the issues of animal cruelty and factory farming to the streets.

It is clear animals have always been loved and admired by artists and this comes across in the work created.

Corporate Identity Design Project

THE BRIEF

Our brief is to design a unique corporate marque/logotype for a company operating within a given, specific area of commerce and to apply this marque to a range of elements within a corporate identity scheme.

 

RESEARCH

What is Corporate Identity?

Corporate Identity is the image, branding and the context of a company or firm. A good corporate identity successfully reflects the personality, values and intention of a company, it conveys the message which the company would like to give, through the use of colours, shapes, typography, logos and to consistency throughout the produce, merchandise and communication materials and literature.
Why is it important?

It is important for a company or firm to have an identity, which reflects their corporate values, is eye-catching and memorable to potential customers also consistent and recognisable to the consumer. A Logotype can become a trademark for a successful company and helps towards the firm becoming a trusted, familiar brand.
Logotypes need to be eye-catching legible and communicate a little about what the company is about.

 

British Telecom (BT)

The current logo ‘The Connected World’ is designed to reflect BT’s corporate values; trustworthiness, inspirational, straight-forward, heart.

BT 1980-1991

1991 – 2003

The marque has changed considerably over time, they have re-branded and had a new corporate identity , modernising each time to coincide with the progress of the telecoms industry over the years. In 1991, they changed their name to B.T and adapted their identity to match this, they introduced the ‘piper’. The marque was designed by Wolff Olins. In 2003, BT modernised its identity and replaced the piper with the more modern logo we see today. They kept the original B.T logotype designed by Wolf Olins and worked jointly with AT&T to produce the new identity.

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The BT marque is used in a wide variety of applications and needs to be recognisable in a variety of different sizes. BT’s current marque is very effective and when tied in with promotion of the ‘open world’ network, the marque signifies this very well.

WWF

WWF is a very recognisable marque, it is designed to communicate on many levels and overcome any language barriers, which I think it does effectively. Over the years the marque has not strayed too much away from the original design, created by Sir Peter Scott in 1961, who was the founder of the organisation. Although, the panda appears to have become cuter over the years!

The image evokes compassion, it is extremely appealing on many levels. The use of the endangered species the panda works well to evoke positivity. The panda is a widely recognised and well loved animal and will appeal to a diverse range of people from all over the world. The marque is simple yet effective, it uses black shapes and the negative space creates the shape of the panda. They introduced the WWF logotype in 1986. The marque has worked well to promote awareness of the organisation’s cause and it’s consistency has kept it a recognisable and much loved identity.

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The use of just the colour black and the negative space allows the marque to be placed in a variety of environmental and product applications. The marque will stand out on most colours, so there would be no need to have any variants of it for print purposes.

Bic

Bic is short for the founder’s name Marcel Bich. Bic is again a very recognisable brand identity, the use of the ‘Bic Boy’ allows for the identity to have a personality. The boy was originally designed to be a French school boy, his head is designed represent the pens. The boy was originally designed for an advertisement for pens, it was then developed to become part of the corporate marque and is now one of the most recogonised identities in the world. Bic’s identity has remained consistent over the years and has not altered its identity.

The marque was designed by Monsieur Raymond Savignac, a French designer. The colours used are PANTONE 1235 C, Black and white, the yellow colour represents happiness, sunshine and evokes positivity in the product. The Logotype is within a slanted rectangle, which demonstrates the casual approach of the organisation.The marque works well to portray the company’s core values and helps to promote their products.

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CHOOSING A COMPANY

Whilst doing my research, I considered the options and found that communication/broadband providers were most appealing to me, I felt that something interesting could be done with the brand name ‘Link’ as it is the only name which actually means something.  I also considered ‘Viga’ broadband, as I considered making the ‘V’ and the ‘A’ a focal point of the design.  Other areas I considered were the bank ‘Northbank’ and ‘Alpha Airlines’.  Based on these initial ideas, I did further research into these types of companies to consider ideas for my design. I really wanted to try and create a design using negative space, so considered this during my research.

 

Telecommunication Companies

I noticed that logotypes for telecommunication companies were very varied and did not really have a particular theme, they need to be quite simple to ensure that they can be used in a variety of ways and be recognisible and legible on a small scale to be used on the back of mobile phones, sim cards etc.  I also found that there is quite a lot of scope with the merchandise that the logo can be used on, apps, phones, correspondence, dongles etc.

 

Broadband Providers

Broadband providers use quite sophisticated logotypes, again all are very varied, although broadband for some companies is an extra service they provide to their main provision and they have had to adapt their logo to represent broadband.

 

Airlines

Airline identities need a logotype than can be produced on a large scale, obviously to go on the side of a plane, it also needs to be used on small scale for internet advertising, inflight produce and tickets etc.  Often the designs incorporate a shape of the tail of a plane as generally this is where they are displayed on the aircraft.

