Since the contents of this blog aren't in the correct order of projects or time created, I have linked all of the posts into seperate categories to your left.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Evaluation
I was very excited about beginning stage two of art and language, since I already knew exactly what type of project I would be doing for it. I have been interested in guerilla advertising for years now and not only having the chance to do it for university, but also to do it for my up and coming design collective company was just too much of a perfect opportunity to miss. I definitely think that my enthusiasm for guerilla advertising helped me stay motivated and active during the project.
I began with a million ideas in my head about what I could do for this project, but obviously, time, money and the relevance of the ideas to what I was advertising all had to be taken into consideration. At the beginning of the research journey, I felt a little disheartened since all of the guerilla advertising I could find tended to be large corporations, doing large publicity stunts in a way to get noticed, and with little to no budget for my project, mine would definitely have less of an impact. However, the whole nature of guerilla advertising (as written by Jay Conrad Levinson, when he first coined the term) was that this method was for smaller companies, with smaller budgets, so I began to think that I could definitely pull something together that would make an impact but also work for a small budget. So I began researching more in graphic designers and their self promotion techniques and also non profit guerilla art, since this would give me a better idea of the possibilities with a small budget.
After the process of generating some ideas, I decided with two final ideas I wanted to experiment with, which were the idea of distributing parcel tags and creating large scale posters. Parcel tags work as a means of advertising in a more subtle sense, wherest the large scale posters work in the opposite way. The only issue I had with the large scale posters is that it's often used by real advertising companies, so I had to think of ways I could keep my poster idea but still maintain the guerilla art ideals behind it.
I started on the parcel tags by creating a number of different type logos. Since there's no defined logo for US AS ONE, I tried out a number of different types and asked a number of different people, students and tutors alike to give their opinion. I finally decided on the font Tall Films, with cyan and magenta overlaid. I had originally wanted to keep everything monotone since it would make everything cheaper to print but the colours worked so well in the design, I decided to make an exception. I ordered parcel tags and clear stickers for home printers and assembled all of the 99 tags at home. I had to print out the designs onto the A4 sticker paper, cut it all out by hand and then manually stick the designs onto the parcel tags. Despite this being a process in which a lot could have gone wrong (human error!) the results of each one of the tags is fantastic and I've had many people ask where I got them printed since (it's always great to see their reactions when I say, a HP printer I've got at home!). Distributing them was also a fairly simple task, it was just a case of walking around town and PCA and tying them onto anything that would be suitable. I worry a little about the weather conditions and how they'll fare, but as Paul mentioned when I was showing him my idea, that actually it could be really interesting to see them decaying and watch as nature takes its toll. I agree that this could have an awesome effect.
The parcel tags, without doubt have been a success, even if they don't really advertise US AS ONE as I'd like, they're still great quality designs and tags and are definitely becoming part of my portfolio. It's a shame that the second stage had such a short time span since I would have liked to be able to tell you the results of advertising the project, such as how many people have since liked the Facebook page. The only thing I can be certain of is that they're being seen, since my friend sent me a picture of one he found in a men's toilet - it's not just been me distributing them, but I've been passing them along for others to do what they want with them. So all I can hope is that they work as a way in which to grab people's attention and even if no-one follows the Facebook page for US AS ONE, I will still consider this part of the project a success.
As for the large scale posters, I began enquiring into different sizes of posters and really finding out how big I could make the posters with as little money and difficulty as possible. I began looking into bus stop advertising and considering 'hacking' one of these spaces by printing out my own poster and pasting it over the top of one of these. I really liked this idea, since it worked in a number of ways as guerilla advertising. It was still advertising, in an environment in which the general public were used to, but it also works as a guerilla piece since it's taking back the public domain and space which advertisers so forcefully spring upon us everyday. So I looked into the size of a bus stop advertisement poster and using the tile option in the print section of inDesign, tiled the poster into 49 A4 pieces. The entire poster covered my bedroom floor and looked incredible. I was originally going to change the design of the poster to something else, but since the parcel tags became more of a primary part of this project, I wasn't able to organize enough time to design something else. However, since then I have fallen in love with my design on the large scale poster and think it really works. My plan, since the hacking of the bus stop would have been rather illegal and not really possible to organize within the timescale (didn't really want to get arrested for this project!), me and a couple friends decided to go to an abandoned building just outside of Plymouth and paste up the poster there. I used environmentally friendly home made wheatpaste and overall, the entire poster took about an hour to put up.
The final result of putting the poster up was amazing. The size was something I'd never really thought would be as impactful but when I stood next to it and it was taller than me (I'm almost 6"0) I was so excited. The cleanliness of the design amongst the grime and dirt of the abandoned building was something that really worked for me, and it proved to me that despite large posters being a simple idea, the final piece was still really something. If I'd had more time, then I would have been able to organize a way to get this into the public domain but for now, I'm just really pleased that I managed to see it up and in an outside environment. Obviously, I'm not expecting this to be a real advertising piece, due to the nature of where it's posted, and this is probably better referred to as guerilla art, but I think the whole thing was a success in that it looked great, the poster went up easily and definitely had the impact that I was looking for.
