Campaign Poster Draft 2

Having focussed on the idea of hands and adding other positions of hands rather than just 'hands in the air' I played around with this idea and created an A3 mock up:

Think this is more fun and interesting compared to the first idea but is still missing an edge.. back to the drawing board!

Development: Other Hand Positions

After our first critique, it was suggested that we made our campaign more interesting and fun while keeping the same template of an idea.

To begin to change this, we decided to look at other hand positions we could incorporate into the poster/leaflets; each relevant to the age category that each of the 3 events are targeted at. Broken down:

Alight: Daylight -
Children's
Adults
Elderly
Fist
Clicking of fingers
Waving
Reaching
Hands in air

Alight: Twilight -
Children
Teenagers
Adults
Elderly
Waving
Reaching
Pointing
Clicking
Hands in air

Alight: Into the Night -
Students
Young adults
Adults
Fist pumping
Peace sign
Swearing?
Pointing
Rock and roll sign
Hands in air

I thought it would be valuable to mimic some of these myself and then draw them, adding them  into the existing poster ideas to see the contrast and whether or not its an improvement...

Stamps, Wristbands etc Research

We had previously considered the use of stamps and wristbands but never took this idea any further when sketching etc. We felt that although stamps could work well, after doing some primary research with a cross section of people we fund that they would prefer paraphernalia which they could keep (such as stickers and possibly wristbands) as stamps would be washed off. For the majority of the older audience stamps are not as popular as they are with students and young adults and are often seen as dirty and not very 'classy'.

Wristbands, however are popular with the younger generations and could be kept by the older generation but not necessarily worn - many festival goers keep their fabric made wristbands on for months, if not years after attending the event for social status, conversation starters and memorabilia. the main problem with these is how would they be distributed and seeing as our clients budget is literally ZERO this would probably not be a viable option for her.

There would be three main options for the material of the wristbands, paper would be the lowest cost:

Sticker Research

I used Google search toolbar to look at children's stickers, which is the market we thought we should aim these at; school children given them at school - take them home for parents to see which will encourage parents to go etc. 

All the designs that were most popular were very bright, colourful, interesting shapes, bold outlines, fun etc which is something we need to really consider if this is going to be our audience for these..

However, we might not want to isolate other segments of the target audience as the stickers could be given out in Sheffield City Centre on the days leading up to the event to passers by etc. This is something we need to look at when continuing to design and develop this idea further.

Beer Mat Research

After having the idea of using beer mats to target a certain sector of our target audience and designing a few round outlines and shapes we  were finding it difficult to fit the information onto our hand shaped template, so i decided to look at some existing beer mats for some inspiration and to focus on whether there is a particular layout etc. Below are the top 3 rows of search from Google:

The main principle I have found is that they use bold blocks of colour, large font, large images and if they are including a larger amount of copy it is contained in one place. 

I then tried to search for 'hand shaped beer mats' to see if there were already any out there. There were not; is this a good thing because ours will be the first? Or does it mean we need to rethink our strategy as the shape is not aesthetically pleasing/wasteful to produce etc, maybe we should consider a hand in a circle/square beermat? Or a hand in a more curcular, rounded shape?

@HLWharton

Twitter: "You have activated your account. Thanks!"
After about 3 attempts to sign up but never getting anywhere, I have finally created a Twitter account, this will enable me to follow agencies, creatives and so on and keep up to date with the current affairs within advertising and the design world. The trip to London made me aware just how important this site is within the industry and how it can be used to gain contact/information about agencies and creatives giving me a better insight...

About time! 

Alight Facebook Page

One of our ideas for a small section of our campaign was to use some Social Networking in order to reach a wider, varied audience. An idea we had to for this was to create a Facebook page and on it ask everyone to upload a picture of their hand, decorated, dressed up etc and then we would judge the winner and they would win 5 free tickets to Alight: Twilight, the ticketed event of the day. We thought this would get people involved and make people aware of the event, the incentive to win something would encourage people to participate, but at the same time we could tell everyone about the event.


