YCN / Final boards

YCN / Final Resolutions

Taking the same added designs from the photos to the drawings,I feel they work a bit better than the actual photos to portray the idea and concept, plus a good idea of the type, composition they both work well together, it is these two that shall be put onto our  boards. 

YCN / Final Exp

This is the final mock-up for the first scenario, me and Martyn decided to use the tag-line, 'why just dream it' felt it was one of the best ones to use in terms of message and the comp of it within the speech bubble. 

YCN / Resolution 2

After showing Martyn my Freddie drawing and having his approval, i went on to produce another one for our earlier planned photo of a male (me) filling up a car, a normal thing to do, only dressed up as ginger spice in the iconic union jack dress!

Using the below imagery i got to this, i think its pretty darn effective!

YCN / Resolution

From creating a nice lil speech bubble, i took it to each different tag-line and played with the layout of it inside the bubble! My favorites out of them are 'LIVING THE DREAM' & 'WHY JUST DREAM IT' i think it works best when the text fills the bubble as a rectangle taking up most of the white space! I think it works best as it is the easiest to read as a whole and also doesnt put any emphasis on certain words unnecessarily. 

YCN / Speech Bubble

Playing with the idea of using a speech bubble to place the tag-line in, making it fully legible and that! Did my best to draw a bit of a fun speech bubble, furthermore creating something that we could link to the logo in terms of colour scheme. Eventually this shall have 3 layers to it, the outer shadow, the white bow and the text, Blue, White and Red.

YCN / Tag-Lines & Comp

This is all of my experimentation with the layout and comp of the different tag-lines, mostly using the typeface Poplar, which i will use in the final designs / mock ups. 

One problem i found with some of the experiments and that is the type can be hard to read on certain ones. This being due to putting type directly over the image which is generally quite dark (so no black or dark colours) but is also bright in certain parts (so no white in certain parts). I attempted to resolve this by using black boxes with a high opacity setting which worked ok! I also made a quick speech bubble which i think is quite an interesting idea, and one which i may look into a bit further. 

Out of these i am mostly leaning towards the 'Love Music, live it at' but im not fully convinced by them just yet, It all needs more work!

YCN / Resolving

Bigger & Better

I drew a more finalised image of the Freddie look-a-like, i think it works fairly well, the best so far anyway! The good thing is about this aswell is that our second photo idea is easily created like this, but Martyn had yet to see this so before i got too far into something that Martyn did'n't like or want to use, i went back to the matter of type and played around with the composition of the photos w/type & logos!

YCN / Resolving

Our problem right now is that we can't produce quality, convincing photos without spending a load of money which me and Martyn have ruled out! Fortunately our brief only asks for concepts and ideas, nothing actually to be produced, but we want something visually pleasing to put on our boards, so our boards look shit hot! 

So i tried one idea, of tracing over the existing photography, and adding some more iconic imagery to try and emphasise who the character is!  

Playing with some different ideas, making him fat, as we dont want people to actually think its freddie mercury more some mad head is dying to be him! The drawings are quite small (a4) I think they will work better at a larger size but i think this is a better way of presenting our concept & idea then trying to have a perfect finalized piece! 

YCN / Mock Posters

Taking our photos into InDesign see how effective they look in context with the tag-line(s) & logos etc!

Our fears had come true, the photo wasnt strong enough for people (who didnt know anything of the brief/idea) to recognise who the character is supposed to be! 

We need to re-assess this, and quick! We are running out of time, even still im fairly calm. The problem is, we could have stronger photos if we bought real fancy dress costumes but i am totally skint and cant afford one alone nevermind two and it would be unfair to get Martyn to purchase two as it would have been something like 40 quid! What to do... 

YCN / Freddie Mercury

First photo shoot, Freddie Mercury look-a-like waiting for a bus.

Problems we encountered:

. Model didn't show, found new one!