Bank/Building Societies

Identities for bank/building societies need to appear corporate and trusting, the symbols used in them are often quite complex, such as the horse for TSB. Although this one initially wasn’t one of my favourite companies to use, I considered the name ‘Northbank’ and thought maybe something interesting could be creating focusing on ‘the north’ part of it.

 

LINK – TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY

I decided to choose Link Telecommunications as the company to create an identity for.

 

THE DESIGN

I wanted to design something quite simple, yet striking, I wanted to try and incorporate some negative space into the mark if possible and wanted the mark to be clever with some hidden meaning. I first looked into the meaning of the word ‘link’ for inspiration, I also looked up chain link, together, unity, connection and join.

Link

n.

1. One of the rings or loops forming a chain.

2.

a. A unit in a connected series of units: links of sausage; one link in a molecular chain.

b. A unit in a transportation or communications system.

c. A connecting element; a tie or bond: grandparents, our link with the past.

3.

a. An association; a relationship: The Alumnae Association is my link to the school’s present administration.

b. A causal, parallel, or reciprocal relationship; a correlation: Researchers have detected a link between smoking and heart disease.

4. A cuff link.

5. Abbr. li A unit of length used in surveying, equal to 0.01 chain, 7.92 inches, or about 20.12 centimeters.

6. A rod or lever transmitting motion in a machine.

7. Computer Science A segment of text or a graphical item that serves as a cross-reference between parts of a hypertext document or between files or hypertext documents. Also called hotlink, hyperlink.

v. linked, link·ing, links

v.tr.

1. To connect with or as if with a link: linked the rings to form a chain. See Synonyms at join.

2. Computer Science To make a hypertext link in: linked her webpage to her employer’s homepage.

v.intr.

1. To become connected with or as if with a link: The molecules linked to form a polymer.

2. Computer Science To follow a hypertext link: With a click of the mouse, I linked to the company’s website.

 

Using this research for inspiration, I put my pen to paper and began to sketch out some ideas, I did this over a period of time and tried a variety of different designs.

Whilst sketching my ideas, I continued to look up images relating to telecommunications, mobile phones, link, communications etc to help inspire me. I liked the idea of having a hand in my design, I looked up other logos with hands.

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I had the idea of incorporating a hand making the ‘call me’ sign.

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I really liked this idea and tried different variations using different drawing techniques and shapes. From my sketches, I began working on my designs in Adobe Illustrator.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE DESIGN

Now that I had the basics of my design, I tried out different ways of presenting it, different colours, different fonts, different backgrounds etc.

MY FINAL SYMBOL DESIGN

My symbol is made up of oblong rounded shapes set at a 55o angle. I chose green/lime colours to show freshness/vibrancy, I found I preferred the symbol to stand alone, without a background.

THE LOGOTYPE

Now that I have  my symbol, I need to create my logotype, I wanted to choose a font which kept consistent with the rounded shapes of the symbol, I decided to go with Helvetica Rounded Bold and named the organisation Link Telecom. I used the colours CMYK Process – C=75% M=0% Y=75% K=0% (the darker green) and CMYK Process – C=40% M=5% Y=95% K=0% (lighter green) and used these colours in the type to keep consistency. I felt that there was something missing, I wanted to add more rounded shapes to keep in context with the design. After some messing around with it, I decided that the dot on the ‘i’ looked good in the link darker green colour. I decided to keep the type in lowercase as it was in-keeping with the youthfulness I would like the marque to portray. And there you have it my Marque!

CREATING THE IDENTITY

So, I’ve designed a symbol and a logotype, I’ve chosen my preferred colour scheme, thinking that is all that an organisation would need for their identity…. oh no, theres so much more I find to creating a corporate identity.  I looked through some sample corporate manuals to get an idea of what was required… oh dear theres LOTS more work to do….

STATIONERY

Not knowing where to start, I decided to begin with stationery, designs are required for a letterhead, compliments slip and business card.

Letterhead

Pretty straightforward, after messing around with the layout, I decided that this was best. I added a bar at the bottom and made this link dark green. It was at this point that I decided I needed a tagline, I wrote down my ideas for words that could be used.

I decided to go with ‘make the connection felt that this linked the communication element and the name ‘link’.  I checked that it had not been used for any other company, which it hadn’t.

Compliments Slip

The size is w210mm X h99mm, I simply copied the layout from the letterhead.

Business Card

The size is w85mm X 55mm, I decided to go with the portrait view and keep the layout in line with the other stationery after trying other alternatives and reversing the colours. Right, its starting to look like a proper business now!!

APPLICATIONS

I decided to move onto the fun part, product application! I began by researching typical produce of telecoms companies.

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DONGLE

This was done quite easily on photoshop, I added the marque, lowered the opacity slightly, then added some noise to it to blend in with the image.