While considering creating this Facebook group I thought it was important to look and find any existing ones, I came across the only one which was every basic, had no members/friends/followers and simply had some photographs of a few of the performances on it, I don't feel that this is at all good enough to promote the even and think it would be valuable for us to create one with more of a buzz about it. 


Here is the existing sites page:

Can be found at: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003107115444&sk=wall

I also noted that this cannot be searched for through the Facebook search bar and can only be accessed through Google Search Bar which means that the many Facebook users cannot access it via a simple search which would be the most accessible approach.

Supporting Research - Hands in Advertisements

We decided it was important before continuing with our campaign to look at existing hand advertisements, not only for inspiration but also to make sure we weren't using an idea which had already been done. Through this time I found some amazing pieces connected to hands that I was really impressed with and took on board as inspiration. The first one was the Guinness Hand Advert:

It is a similar idea to what we have done for one of our Youtube/Viral video ideas and thought it was interesting and useful to us. It has a similar home made feel to what we wanted to create, using a plain background (although we intend to add a back image) and then the use of hands as the main focus. Just like our idea, we are not advertising hands which we felt was important.. I really like the repetition used and the fact that you don't know what its for until the end, but once you do you wont forget. The insight into this is really significant to the product.

I also found a St Patricks edition of this:

I then came across poster image advertising for company AT&A, the full set for the campaign can be seen here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shareatt/sets/72157622368636074/

Some of my favourites are below:

I was so impressed when I found these, they are so beautiful and innovative and clever, I love the way they have incorporated the fact that hands are used to make calls send texts etc but then they have made them relevant to the 'truth' or the company which is that the network is the best in many different countries for signal etc. I cant even describe how impressed I am with this campaign, I absolutely love it! It has made me think about other ways of how we can include hands into our campaign rather than using just bare skin, we could think about layering images on top of it or incorporating images onto the hands...?

London Trip Overview

Overall, I really enjoyed my 3 days in London and really felt it was an eye opener into how the industry works. In the 2 agencies I went to I loved the atmosphere and professionalism but also the casual working atmosphere. It gave me a valuable insight into what the agencies are like and the sort of accounts they are involved in. The experience made me realise how much I do want to work in London and how much more cosmopolitan and multicultural it is compared to Sheffield or Lincoln. The visit has made me motivated to work harder and make sure I have a good Book ready to present to agencies, as well as consider what partner I would like to work with long term and who I think I could go into the industry with successfully. 

London Trip - Euro RSCG London

This was the second agency we visited, and although it was still very modern and spacious, I instantly began to prefer Inferno's vibe and atmosphere and the sophistication and quality of the layout which immediately created a certain impression of the company. After looking at their website too (Below) I felt more like Inferno would be a company more for me, with a more quirky, innovative edge, maybe much smaller but with a much more personal feel about it.

At Euro RSCG we were given a short brief of creating an advert/campaign for either Flora Light or PH Hot Sauce, me and Emma (the other half of my team) chose the Flora Light product to begin creating a campaign/initial ideas for. We were given an idea to come up with initial ideas before we were given feedback. I felt that this would have been a more valuable experience if we had been given the brief maybe a couple of weeks in advance and then took our work in to be critiqued, showing George Beattell (the Copywriter who we spoke to) some more finesse work which we had had chance to develop and work on to a higher quality rather than some rubbish initial ideas which were all very simple and similar to the others. This was reflected by the very generic feedback which he gave us all.

I found him a useful character to talk to as he had been to SHU and had came into the industry not in a team but as a single copywriter, it was useful to hear his story and how he had got where he was and what advice he had for us. Overall it was a valued and useful experience and it was interesting to have a nosey around and see what sort of environment people worked in (as we saw when we went to get a cuppa from the cafe!) I feel it could have been useful to speak to someone a bit higher up and to see what they were looking for in new, young designers, but obviously the likelihood of them having time for us is always going to be very slim. George suggested 5 finished campaigns in our Book, and said it should all be very refined and to a high standard. DONT PUT ANYTHING LESS THAN THE BEST IN IT. 

