‘Embrace Life’ nominated for YouTube Ad of the Year award

Rationale

The main aim of this blog was to research the creative design world thoroughly and highlight and analyse key areas that interest and inspire me. I wanted to begin by searching through a wide variety of different kinds of design work until I found an area that really appealed to me that I could start focusing my research on.

I started off my blog by looking into quite a bit of illustrative work, inspired by the sheer variety of styles there are. The use of illustration in design can really add that element of fun or humor to the work. For example, the typography book Hyperactivitypography from A to Z was created for people who obviously are enthusiastic about typography and therefore most probably design too. This provided a creative opportunity for the designers of the book to use this appreciation and beautifully illustrate the book with soft block colours in a fun and youthful style. This gave the reader a sense of nostalgia, remembering their classroom days of working through booklets that tested their knowledge just like this one. I feel this really shows the power of illustration and just how much it can really change your experience of or feelings towards a piece of design.

The Satirical Comic Book exhibition I went to at the Tate Modern also demonstrates this. Through the use of comic illustrations artists could represent a serious person or event in a humorous way. You can make something funny through using words but it’s not as instant or universal as creating an image. The artists grabbed hold of the greed and self-delusion that characterised their modern consumer society and developed exaggerated and ridiculous illustrations to create highly entertaining pieces of satirical art.

The media in which designers chose to create their work from is both strategic and important because as I’ve found out from these two pieces of design it adds so much to the work and can really change the way people perceive it.

Illustration used within the design of a website is also very effective when you want to make the site interactive. I found a couple of websites that used illustration to dramatically improve the users experience. The Satorisan Sneakers site used bizarre illustrations of creatures to add personality and uniqueness to each shoe presented on the website. Without this graphic element the brand relies solely on the shoe to sell itself. However through creating these interesting and entertaining creatures it both keeps people on the site for longer because they enjoy the experience they’re having but also it creates an appealing image for the brand and therefore the shoes they’re selling, that customers will buy into. The websites I found were very interactive and gave the customer the opportunity to almost enter the world of the brand and explore. This made a huge difference to the amount of time I spent on the sites and how much I both enjoyed and remembered them.

This got me thinking about how this element of design could be used for other media. The campaign for the World Wildlife fund I felt did this very well. They strategically placed large images of endangered and over-hunted animals down one side of a street and images of the actual hunters with guns facing them on the other side. Passers by could quite literally stand between the hunter and the hunted in a symbolic gesture of defiance. Through allowing the public to interact like this creates a ‘buzz’ around the campaign and people will remember it. It also makes the problem seem more real when you’re given the opportunity to stand, like the animals in front of a gun. Therefore getting the public involved increased the impact and success of this campaign.

The Test Your Awareness campaign also demonstrates the power of getting people to interact with cause campaigns. Through asking people to test their own awareness it gets them to focus and pay attention, hoping to outsmart the campaign. I can’t speak for everyone else but I most definitely did not outsmart anyone and because of that it made me realise that even if you’re looking, you do not always ‘see’. Designing the campaign in this way makes people empathise with the issue because after taking part in this test they understand it. This is an extremely clever campaign that proves that how you get the public to understand and empathise with your cause is very important and something to think about creatively.

I started to become more and more interested in campaigns designed for specific causes because research and strategy are very important, it’s not just about making something look nice you’ve really got to make people actually feel and do something.

The Abram Games exhibition I visited in Halifax was especially inspiring. Although his work is dated and does not involve any technology or new marketing techniques he still grabs you with his simple but highly powerful and symbolic posters. His Freedom for Hunger poster combines a young boy with a sheaf of wheat. By bringing the problem and solution together in one symbolic image, Games gets an important message across instantly. The Syphilis Sucks campaign also uses this same notion of bringing the problem and solution together to create a simple yet impactful piece of design.

I think the most powerful campaign I researched is “Woman are Heroes”, designed by the Parisian artist JR. This campaign combines different media in many different countries around the world to try and reach as many people as possible. He both attempts to raise awareness in the countries in which the issues are occurring but also in the Western world because he knows that if they empathise about this cause they will want to help too and will have more resources and facilities to do so. The innovative and creative application of the photographs taken increases the impact of the campaign. It makes people talk about it and putting the photos on trains and buildings within cities means that they cannot be missed. JR has created a very beautiful but powerful campaign that is still on going today. He brings the issue right down into peoples every-day lives where they cannot ignore it.