I've really enjoyed the second stage to this project and I'm really glad that I've had the opportunity to explore a side of graphic design and media that I really enjoy. Overall, the project went rather smoothly (for a project that has potential legal issues) and the outcomes of both my ideas excelled my expectations. Now, all I can do is wait and see if my advertising methods have worked for my design collective, US AS ONE, but even if they don't work, I'll still be really pleased with what I have accomplished and definitely plan to use all of this work as part of my portfolio.
I began with a million ideas in my head about what I could do for this project, but obviously, time, money and the relevance of the ideas to what I was advertising all had to be taken into consideration. At the beginning of the research journey, I felt a little disheartened since all of the guerilla advertising I could find tended to be large corporations, doing large publicity stunts in a way to get noticed, and with little to no budget for my project, mine would definitely have less of an impact. However, the whole nature of guerilla advertising (as written by Jay Conrad Levinson, when he first coined the term) was that this method was for smaller companies, with smaller budgets, so I began to think that I could definitely pull something together that would make an impact but also work for a small budget. So I began researching more in graphic designers and their self promotion techniques and also non profit guerilla art, since this would give me a better idea of the possibilities with a small budget.
After the process of generating some ideas, I decided with two final ideas I wanted to experiment with, which were the idea of distributing parcel tags and creating large scale posters. Parcel tags work as a means of advertising in a more subtle sense, wherest the large scale posters work in the opposite way. The only issue I had with the large scale posters is that it's often used by real advertising companies, so I had to think of ways I could keep my poster idea but still maintain the guerilla art ideals behind it.
I started on the parcel tags by creating a number of different type logos. Since there's no defined logo for US AS ONE, I tried out a number of different types and asked a number of different people, students and tutors alike to give their opinion. I finally decided on the font Tall Films, with cyan and magenta overlaid. I had originally wanted to keep everything monotone since it would make everything cheaper to print but the colours worked so well in the design, I decided to make an exception. I ordered parcel tags and clear stickers for home printers and assembled all of the 99 tags at home. I had to print out the designs onto the A4 sticker paper, cut it all out by hand and then manually stick the designs onto the parcel tags. Despite this being a process in which a lot could have gone wrong (human error!) the results of each one of the tags is fantastic and I've had many people ask where I got them printed since (it's always great to see their reactions when I say, a HP printer I've got at home!). Distributing them was also a fairly simple task, it was just a case of walking around town and PCA and tying them onto anything that would be suitable. I worry a little about the weather conditions and how they'll fare, but as Paul mentioned when I was showing him my idea, that actually it could be really interesting to see them decaying and watch as nature takes its toll. I agree that this could have an awesome effect.
The parcel tags, without doubt have been a success, even if they don't really advertise US AS ONE as I'd like, they're still great quality designs and tags and are definitely becoming part of my portfolio. It's a shame that the second stage had such a short time span since I would have liked to be able to tell you the results of advertising the project, such as how many people have since liked the Facebook page. The only thing I can be certain of is that they're being seen, since my friend sent me a picture of one he found in a men's toilet - it's not just been me distributing them, but I've been passing them along for others to do what they want with them. So all I can hope is that they work as a way in which to grab people's attention and even if no-one follows the Facebook page for US AS ONE, I will still consider this part of the project a success.
As for the large scale posters, I began enquiring into different sizes of posters and really finding out how big I could make the posters with as little money and difficulty as possible. I began looking into bus stop advertising and considering 'hacking' one of these spaces by printing out my own poster and pasting it over the top of one of these. I really liked this idea, since it worked in a number of ways as guerilla advertising. It was still advertising, in an environment in which the general public were used to, but it also works as a guerilla piece since it's taking back the public domain and space which advertisers so forcefully spring upon us everyday. So I looked into the size of a bus stop advertisement poster and using the tile option in the print section of inDesign, tiled the poster into 49 A4 pieces. The entire poster covered my bedroom floor and looked incredible. I was originally going to change the design of the poster to something else, but since the parcel tags became more of a primary part of this project, I wasn't able to organize enough time to design something else. However, since then I have fallen in love with my design on the large scale poster and think it really works. My plan, since the hacking of the bus stop would have been rather illegal and not really possible to organize within the timescale (didn't really want to get arrested for this project!), me and a couple friends decided to go to an abandoned building just outside of Plymouth and paste up the poster there. I used environmentally friendly home made wheatpaste and overall, the entire poster took about an hour to put up.