. Trousers, firstly the colour of them, we had large white ones and skinny bleached jeans, neither were fully right for the job.

. Trousers again, problems with sizes, needed to be tighter!

. How to make the moustache, face paint, hair!?

. Traffic, we accidently chose to shoot at rush hour, oops. Was hard to get a good shot across the road with cars driving and stopping in our shot. 

Nevertheless we got some photos done! 

A small sample of them, but the main angles / compositions we were looking at having.

I think the photos are funny, however, it isnt obvious enough that its suppose to be a Freddie Mercury look-a-like, just chillin. Instead it looks like a press ad for a new gay chat call line. The problem with it is that there isnt enough iconic imagery on the model, Yellow leather jacket, Whiter jeans, normal trainers, red stripe trousers! We did our best without spending any money, money that i dont have anyway!

Not exactly what we want, nonetheless we have something to work and try to move forward with!

YCN / Tag-Line

Again...

Right again we needed to re-assess our tag-line, we came to the decision to work with a few similar ones, 

. Why just dream it

. Love music?

. Passionate about music?

. Living the dream

This time not having any orders or demands, more short questions that are easily answered! 

We came to the decision to just play around all of these, see what goes well within certain layouts and with the composition of our photos.

YCN / Final Crit

Going into the crit me and Martyn were pretty confident with our idea, however we suspected to be torn into a little bit by Graham. Which we were! He had concerns about our tagline and the people we were aiming at. 

He was under the belief that people don't lose their passion for music so we were aiming it at the wrong people. I disagreed, i think that when people are in their youth, 16-20's their interest in music is huge, forming bands, playing instruments a lot, then people grow up and have to get jobs, pay bills etc so music becomes something smaller than what it once was, I personally see this as people losing some passion for music, I feel the problem within the crit was simply the word passion, it could be explained better by i guess time, people have lost the time for their passion in music!

I feel as though me Mart and Graham were on the same page, concerning the concept and idea however we were just expressing it differently!

Another point that Graham raised was that our tag-line wasn't right, it was close but not there. The main problem with it we all felt was that starting with 'Dont' is telling people something to do/dont do, people dont like taking orders so we need to change that.

Other than this stuff our concept was liked so s'all good.

YCN / Type Layout

Type layed out in the style of Anthony Burrell's Wood Block posters (see DC), i think they could work well with our imagery, if it turns out how i think it will! The two above are Poplar and Helvetica Inseret, out of the two i think i prefer Poplar (top) i really like the tail on the R, its fit. Mmmmm type. But yeah when searching for a typeface to use i practiced the trick from the type sessions, think of 3 words to describe our message, i came up with youthful, exciting and fun! I think poplar answers all! 

YCN / Early Sample Press Ad

This is a quick mock up i did to reprasent what our press ads were going to look like before we fully resolved our idea!

Mundane situation, an office worker say bored at work day dreaming of him living his past dreams of rock stardom!

YCN / Action Plan

This is a rough action plan for the rest of this week, got quite a few workshops which get in the way a bit but, Tomorrow evening we shall hopefully take the photos for the Freddy Mercury ad, then after the type workshop i shall take the photos into Photoshop/Indesign and play with the layout of the tag-line and logos etc! 

Then on friday we shall take the photos for the Spice Girl ad, and later in the day adding the tag-line and what not! Then this weekend, the essay. SWEET. 

YCN / Lost

It was after deciding on the tag-line where me and Martyn got lost, we got a bit lost within our idea, not really knowing what we were to do next! We had the tag-line and had the ideas for the brief, we just didn't know how to resolve them and what we were going to put on our presentation boards. 

We had a sit down with Fred, where we stated our concept and our idea and our problem of just not knowing how to present it!

What fred pointed out is that to resolve the storyboards how we wanted, they would be lens-based, the problem here is that it would be really hard for us to set up one of the situations we had made up within our ideas, we needed something much more simple.