London Trip - Inferno

First impressions: WOW, the agencies interior was gorgeous, professional and had a friendly atmosphere, the TV was nicely framed in a photo frame style and everyone seemed busy working but happy to help. We all went into a conference/meeting room and the talk began..

Our talk was given by a man called Paul Mann, who is originally from Newcastle who now works for the agency. He was really friendly and gave some great advice, showing us different recent campaigns that Inferno had been part of, including a huge Nokia account:

 He then went to tell us about his role in the company which mainly consisted of keeping the website and other frontal pieces up to date, accurate and interesting, here is there website:

The most important thing thats affecting me right now is probably this below. The Young Creative Council, its a great way for me to see whats going on, get new ideas and can aid me in getting contacts in the UK and abroad for placements as well as finding someone to be in a team with if I end up on my own trying to start my career. Below is their website:

Love this.. Nikon - Robbie Williams Advert

This advert always catches my eye when I'm watching television and it comes on, I absolutely love it and it really inspires me, the particular section is the Robbie Williams concert piee which is from about 15 seconds onwards on the video below:

Existing Images

I thought it might be useful to look at existing images of 'hands in the air' to see where these are applied - from looking at these they are mainly at concerts, gigs, festivals - all music related and most of the imagery I could find was located out doors. 

Compared from the images we used in our first draft we presented, it would be interesting to do something similar but with hands at different angles rather than facing forward (showing the back hand) all the time. We want to try and use more interesting hand positions that have a bigger connection to music compared to just hands in the air, although this does link to music in the concept that everyone puts their hands up at concerts etc.

We looked at other possible hand positions briefly:

Next, we intend to take photos of our own hands in different positions and play with these ideas further, then apply them to our existing campaign ideas.

A3 Marker Visuals Draft 1

We were given a short turn around to turn our initial ideas into A3 neat marker visuals to present to some of our piers. Below is your first attempt at our campaign, obviously it'll need tweaking and improving after we have been critiqued!

This is our initial template idea for the campaigns poster. We have focussed on the idea of people with their hands in the air at a concert. This poster is to represent the whole event therefore contains imagery of different aged hands across the whole range rather than a specific target audience for one of the 3 events. 

Above is our idea for the 3 separate leaflets for each of the 3 events. It is broken down into the front pages on page 1 and the back of the leaflets on page 2. The fronts differ due to the age/style of the hands on the front which indicate the target audience, the more specific detail is on the back such as which event it is, the times and venues etc. (Need to also add the date to this at some point!) We included a map to show the locations of these events as there are several different one throughout the day at different times.

Above is our idea for a viral Facebook/E-mail/YouTube video. It would be simple, short and straight to the point but something that would stick in peoples heads. It simply involves hands piling up on top of each other, then the final shot zooming in to show the event/date/time and other details.

Our  final idea is a large canvas set up in the City Centre on the day of the event, encouraging all the spectators to come up to the canvas and draw around their hands writing their name then something else (yet to be decided on) such as best day of our life, a word to describe the day et, this is something we feel the client would like as it would make the day 'legendary' as she described, and means it would be kept forever, as a memory of the day..

Further Supporting Research

As a team we began to think about how to make our campaign more interesting and unique and something which is more memorable and fun. We have decided to focus on the idea of community, cultures, families and so on for our main 'truth' or alight rather than focussing solely on the idea of music, although we also want to incorporate this into our idea, perhaps more laterally than literally.

We have began to look at other ways of using hands rather than them being in the air to music, still baring music in mind..

We have considered the idea of using hand lettering to create the word 'alight' this is something which I still need to mock up and try to apply to our existing concepts. Online, I found a useful source which I could use for references, using fingers and hands to create each letter of the alphabet. Of course we would also need to incorporate numbers into our poster due to dates and times?

Interesting?:

"Manualism is the little-known art of playing music by squeezing air through the hands. Because the sound produced has a flatulent tone, such music is usually presented as a form of musical comedy or Parody. The musical performer is called manualist, who may perform a cappella."

