OUGD603: Extended Practice - Brief 4: Interactive Mail shot, Contacting Studios

Throughout my first two years on the course I have learnt from PPP sessions the importance how to communicate with professionals in terms of securing visits and possibly future placements. In order to pass the third year of the course it is imperative that I complete a two week placement which is something I discussed with Amber during my progress tutorial in December. 

She suggested an informal, friendly tone of voice and to offer to bring something such as Yorkshire teabags in order to differentiate from the masses of other students whom they will be receiving emails from. Therefore I began by writing a simple structure which I could send to a number of studios.

I personally believe it is of vital importance to be as personal as possible when contacting studios, just sending out a mass email which is vague will possibly get lost within the hundreds of other emails they receive whilst something that is personal to them and shows I have gone to the effort of looking and their studio and what they do may be more impactful.

Using the mailing list I created for Studio Brief 4 for Extended Practice I began emailing my selected studios from Liverpool, Leeds and Amsterdam changing the content slightly each time.

To Dave Williams:

Hi!

My name is Anna Sergison, I am currently in my third year at Leeds College of Art studying Graphic Design.

Being an avid football fan myself I find your work particularly inspiring. I watch as many games as I can, of course being a red it's mostly from behind my hands anxiously! I loved the 'Back in Europe' insert you did for the Liverpool Echo which I had hung up on my wall, although it was heartbreaking filling in the results! 

I would love to come and take a look around your studio should you have the time, i'll even bring you a box of Yorkshire teabags!

I look forward to hearing from you!

Anna Sergison

Response:

Hi Anna, Thanks for your email and for your kind words. I wish I could invite you to have a look around my studio, but unfortunately I don’t have one (yet!). I have been freelancing full-time for just under a year now so I still work from home in a spare bedroom, which is quite un-glamourous! I’ve been working as a designer for nearly 10 years, freelancing in my spare time for the last 5 but I only made the jump to working for myself last Feb. Long term, I would love to rent some studio space, or even just a desk within a studio environment but for now Im trying to build up enough regular work to keep me doing for the foreseeable future, so it makes sense to work from home and not pay the additional expense of a studio. If I can be of any help to you though, just give me a shout. I’ll happily give you feedback or advice as and when I can! Cheers Dave

This was a real blow as I have a keen interest not only in the type of work that Dave is producing but also the subject, however it is good that I have a point of contact should I need any feedback or advice about my future.

To Liquid:

Hi! 

My name is Anna Sergison, I am currently in my third year at Leeds College of Art studying Graphic Design.

I too put an emphasis on creating imaginative and memorable concepts within my design work, and therefore find your work to be particularly inspiring.I love the concept you generated for the Onitsuka Tiger campaign, the warning posters around town was a really unique way to engage with the audience and really caught my attention as something I myself would like to achieve.

I would love to come and take a look around your studio should you have the time, I'll even bring you a box of Yorkshire teabags! 

I look forward to hearing from you!

Anna Sergison

To Black and Ginger:

Hi!

My name is Anna Sergison, I am currently in my third year of study at Leeds College of Art studying Graphic Design.

I too like to use a brief as an opportunity to be as creative as possible and therefore find the work you have produced particularly inspiring. My best friend was actually involved in helping with the giants last year, I really love the identity you created, particularly how it was applied to the website with a distinctive World War One aesthetic which for me really epitomised what the event was about.

I would love to come and take a look around your studio should you have the time I'll even bring a box of Yorkshire teabags! I look forward to hearing from you!

Anna Sergison

To All Good:

Hi! My name is Anna Sergison I am currently in my third year at Leeds College of Art studying Graphic Design.

I too consider myself to be a concept driven designer, and put a lot of emphasis on producing innovative solutions in my design practice and therefore I find the work you have produced particularly inspiring. I love the designs you produced for Broadgate Chiropractors, the hand-rendered aesthetic is something I explore a lot as I personally find it really engaging. The type you used for 'Super Health Heros' particularly works really well.

I would love to come and take a look around your studio should you have the time, I'll even bring a box of Yorkshire teabags! I look forward to hearing from you!

Anna Sergison

Response:

HI Anna

Thanks for getting in touch, we’re a bit busy in the studio at the minute.

If you can get in touch again late February we might be able to sort something.

Regards

Paul Dodd

To Robot Food:

Hi! My name is Anna Sergison I am currently in my third year at Leeds College of Art studying Graphic Design.

My personal interests lie particularly in the branding and packaging sectors of the industry and therefore I find your work particularly inspiring. I love the packaging you produced for your Robot Roy nutcracker toy what a lovely idea to thank your clients! The gold foiling and limited edition numbered stickers makes it look, and I'm sure feel really bespoke. A really personal way to engage with others and a beautiful gift to receive.