The final result of putting the poster up was amazing. The size was something I'd never really thought would be as impactful but when I stood next to it and it was taller than me (I'm almost 6"0) I was so excited. The cleanliness of the design amongst the grime and dirt of the abandoned building was something that really worked for me, and it proved to me that despite large posters being a simple idea, the final piece was still really something. If I'd had more time, then I would have been able to organize a way to get this into the public domain but for now, I'm just really pleased that I managed to see it up and in an outside environment. Obviously, I'm not expecting this to be a real advertising piece, due to the nature of where it's posted, and this is probably better referred to as guerilla art, but I think the whole thing was a success in that it looked great, the poster went up easily and definitely had the impact that I was looking for.
I've really enjoyed the second stage to this project and I'm really glad that I've had the opportunity to explore a side of graphic design and media that I really enjoy. Overall, the project went rather smoothly (for a project that has potential legal issues) and the outcomes of both my ideas excelled my expectations. Now, all I can do is wait and see if my advertising methods have worked for my design collective, US AS ONE, but even if they don't work, I'll still be really pleased with what I have accomplished and definitely plan to use all of this work as part of my portfolio.
Can you find them?
So the tags are up, this are just a select few out of the 100 that have been distributed around PCA and the city centre. It's too early to really figure out how they're being received but currently we're at 94 fans of the project on Facebook, which I'm sure will be helped along by the guerilla project. A friend who goes to the college sent me the following picture earlier today, which proves that people are finding them and noticing them in all of their locations.
Overall, I think the tags look really great and work well in the environments they've been placed in. It's just a case of people taking notice of them now and enquiring as to who we are, which is something of an experiment itself, since it's hard to guess how people will react. However, I am positive about the parcel tags as a marketing strategy, I think they look great, the design is simple and effective and they're an item that makes you want to pick up and look further into. I think with the company only just starting up now, yet already advertising, it's a good way to gather up hype towards projects for the collective in the future.
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
First Parcel Tag Distribution
I tied my first parcel tag into the general public area. Obviously, I still have many to distribute, but it was quite exciting seeing the first one go up in the branches of the tree, flying around in the wind, waiting to be found or seen or thrown away even. Guerilla advertising is all a big social experiment, all of it relies on how different people react to certain methods within the marketing strategy.
More pics to come of parcel tags in different environments!
Pasting up the Poster
Today I managed to get one of my large scale posters out into public space. Myself and two friends drove to a nearby abandoned building. It's a common place for graffiti artists to enjoy large areas on wall space to test their larger pieces. I really badly wanted to get my poster out into the public domain, but as mentioned in a previous post, I was worried about the time scale of the project and the legality of the entire process that could jeopardize a lot of my work.
So we went to this derelict area, and found the perfect spot for my poster. It was next to a couple pieces of graffiti work, so I felt that it would look good surrounded by other pieces of art. I had made my own wheatpaste out of flour, water and sugar (trying to maintain an environment friendly project) which worked so much better than I had expected (as the cooking process was rather interesting!).
Since the inDesign pages that got printed out through the tile print option, each page was numbered with a row and column number so the design wouldn't get confusing. This was really helpful in the construction of my piece since it kept me organized and allowed for minimal error. Overall, it took over an hour to complete the piece, pasting each A4 sheet one by one. We also realised, as the poster grew in size with each row, that I could have used a ladder to paste the top rows. Thankfully, the place we chose actually had an upper section to it, so I was able to hang off the top of the wall and paste from above.
I'm so pleased with the results of this experiment, I think that large scale posters work really well as a way to grab and capture the attention of passer bys and the general public, and by taking them down a different route to common advertising, they can become more of an interesting way to market a product, a service, etc. I also think the contrast between clean, simple graphic design and a dirty, industrial abandoned building also really worked well and made my final poster really stand out against the grime. Given the time scale of the project, I unfortunately couldn't take the large scale posters further, but it's something I'm glad I've experimented with as a possibility not just only for future personal projects but as a method and/or way in which to present work in university modules.
Bus Stop Ad Poster
Using the design I had created for the parcel tags as an experimental design, I created a 1.3 metre by 1.8 metre size poster to advertise my company. I used the inDesign tile option when printing and it created the large scale poster using 49 pages of A4 paper. As it printed out, I laid the paper onto my bedroom floor and watched as it began to grow in size.
My plan with this poster is to take it to a derelict place in Devon and paste it up using a homemade wheatpaste. I think due to the time scale of the project and the possibly legal issues I may have to deal with due to the nature of guerilla advertising, I won't be able to post my poster up in an area commonly used by the general public at this stage. I do still want to put up the poster somewhere in a busy place, but it would take a lot of planning to do so, of which I don't have the time to do. However, I do want to see the poster pasted up and in its full glory, so I think using an abandoned building could be a way of really showing it off before testing it with people. I think after doing this I will have a better idea of the impact it will have when placed in a more appropriate environment.
Final Parcel Tags
This is an image with all of my parcel tags finished. I had to individually stick each sticker to the parcel tag, but since the stickers are clear it allowed for small human errors to slip past the net of people who will recieve the tags. However, no quality was lost, and when I showed the final result to a number of people I received some great compliments in how well they had turned out.
The next stage of my parcel tag project is to begin distributing them.
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