Furthermore Fred stated that the videos were far to complicated, which was a fair statement. 

So to simplify it we came to a new slightly different idea. Instead of TV commercials we will make press ads. The subject of which will be a photo of a normal person in a normal situation only dressed up as their music hero. So to say they are living a dream of being that person! 

We also stripped the tag-line back from ' dont just dream it, experience it' to ' dont just dream it' as the experience is the museum and will kind of already be shown in the poster and that. 

An important factor of these posters is that the person the character dresses up as is a very iconic person within British music, this making it blatantly obvious! 

So the idea...

2 Photos!

- A male standing at a bus stop waiting for the bus, nice and normal, however he is dressed as Freddy Mercury! White tank top, white jeans, arm band, moustache, win!

This will be made into a press ad with the tag-line and logo etc The context for this press ad shall be on posters at bus shelters and on posters inside the bus. 

- Another male, at the petrol station filling up his normal car, only dressed up as ginger spice from the Spice Girls! Fulfilling his dream!

This will be again produced into a poster with the tag-line and logo's on. The context of this will be on billboards as this is for drivers.

The reasoning of the context for the press ads, is the context within the photos is the context for the posters!

YCN / Tag-Line

So more work on the tag-line! It took a while and some hardcore research! Check out the web-site below for what i looked at, 100's of famous tag-lines! 

http://www.taglineguru.com/sloganlist.html

But yeah looking from these it helped me to kind of see how tag-lines are generally made and written, what kind of language is used. It helped me to find that the shorter the tag-line the better, however it is also more difficult to get a short one that works well!

From here i got to line such as, 

. the best music experience ever, The BME

. Restoring the joy of music

. daydream away or experience today

I wanted to en-capture the interactivity of it, the daydreaming / dreaming part of out idea and something about the experience.

After thinking of different ideas with Martyn today we kind of came to the agreement that, 'Dont just dream it, experience it' was the best one we had come up with so we decided to go with it!

YCN / Storyboard

This is a storyboard i made after Martyn had showed me the Music video with the oversized heads, and going from a point which was made during our last crits of visualising the storyboards differently and more detailed. Not in full detail, but i think it gives a good representation of what me and Mart are going for. I used Will Ferrell purely because he his easy to get images of and his facial expressions suited the scenario i was making. 

YCN / Tag-Line

So without doing any real research into existing tag-lines and the like, i brainstormed a few initial ideas to what it could be or be like!

{insert design sheet photo}

At the moment the best one i could come up with is...

"Dont just dream it! Experience it! The British Music Experience"

But that is something that could be at the end of everyone, like something that would tie them all together, for the single ones all i could think of at the time was using the E4's humorous voice-over guy saying something like...

"What the ruddy heck are you doing buddy boy!?" & for women, "What the devil are you doing madame!?"

Lets just say work in progress.

YCN / Action Plan

So my List to do essentially is as follows...

. For the Ad campaign we need to have some sort of tag-line that will pop up at the end of the TV ad and to have on the press ad like, something that sums it up quickly and says in other words, 'go to the BME'. So i plan to look at the different situations me and Mart have come up with and try to make a tag-line for each one, then create one for all of them tying them all together like. 

For this  i will also research into existing adverts with a similar subject, and also look into tag-lines / voice overs, specially the E4 famous voice over, i feel his voice could be perfect for this!

. Concerning this, i need to research and look for typeface designs to use to represent the tag-lines, Martyn mentioned using something a bit more custom, something that is recognisable, something that the audience will remember and associate with the BME alone.

YCN / Final Brief

So the final brief that me & Martyn shall be working from is...

Brief - Bring new customer to the british music experience.

Concept - Rekindle peoples lost passion for music.

Idea - Think of 5 things in your environment you can use as a musical instrument.

Audience - People who have lost there passion for music.

The deliverables for this (aside from the boards etc) will take the form of a storyboard(s) for a TV ad and also a still form of media such as a press ad. 