SMART PHONE

Again this was done quite easily with not much editing needed, I added the marque and tagline, changed the network provider in  the top left to ‘link’.

SHOP FRONT

I found it difficult to find any decent pictures of mobile phone stores that could be used for my applications, so I decided to go out and take a picture of my own. The staff at Carphone Warehouse were very pleased with this, as you can see in the image below if you look closely! Thanks guys!

I reduced the size of the image and added my sign using photoshop.

Using the distort tool, I positioned the sign so that it appeared to be set at the right angle, I added some shading using the gradient tool to make the sign appear to be going into the wall, I replaced the colour of the paintwork to match the corporate colours.  I then cut out the lamp post using the pen tool and duplicated this into another layer above my sign.

RECEPTION

Now I was starting to get a little brave at doing this, so I decided to design a reception for the company’s head office, I chose a modern design office to work with, which already had similar colours to my corporate ones.

Using the ‘Vanishing Point’ tool I placed the symbol behind the desk, I cut out the chair and some of the desk and duplicated it onto another layer above this. Using the brush tool, I added some green in the transparent parts of the chair back so that it appeared more realistic. I changed the blending mode to multiply and added some shading in parts where needed using the gradient tool.  I then replaced the colour of two of the coloured boxes on the desk with a colour similar to the link darker green. I added the marque to the front of the desk and used the distort tool to align it correctly with the angle of the image.

I changed the picture on the wall to a picture of my marque and also distorted this. I replaced the reflection on the floor with a flipped version of my picture, distorted it to fit and lowered the opacity to make it appear like a reflection, I had to erase the image underneath with the brush tool so that it didn’t show through. I added a ‘link’ cup and put it on the desk, again I added shading with the gradient tool to make it appear realistic. I then added a frosted glass effect of my marque to the three windows in the background. I did this by placing my marque over the window, distorting it to make it fit, then I selected the path of it, whilst on the background layer, duplicated this then lowered the opacity.

T-SHIRTS

This was relatively easy to do once I had found a good image to work with, I wanted to do this to show the variants of the marque with different backgrounds. I added the marque to the t-shirts and slightly warped/distorted them to fit with the shape.

MODEM

I did this to show how the marque could be used on a small scale. I added the marque, changed the blending mode slightly, then distorted it to fit.

MOUSEMAT

Again this was relatively easy to do, using the distort tool.. you get the idea…!

MUG

To do this I placed the marque over the image of the mug and spherized it to a percentage that made it appear to be printed on the mug.

NAME BADGE

SIGNAGE

I didn’t use all of my product applications in my manual as I didn’t want it to appear too cluttered.

COVER DESIGNS

For the manual, I need to produce cover designs for a A4 brochure and three 1/3 A4 leaflets, I tried many different ways of doing this and decided to go with the ones below:

I decided to use one of the fingers from my marque as the shape with which to put the images in and use a gradient blend of the link darker green and white as the background. I made sure the measurements were precise and ensured that all the leaflets were uniform without any inconsistencies.

PRIME MARQUE ELEMENTS

For the corporate manual, there needs to be some guidelines regarding the marque and the proportions of the elements in relation to each other. This is so that the organisation can scale the marque up or down to any size and still keep the integrity of the design and its proportions. To do this, there needs to be a measurement ‘X’ that can be used to measure other elements of the marque. I must admit I found this very confusing and  I knew I would find this difficult. I chose to use the height of the type as a guide to begin with and used this to show the proportional relationships between the elements of the marque. Using these guides the marque can be scaled up or down without losing the proportional dimensions of the marque. I also calculated the angle at which the symbol needs to be placed.

SAFE ZONES

The manual also requires guidelines as to the minimum area at which text or images can be placed next to the marque. The areas I have marked, using ‘X” as a guide is the minimum clear space which should be kept around the marque to preserve its integrity.

PERMITTED VARIANTS

So that the organisation has options when printing the marque, there needs to be guidelines as to the permitted variants.

NONE-PERMITTED VARIANTS

As with the permitted variants, there also needs to be rules as what can’t be done with the marque. This could be endless but the above represents some of the common mistakes that can be made when using the marque.

COLOURS

I regretted choosing my own colours when I came to this bit! I found the closest PANTONE colours so that printing options are available. There also needs to be guides to the secondary colours which can be used when others are not available.

TYPOGRAPHY

The manual requires a guide as to what typefaces are permitted in the corporate identity. As I had used Helvetica for the typeface, I decided to use a range of Helvetica typefaces which would work well in any corporate documents.

THE MANUAL

I combined all the above elements in a formatted order into my corporate manual, using the ‘Blurb Book Creator’ and InDesign.  I kept the layout design in-keeping with the ‘Link Telecom’ corporate identity, with the use of the corporate colours and marque elements. Below are examples of my page layouts.