The aim of every cause campaign is to raise awareness and to get people to do something that will help their cause. The first and most important thing though is to actually reach the public, to be seen, to be heard and to be listened to. The public needs to empathise with your campaign to want to help it and from researching I have discovered that there are so many different ways of getting people to understand and care about your cause. I think I want to research deeper into how cause campaigns really target their audience, get their voice heard and what makes them successful so I can start to develop my own and try and make a difference where I can.

Devil Yogurt

http://www.devilyogurt.com/

Made up of unique illustrations, beautiful colours and textures this website is a whole lot of fun. It really shows that surprisingly there are very little limitations when it comes to web design. If there's something you want to create the chance is it's possibe you just need the know how. I love the interactivity on this website and the way you never click off to another page, you quite literally follow devil yogurt further and further down into the darkness. The fact that you always stay on the same page makes you feel like you're within their world, exploring your way around.

Now go create your devilish yoghurt!

Bras for a Cause

I've only recently discovered this small but perfectly formed voluntreer-based organisation in America thats trying to raise money for breast cancer. They encourage anyone who wants to get creative to decorate a bra and donate it to them so that they can auction them off for money. Not only are the bras donated amazing pieces of creative work, ranging from beautiful and intricate to weird and wonderful but they are raising both awareness and money for an important cause.

They held their first event in 2007. It was attended by more than 500 people, raised more than $340,000, included the efforts of more than 150 community volunteers, and received almost 150 decorated bras. It is now working hard to get more and more people involved through things like the viral video above and visiting fashion colleges to try and get students enthusiastic about the organisation.

This is a creative and positive way of raising both money and awareness. Rather than making people feel bad or guilty they're doing the complete opposite and getting people to feel productive, enthusiastic, creative and happy.

Peace, love & Juicy Couture

The marketing for Juicy Coutour's new perfume, Peace, Love & Juicy Couture is so beautiful. Both the TV and printed ads create the feeling of being in an innocent, fairytale land. They are playful, fun and optimistic including objects like balloons, gobstoppers and chocolate cake that make you dream about being a kid again. The photography was done by the famous Steven Meisel who captures so wonderfully the warmth of the moment and the feeling of being care-free. The music and styling is reminicent of those hippy days that adds to the feeling of being completely free and just happy. That's what these adverts are about, quite simply the feeling of being happy. They include everything that makes girls excited like a child again, sweets, flowers, butterflies, sunshine, cake... It's the girly girls dreamworld that has been applied to all areas of the marketing, even the bottle is covered in jewels and tassels.

Social media and small cause campaigns

Mothers Day 2010 brought about a small but impressive campaign called To Mama with Love created by Epic Change and a host of great volunteers. The aim of this campaign was to raise money to support Mama Lucy in her efforts to educate children in Tanzania.

Mama Lucy saved her own income to start a primary school in Tanzania, believing that education is the key to transforming a country gripped by poverty. Over the last six years, Mama Lucy has grown the school from one classroom with fewer than 10 students, to a school that now serves more than 300 children at eight grade levels.

The initiative was simple but powerful. Supporters were encouraged to honor their own mothers by making a donation and then creating a virtual scrapbook or “heartspace” on the site, including photos, videos, notes, and artwork. They could then share their “heartspace” with their mother, friends and family via Twitter and Facebook, or via a customized e-card.

Using social media as the primary communication and engagement mechanism, Epic Change was able to raise close to $17,000 and provide a safe home for 17 children in Tanzania, while also encouraging more than 300 mothers along the way. They did all of this in about a week’s time.

This shows just how powerful social media can be for non-profit organisations, both large and small. It allows you to reach out to a huge amount of people and give them the opportunity to help make a change through a media that's very much a part of their everyday life.

The wonderful world of Erica il cane

These new hand coloured screen prints by Erica il cane are so enchantingly beautiful. The massive screen prints were painted directly on the screen with no film, no scanner, no photocopies and no computers involved! Due to the very poor equipment available he also had to paint in total darkness. Knowing the love, care and effort put into these stunning prints makes them even more impressive and adds a romantic, personal touch to them. Too many designers these days turn straight for their shiny apple mac forgetting the raw beauty of sketching ideas first. In an age where everyone is working with technology it's really refreshing to see that people are still in love with their pencil and old sketchbook...