The essential idea behind this is looking at a normal person (who at one stage in his or her life had a strong passion for music) in a mundane situation, E.G. A guy in an office, young adult in a fast food joint, a widowed Grandmother at home etc they fall into a daydream of living out their lost passion of being a big music star and shortly are dragged straight back to reality. The selling point being for them to live that lost dream at the BME or atleast find their lost passion!

YCN / Post Crit: 2

Going into the crit me and Martyn had made quick design sheets clearly stating the brief and our different ideas for it, we wanted to achieve one main thing from the crits and that was to get everyones opinion on which idea was the strongest, i had a feeling that Martyns would get picked as his idea was more finalised and nailed than mine, but that was our aim.

What we found from the crit is that everyone pretty much preferred Martyns idea, a few of my mail-shot ideas were liked but were deemed a bit extravagant & expensive to produce. I can sympathize with the guys opinion on this however my ideas were really just conceptual, i wasnt planning on making them merely presenting the idea to the BME as a new exciting, interactive way to get new customers! On the other hand i dont want to sound bitter because im really not, i think Martyns idea is really strong and has a lot of potential! 

Other things that were mentioned during the crits and on the feedback sheets were;

. The storyboards need to be resolved a lot more, as they were quick drawings

. Good variation of ideas for one concept

. Try to translate advert into single poster images

. No mentioning of the "cutting edge audio & visual technology" 

. A good potential slogan that will bring your ideas together 

. What target audiences from the ones looked at will be most successful 

. How will we deliver our idea

I think we got some valid points here, some of which we have thought about and come to a decision on, notably the point about taking it to a still media, such as posters / press ad. We have also thought about a slogan bringing them all together, obviously i say we have thought about it, me and Martyn have seen that they are an issue and have planned to resolve them, but they come further down the line, after this crit basically! After choosing a concept to carry on with like. 

Design Identity

Been playing with some hand drawn type stating my name, possibly using for a business card / website etc! 

Dreamweaver

YCN / Ideas

To solve my re-written brief i thought of creating some form of mail-shot that would go to a chosen list of music agencies, labels and related businesses. 

So here are some ideas for what the mail shot could be...

To go over some of my ideas! 

. I had thought of sending an old school style Barbershop Quartet to the chosen companies, they would perform an awesome song, describing the possibilities of hiring out the space, ending with a contact number or email address! 

. Another idea was to play a little trick on the companies! Send in a man dressed as a UPS or similar delivery man, get someone to sign for a 'package' which would be empty, then after signing the UPS man would give them a copy of what they had signed, which happens to be a contract stating they had booked a party/event in the space. 

. Sound-bombing. The idea is a group of actors all raved up crash one of the chosen offices just have a mad party there and then, boom-box in hand, they then hand out business cards/flyer or something! "carry on the party at the BME" or something! Then they all scoot off. 

. Another idea for a mail-shot is to deliver a huge bundle of balloons held together by a tag with a simple amount of info and that, "BME at your disposal" and some sort of contact details, but yeah all the balloons have the RAF roundel on to match with the logo aswell as having O2 logo as a balloon and models of the arena itself! Nice, bright and fun! Guaranteed to produce a smile! 

+ MORE!

YCN / Target Audience

For the re-written brief my target audience generally speaking is music related businesses & music labels/agencies. 

So i came up with a list of possible companies and that to send this mail shot too. 

YCN / My chosen brief

Taking the two briefs to Martyn, we both came to the decision that the Brief based on hiring the BME out was the better one, it seemed a more interesting & different idea and also the more exciting out of the two.  

It was also at this point where martyn came to me and showcased a concept he had come up with! I really liked it, partly because he had done his best to make it exciting and funny. The general jist of it is, 'rekindle your youth' the premise of it was to look at people who have once had a big passion for music yet due to age and general life their dreams go out the window. Getting the people to rekindle these fond memory's of their lost passion. Our plan is to work on both the concepts separately, helping each other with certain bits, pushing the ideas further! But yeah working on these concepts till we get a good idea of how each one will look and what not, at this point we shall choose one and submit it!  

