OUGD603 - Extended Practice: DSM Brief (Development)

The Brief

Below is the brief which was given to us by DSM. We received the brief via email although we had already been briefed the day they came into college and did a presentation for us. We were all given a different subject to focus on and create a brand for, I was given the City Council. As soon as I was given it I knew how challenging it would be to come up with something which was exciting, as it is quite a dull subject matter.

The whole point of this brief is to make a brand a wonderful experience though, so this is something I am going to keep in mind the whole time while trying to come up with a strong enough concept to answer the brief. 

Initial Ideas

I started off by having a look at Leeds City Council website and Liverpool City Council too. I wrote down all of the ideas that came to my head when I was looking through all of the things that the council already do for us. 

All of these ideas would be worthwhile but I still don't feel as though one of them stands out from the rest as being the strongest. I like the idea of redesigning a parking permit scheme, because at the moment it takes so long for the council to send out a permit without it turning into a big hassle. It should be a straight forward procedure but it isn't.

I also tried to consider the creative sector within my idea generation. This is simply because I like the idea of involving the community as much as possible and love the idea of designers in Leeds or in any city working with the rest of the community to try and make a difference in some way. 

As I know people who are home taught and have also witnessed the negatives of being taught from home, I feel quite passionate about designing a brand relating to this particular area. I don't want to focus on the City Council without looking deeper into it. I could just design some new bins to be placed around Leeds, but I feel as though this wouldn't particularly be a wonderful experience, and I would be limited as I couldn't really do much to change the bins apart from adapt the Leeds City Council logo. 

I also really love the idea of focusing on elderly people. I feel as though I would benefit a lot from focusing on this age range as I haven't designed anything before which is aimed at the elderly. All of my ideas are illustrated below.

I particularly like the idea of creating a marketing brand or marketing campaign which involves people raising money for the elderly who will be spending Christmas alone. I think Christmas should be a time for happiness, and for a lot of people it isn't. So if we could try and make their day better then we should do. The only problem with this idea is that it has been done already by several different charities so it would be hard to be original. 

I love the idea of bringing experiential marketing into it. I have even considered designing a video which would explain my brand from start to finish and would also tell the story of the brand. I would have to collaborate with The Post House to be able to do this, as they would be able to create a short video for me in the time I need it. 

I had a look on a website called Fix My Street and found some interesting things out from there. However, once again all of the information is quite boring and not very exciting, and all of the possible ideas I have already covered in my previous thought showers.

I had a crit with Vicky about my ideas to see whether she had any suggestions as I felt as though I was coming to a bit of a halt and needed some feedback. Vicky suggested that I could design something for homeless people. This added another spanner in the works as I really loved this idea too, but once again there are already a lot of things which people already do to help them. 

I asked an industry professional what he thought of my idea for the elderly. I explained that I could perhaps have a pop up experiential marketing stand in the centre of Leeds to promote giving and this could come in the form of a giant advent calendar. He made me think a bit more practically about my idea and suggested that I should always reconsider WHY and ask myself WHY I am making all of these decisions and whether they are going to have a meaning to them or simply look good. This was really good feedback as I feel as thought I was getting a bit carried away with how the overall brand will look, as opposed to looking at the bigger picture. 

My concept for the elderly became more and more complex. The idea was simplified to create a Christmas meal for those who are alone on Christmas Day. If someone can't make it to the event then they will have their food delivered to home instead.

I tried to come up with some ideas for the branding of it and came up with the name Festive Feast to start with. I asked Ellen for some feedback and she said that she wasn't overly keen on the word 'Feast' as it sounded a bit over the top and overwhelming, implying that there would be a lot of food. This may put some people off who don't eat as much as others.

I experimented with trying to make the logo look festive in some way. But I feel as though all of these branding ideas are too closely linked to my Christmas card brief, and I need to pull away from that as I don't want all of my final outcomes to look the same. 

I quite liked the idea of using a stamp for the branding. I thought it would be a bit different from the linear branding we tend to see on a daily basis. But once again there wasn't one design which stood out to me. 

Logo Development:

I started to feel as though all of my briefs were linked back to Christmas in some form. So I wanted to try and pull away from the idea of festivities and do something completely different. I feel as though this was a wise move. I spoke to Ellen about my ideas and said to her that I need to start a fresh. She suggested that I looked at the carers as opposed to the elderly. I loved this idea instantly as my Mum was a carer and deserved a lot more appreciation than she received. This is therefore something which I feel passionate about.

Here I tried to incorporate a balloon into the design to represent the idea of celebration. I also tried to use the two 'C' letter forms to create an independent logo to work alongside the full text.

Here I experimented with using shapes of the letters to create a friendly image. None of them worked particularly well though so I think I am going to leave this idea behind. 

Preparing for the presentation and applying the branding:

Below are all of the examples of application to various images and applying the brand to a variety of different materials. I experimented with trying to put the event on the Leeds List website, but it didn't look right. It also needs to be directly linked to the City Council website so this wouldn't be appropriate anyway. 

I sent a mock up design of what I wanted the balloon to look like in the centre of Trinity as an advertising strategy to The Post House company who specialise in this kind of work. They came back to me with all of these different variations to choose from. The chosen design can be seen on my presentation.

I also designed some name badges to go on the tables, which also turn into a badge when everyone gets up at the end of the night for a bit of a dance or simply to socialise. I wanted to create something with a dual purpose as this seems to be something I enjoy within my work. 

Here I am cutting all of the badges out. I chose to use the names of the people who are in my group. I doubt I will be giving them out as there may be more or less people on the day of the presentation but it gave me a bit of focus in terms of fitting various names on the tags.

I also mocked up a message wall. This would be used by the council volunteers running the event and they would choose an envelope at random, and inside each one there would be a testimonial to the carers in the room from their patients. This is to show appreciation and create a wonderful and memorable experience. 

Some further advertisements were mocked up to demonstrate promotion throughout the city. Both inside and outside to reach as many people as possible.

This is a seating plan which would also be interactive. The balloons would be lifted up to reveal the names underneath.

In the end I looked at Leeds City Council website and placed an image on the LS events page on there to advertise the event. I am pleased with this mock up as I feel it would attract people's attention.

Feedback from presentation:

On the last slide of my presentation I asked everyone to fill in a piece of paper with some feedback on my presentation and brand. Only four people filled out a slip which I thought was a little bit disappointing. DSM didn't fill one in either, but I suppose it wouldn't really have been fair for them to have filled a feedback slip for me and nobody else.