CONCLUSION

I have found this project to be an excellent learning curve., challenging, stressful and quite boring at times if I’m honest! ! I feel confident that I could produce manuals for other companies in the future and I have learnt a lot throughout the whole process. I am now aware of the importance of a corporate identity and the philosophy behind it. The many components of the manual which I initially found a little over the top, I now see as necessary  when creating an identity for an organisation. Uniformity and consistency is crucial in maintaining the integrity of an identity and it is not just a case of designing a ‘logo’ as I naively first thought! Now that I am aware what is involved when producing a corporate manual, I would do some things differently in future. in terms of colours used and sizing. I will consider the elements of the marque whilst designing and be thinking about how to keep the uniformity.

All in all I am very pleased with my final outcome, I think it looks professional and I am confident I have covered everything required for a corporate identity.

BOOM! (as a certain someone would say!)

Aesthetic Theory

WHAT IS IT?

Aesthetic Theory is a philosophy around the idea of what is considered to be beautiful. In the context of art, aesthetics can be a subjective point, as what one individual considers beautiful, another would not. Projects such as the Chelsea Flower Show use the theory of aesthetics, they judge the entries based on ‘intentionality’,  has the designer portrayed the message they intended to, they judge this based on a set rules and criteria which define the display  as beautiful or not.

Such criteria involved in judging would be:

• Overall impression – impact, originality, theatre, scale
• Objectives – have the design objectives been achieved.
• Construction – material selection, quality, workmanship, finish.
• Choice of Plants – quality, colour, texture, plant association, relevance
• Overall Design – unity, balance, creativity, spatial awareness

PAVILIONS

A Pavillion is a structure, designed by architects to represent the country/area it is being designed for. They are large scale structures, reflecting the core values and intention of the town, village or country. Included below are some examples from the Serpentine Pavilion in London, where a new pavilion is designed and built annually.

The Annual Pavilion Project is held in Shanghai and architects from all over the world are given the opportunity to design a pavilion for their country to be erected  for tourists to visit.. We looked at the Pavilion designed by Thomas Heatherwick for Great Britain

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The structure is named the’ Seed Cathedral’, it is made up of 60,000 acrylic rods inserted with 250,000 seeds, designed to reflect the plight to save seeds from banks round the world. It won the BIE Gold award for best pavilion design and cost £25 million to build in 2010, which apparently is cheaper than it has cost other entries.

SHEFFIELD PAVILION

We were tasked to design our own pavilion for Sheffield, to be placed somewhere like Devonshire Green.  I had several ideas for this, initial ideas were around music, rivers, steel etc. Words that came to mind when considering Sheffield were:

• River Sheaf/Don
• Steel
• Trees
• Parks
• Cycling
• Universities
• Music
• SPOONS!

I decided to design a Spoon water feature, incorporating the history of Sheffield’s spoon making trade, which went bust in 1985 due to Asian imports and also the rivers. The structure would be essentially a giant spoon at an angle to allow water to flow through and over it, there would be areas for people to sit.

THE SPOON!

 

Styles in Objects

RENAISSANCE

Inspired by art and architecture in ancient Rome, busts of men and women in a circle and mythological characters are often featured in this style.

GOTHIC

The Gothic style features pointed arches, curving biblical figures with strong emotive influence.

BOROQUE

Baroque style objects often have scrolling motifs of foliage, garlands and flowers decorating them. Chubby infants and the decorative use of people’s initials are also found in this style.

ROCOCO

Asymmetry was common in this style, often one side does not match the other, the items feature curved forms which resemble the letters S and C and leaf designs.

NEOCLASSICAL

 

Characteristics of this style include hanging garlands, ribbons, flowers, beading and buds based on the classical Roman decoration. Classical figures, real and mythical creatures feature in the designs.

VICTORIAN

Above is a Victorian Gothic revival cabinet, medieval styles appear often in the Victorian era, with a more elaborate style.

ART NOUVEAU

Leaf motifs, curved, linear shapes, rounded corners.

ART DECO

Influence from Cubism and Surrealism, Egyptian and African folk art are evident in the lines and embellishments, and Asian influences contribute symbolism, grace and detail.

MODERNISM

Modern furniture features a collection of styles, it moves on from the traditional, symmetrical styles for a more modern, unconventional style.

POST MODERNISM

Moving on from simplistic modernism, this controversial style embraces contradiction and is designed to make a statement rather than for functionality.

3D PRINTING – THE NEXT MOVEMENT…?

Over time the styles have changed incredibly and we have become more and more industrialised. Skilled workers and craftsmen are becoming obsolete as we are moving into a more digitalised world. Designs can now be made digitally and printed out in a 3D form, which I feel loses the beauty in objects, the beauty comes from the hard work and detail put into a piece, which we seem to have now lost.