Brief: 

Promote the BME as a function room available for hire, aswell as an interactive museum. 

Concept: 

The BME has a 3,768 sq ft function room available to hire whenever! Not enough people know of this and are therefore not using the space.

Background: 

The space can be used for many a thing, Cocktail Reception / Rock or Pop Gig / Private & Corporate events / Awards Ceremony, etc.

Target Audience:

Music related Businesses, Music Agencies & Labels based around the London area. 

Tone of Voice:

Exciting, Persuasive, Informative, Friendly, Fun

Considerations:

Think conceptually! 

There is the need to contact the target audience directly, what is the best way to do so?

Go big or go home. 

Mandatory Requirements:  

Must use the BME logo keeping the original colours. No changes! 

Deliverables:

3 X A2 Presentation boards - YCN

5 X A2 Presentation boards - Hand in. 

YCN / Re-written Briefs

Two different briefs & concepts i came up with from looking once more at problems and TA's, First one is aimed at children, well getting children to go on an arranged trip with their schools, possible to look at a collection ages, anything from 7-19! It would be in the form of a mail-shot sent to chosen schools, it is a bit boring but could look very nice if made all proper, portfolio piece and all that jazz.

The second is a little bit more fun, more possible outcomes i feel, I found out that the BME actually rent the place out for all kind of events, private & corperate, so i thought we could target music labels based around London and also Music related businesses such as HMV, telling them about the possibilities of renting the place out, good thing to base it around would be christmas parties. 

YCN / Target Audience

Considering the problems i need to now think of the possible target audiences. 

What me and Martyn realised from the crit was that our chosen audience (Families) were the people that are already going to the BME, and will probably be the majority of existing custom the BME get. 

So what we want to do is to get people to the BME, as no one knows who, what or where they are, ergo sum no one is going, so we need to get people there, families are already going, so new possible Target Audiences...

. Schools

Getting children from a large range, 7-19 yrs to go for an educational visit with schhool to the BME, Go to learn, discover interact and play! 

. O.A.P's 

They have a lot of spare time, a lot of which will have a passion for music, maybe not current tunes but will have roots to the history, where to better to go for that than the BME!

. Workers (Inside the O2)  

The O2 is huge, and during the day there is always a lot of people working around the arena, so why not try and get these guys to come in on their breaks or after or before work, have a bit of a play and what not!

. Workers (Outside the O2) 

The O2 is situated in a very busy area of East london, notably the famous Canary wharf, which is home to bloody loads of wealthy young professionals so lets try get these guys into the museum whether it be for an hour during breaks or a small taster for them to then come again in their own free time, weekends and such.

 

YCN / Problem

These are the problems i see the BME having, 

. People don't know who they are

. People don't know where they are

. People don't know what they are 

. They don't know what their target audience is

. Their visuals are shit 

. No one goes during the week

. People don't know how to get there

. They have no/minimal advertising 

. They have no advertising outside of their own website / O2 website 

Now combined there is a rather large problem! 

*People don't know who/what/where they are* 

This is the problem i feel we need to tackle, tell people (yet to be determined what specific audience shall be)about the BME, what the place is and what goes on there and to let them know where it is, how to get there etc!

YCN / Post crit

Didn't go too well, what was pointed out to us was that our target audience may not be the most appropriate as it is families that are already going, and families in itself is a very broad audience. Furthermore our problem that we had identified was quite superficial as we kind of just looked at the BME and decided that their imagery was pretty poor and represented them in the wrong light, to solve the problem we decided to make better and more exciting imagery across as many formates as possible. 

Heartbroken and defeated me and Martyn went away to re-assess the brief and to really hone our target audience and come up with a better problem.

Poster Mock-Ups