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.