Hand positions related to music:

-Pointing

-Air pumping

-Rock and roll sign

-Swearing

-Hands in the air

-Clicking fingers

-Tapping

-Moving them side to side

-Looping motion

-Strumming strings

-Drumming motion

-Flute motion

Supportive Research - Music Festival Campaigns

When beginning this brief one image instantly stuck in my mind and this was the Creamfields 2007 advertising campaign, it was one that I had seen and instantly loved:

What I love about these posters is the freshness, fun and celebration that comes along with the images, they instantly make me feel empowered and overwhelmed. In my initial ideas I played around with the ideas of characters jumping into the air in celebration etc but didn't feel it was right for my campaign as it looked too generic and 'cheesy'. However, in our campaign I would really like to create the same feel that this Creamfields campaign gives to me the idea of:

Freshness

Fun

Coming together

Celebration

Music/Dance

Although this festival is very different to Alight, it still focusses on music, dance and people joining together to celebrate the performances and to enjoy themselves, although the target audience is considerably different. The fact that alight is held in March rather than the Summer like Creamfields could encourage the themes of spring, fresh, youth, new starts etc?

Ideas Development

Initial Ideas

Primary Research - Questionannaires

To gather some more directed, specific information that we wanted, we created some short questionnaires which we gave out to a variety of ages both in Sheffield and another city, Lincoln. We asked specific questions such as Age/Gender so we could understand the different categories more accurately. We then asked other questions including:


- How would you normally find out about a local event?
- Any words you'd associate with Sheffield?
- Where do you listen to music?
- Best event you've ever been to?
- Best experience you've ever had?


This helped us to understand how different age categories found out about events, which of the 3 events they would suit going to and what they would enjoy (this will help to decide on our advertising campaign!)


It has also given us an idea for part of our campaign; a huge wall/canvas which people could write on their name/age and best day of their life, to create a sense of community and to make it 'legendary' as the client described, creating something to remember the 'once in a life time' day by...

Word Association, Ideas Generation

After Dark, Existing Event Research

I thought it would be useful to look at the advertising for another successful event in Sheffield which i know about, this is After Dark - held once a year it is a bonfire/firework event which is the biggest in Yorkshire and has many people attending.

The only advertising I could really find for them was their poster:

I also analysed this slightly in my sketchbook:

Also, Rachel mentioned that she wanted a Facebook group creating for the event. I looked at the one for After Dark as seeing as how successful the even was the Facebook page was poor. It had little friends, little people attending. Although this is a great way to engage people and inform people of the event it is difficult to get the right target audience through this way without just adding random people on Facebook. I feel that other ways of getting their attention would be much more successful personally. 

Meeting the Client

Target Audience

Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus

Rachel Mallaband, my client is a member of the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus, this will be the lead performance for the Alight event. I thought it was important to research them due to this and found a lot of useful information on their website:

www.sheffieldphil.org/

How useful this information will be towards my campaign I am unsure of, but felt it important to gain a well rounded deep understanding of every aspect of the event...

Focus on History

From my research I found that one of the main themes for the event was the history of sheffield, this will be used to create a narrative for the Twilight part of the event. Rachel wants to include different parts of Sheffield's history since 1893 including songs from the Blitz, old Football Teams, important dates for some of the choirs taking part etc.

Rachel Mallaband's Vision

After researching, I found an article which had a list of everything Rachel Mallaband, who is my client wants for the event. It includes all the different acts she hopes for to create a multicultural celebratory event.

Venues

Alight: Daylight -

Alight: Twilight -

Alight:Into the Night -

Event Information

After the briefing I decided to gain a general feel for the event and try to accumulate as much information about it as a could, below is a summary of the main information, most which we had been given in the brief. 

I looked at various websites to get an all round feel for the event as to gather as many different perspectives and information as possible to make sure I understood completely. Below are some of the websites I looked at and picked out important information from:

Main points I gathered:

-Approx 650 performances

-Want a variety of different acts from different cultures

-3 Sections to event

-Different venues throughout Sheffield

-Many different ages, abilities of acts

-Focus on history of Sheffield

-Twilight includes a narrative