I would love to come and take a look around your studio should you have the time, I'll even bring you a box of Yorkshire teabags! I look forward to hearing from you!

Anna Sergison 

Response:

Hi Anna,

Thanks for getting in touch.

Have you got a Pdf of your work or a link to an online portfolio?

Thanks,

Simon

A PDF I put together of some of the briefs I have worked on during the second and third years of my course. 


To Happy Giraffe:

Hi! My name is Anna Sergison I am currently in my third year of study at Leeds College of Art studying graphic Design.

I too would refer to myself as a doodler as I prefer to work with hand-rendered techniques within my work, therefore find the work you have produced particularly inspiring. I also love the name of your agency! Giraffes are actually my favourite animal, I recently adopted one at Chester Zoo!

I would love to come and take a look around your studio should you have the time, I'll even bring a box of Yorkshire teabags! I look forward to hearing from you!

Anna Sergison

To Freshu:

Hi! My name is Anna Sergison I am currently in my third year at Leeds College of Art in England studying Graphic Design.

My personal interests lie in the branding sector of the industry and I too enjoy letting the story come to life by being as creative with my ideas as I possibly. Therefore I find your work very inspiring. I particularly like the branding you produced for GYLD, the identity is visually really strong and the pattern you have created is not only impactful but also creates a really a sense of cohesion to the outcomes.

I would love to come and take a look around your studio should you have the time, I'll even bring you a box of Yorkshire teabags! I look forward to hearing from you!

Anna Sergison

To Lava:

Hi! My name is Anna Sergison I am currently in my third year at Leeds College of Art in England studying Graphic Design.

Within my practice I have a keen interest in working with mixed media, similarly to the aesthetic of your work and therefore I find your work particularly inspiring. I really admire the work you produced for The Museum of Communication, the mixture of the hand-rendered and digital media is really engaging.

I actually visited Amsterdam last summer it is such a beautiful city! I would love to come and take a look around your studio should you have the time I'll even bring a box of Yorkshire teabags! I look forward to hearing from you!

Anna Sergison

Studio Brief Four

This idea of a personal approach when it comes to contacting professionals gave me inspiration for a concept for my fourth studio brief for the Extended Practice in which I will design and produce a mailshot to send to studios. Not only will personal feel showcase me as an individual rather than just another Graphic Design student looking for a placement but it will also represent my outlook as I consider myself to be a friendly, down to earth person, something I would really like to get across.

OUGD601: Context of Practice 3 - Practical Element, Design Development

Advertisements

Client: Ebon Chocolates

Target Audience: Women, Early 20s to 30s, young independent females at the height of their sexual experience.

Aims: As a start up campaign the main aims will be to increase awareness of the brand whilst also creating an emotional connection between the target audience and the product.

Influences I Want To Provoke: Pleasure, curiosity, desire, excitement

The main aim I wanted to achieve through the practical element of the Context of Practice Module was to produce a professional advertising campaign pitch for an existing chocolate confectionery company which could realistically be taken to the company.

- Ebon Chocolates existing packaging

- Product photographs


Therefore, when communicating with Ebony Dip, owner of Ebon chocolates via email I asked her to send me photographs of her products which I could possibly include within the designs for my advertisements in order to give a professional quality to the designs for both my advertisements and the campaign pitch.

When reading through the Ebon Chocolates Kickstarter page, there were a few quotes that Ebony Dip had used to describe the ethos of her company which I felt backed up what I had discovered throughout my research and some of the points I have raised in my written element for the Context of Practice module. This was also one of the main reasons I contacted her with an interest to design for her start-up company.

Quotes such as "Delicacies made from the love of chocolate & love of life & made with the belief that life, like chocolate, is meant to be savoured", "every bite will give you an amazing experience " and "flavours that will make you scream for more" were all quite sexually suggestive similarly to the example I have analysed in my extended writing piece. 

Through my primary research I concluded that language tends to be more effective in terms of influencing emotions as it is open to a lot more interpretation.Therefore I decided to used these three tagline as the basis of my design with the aim of influencing a sense of curiosity and excitement in my intended target audience like had Kinder Bueno have successfully achieved in their 'Not Only For Kids' campaign.

I tried a range of typefaces, and type styles including Copperplate which was the font originally used by the brand, however I felt the uppercase styling was quite 'heavy' for the feeling I wanted to portray in my advertisements.

I chose to use typeface, 'Philosopher' for the advertisements it has a classical feel to it in terms of being a serif font and yet it feels more contemporary as the serifs are more experimental in the placement. I personally think it feels more seductive in comparison to the minimalist sans-serif typefaces I also tried.

Phrases such as "savoured" "make you scream for more" and "give you an amazing experience" are steeped in sexual innuendo which is a common strategy advertisers use which I discovered in my research for both elements of the module. Advertisers use suggestive language in order to arouse a sense of curiosity in the audience and to allow their imaginations to wander. To put even more emphasis on the particularly provocative words within the tagline I decided to italicise in order to draw the audiences attention to them. With the aim that this would entice the audience .

One of the main requirements for the campaign that Ebony Dip stipulated in her emails was that should it be possible I should aim to stay as close to her original colour scheme as possible.

I began by experimenting with different hues of the blue as I personally felt a darker, perhaps navy blue would be more seductive than a primary blue.

Originally when experimenting with possible designs for the advertisements I tried a black and white filter on the photographs that I had chosen, however the feed back I received from Simon during my final tutorial was that that they did not seem 'chocolatety'. Through the aesthetic of my advertisements I wanted to strengthen the relationship between the viewer and chocolate in their subconscious mind, therefore I tried an chocolate-esque brown filter on the provocative images of woman which I had chosen in order to tie the two together.

Similar to what photographer Marek Straszewki had attempted to achieve within the Kinder Bueno 'Not Only For Kids' campaign.

In terms of selecting imagery for the campaign, I chose to strictly stick to one subject per ad, which as evidenced in the existing advertisements I analysed within my extended writing piece, reiterates the self-indulgent nature of the consumption of chocolate. The feeling of indulgence is something I wanted to influence in my intended audience.

- Examples of how the mouth is commonly used to induce associations between chocolate and sex

- Examples of female sexuality being exploited in chocolate advertisements

It's is a common trait for the sexuality of woman to be used within chocolate advertisements, as seen within both the Kinder Bueno and Godiva advertisements. I noticed a trend to particularly use the mouth, a common symbol of sexuality in order to induce associations with sex within the audience and therefore I cropped down my photographs to only feature the mouth of the woman.

In order to give the chocolate-esque filter I simply had to create a new layer with my chosen colour, and then alter the overlay options between layers to edit the photograph.

I like the subtlety this filter 'Linear Light' has upon the photograph, it seems to tease at the idea of chocolate yet the brown in not overbearing and would not take away from the image itself or the tagline. The glossy dark brown lips are really quite eye-catching and I believe would successfully entice the audience.

I believe this filter is perhaps too subtle, giving a more creamy colour rather than brown there is no connection between the image and chocolate and therefore it is not as effective in my eyes.

The filter has appeared to my the lips in this image faded out and not as eye-catching.

Again the glossy brown lips in the image are really quite enticing and provocative, effectively showing how the mouth can be used as a means of influencing associations of sex and pleasure.

- Application to another photo from the advertising campaign

I chose to use the 'Linear Light' filter for my photographs as I felt the subtle hint of chocolate which it applied to my photographs was in keeping with the innuendo and suggestive nature of both the language and image I have specially chosen. I learn throughout the research process that the suggestion of something tended to be much more effective in influencing emotions than out and out saying it. Which was why in my survey language was more provoking than imagery, the more there was the suggestion of sex the more our mind wanders to more explicit images.

In terms of placement of the tagline, I experiment with a variety of layouts. For the final designs I deliberately chose to place the tagline over the mouth in order again draw attention to the facial feature which has strong sexual connotations.

Finals

As this is a start-up campaign aiming to raise awareness of the brand and build a emotional relationship with the audience I believed it was appropriate to create an extensive campaign which could be distributed across a variety of formats I applied the three taglines which are the basis of the campaign to each of the five final images I have chosen creating fifteen advertisements. 

Overall I pleased with the design outcomes for the advertising campaign. I believe the sexually suggestive nature of the designs would be effective in strengthening the relationship advertisers have fabricated between chocolate and sex or more specifically pleasure. By strengthening this relationship it will form a emotional connection in the audience, whenever they think or see the brand name Ebon Chocolates they will immediate think of a pleasurable experience which as evidenced in my written element can be effective in influencing purchase decisions.

In terms of distribution, with it being a start-up campaign it was imperative that the advertisements are distributed on a variety of format in order to increase brand awareness.

Mock-ups

PDF Pitch

The final outcomes and mock-ups I produced were presented in the format of an advertising campaign pitch on presentation boards giving some context to the brief.

These boards would theoretically be proposed to a live client, Ebony Dip of Ebon Chocolates as a start-up campaign concept.