Communication is a Virus

 Today we were asked to compile four lists. These included: our skills and personal attributes, and what skills and attributes we looked for in an ideal partner.

My Skills:

Research, Composition, Photography, Punctuality, Time Management

My Personal Attributes:
Reserved, Sarcastic, Tolerant, Easy Going, Honest
Your Skills:
Illustration, Concept Builder, Commitment, Knowledge, Experimental
Your Personal Attributes:

Confident, Outspoken, Humourous, Punctual, Decisive

We were then told we had 45 minutes to compose a poster similar to a personal advertisement. It had to be A3 and include all the information that we had previously written. When everyone had created their poster, they were all pinned up on the wall anonymously. Then with as many post-its as we wanted we had to put our name on the advertisements that appealed to us. When everyone had done this we went back to our initial posters and made a list of the names that were on them. We then had to go to each person and ask if they wanted to partner up with you. The first person I went to was Karl, and coincidentally I had placed my name on his poster too, therefore we thought it would be a great idea to work together.

After establishing our partnership we immediately got to work brainstorming ideas, both collaboratively, and individually. We decided to take two issues each and start to work on resolutions and directions in which to take each idea. I decided to research 'tell a lie convincingly' and 'get people to communicate more'. I started by simply placing the phrases in a bubble and placing ideas around them. The off shoots ranged from fully formed ideas to as little as key words and further questions. However I found myself struggling on my own, as I didn't know how well my ideas would be received, this may have something to do with my decreased confidence in my own work. Never the less I continued to research and thought that the best direction to go was with getting people to communicate more.

When we came back togather though it became obvious that we were both going in opposite directions and we really needed to do was regroup. Therefore we settled on a definite problem and decided to just make the most out of it, even if we were struggling we just had to power through. The problem we settled on was 'Get people to read more.' The statement of intent that we set ourselves from the beginning went along the lines of:

We have decided on 'get people to read more'. We have decided upon this because there is already plenty of research and statistics out there that we can use to our advantage. We don't want to just promote reading im general, we want to target our campaign at commuters, to brake up the monotomy of the journey they have to take every day. We also want to remove the influence of 'The Metro' and other similar free newspapers.

Because we now knew our target audience we could find a way of directing our message straight at them. We decided to use the National Rail map as a reference and through further research we narrowed down the ten most popular train stations. These stations were: Manchester Picadilly, Glasgow Central, Kings Cross, Leeds, Canterbury West, Bournemouth, Edinburgh Waverly, Cardiff Central, Norwich, Portsmouth and Cambridge. From the names of the different stations Karl started to research the famous literature that has come from that particular area. It was at this point that we realised we could add another dimension to the project: the promotion of new technology and how that can increase the popularity and availability of classic novels.

This also enhanced the 'virus' part of the brief, an aspect that I fully admit had not thought about until now. The final ten stations had to be assigned a piece of literature that could be deemed worthy of reading on commutes on a daily basis. The ten books in relation the stations went as followed:

Manchester - A Clockwork Orange
Glasgow - Peter Pan
Kings Cross - Frankenstein
Leeds - Jane Eyre
Bournemouth - Lord of the Rings
Canterbury - James Bond
Norwich - Black Beauty
Portsmouth - Oliver Twist
Cambridge - The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
Edinburgh - Sherlock Holmes

Now we had an audience and a context we could start to work on design and composition. We both took five books each completely at random and started to draw out early ideas. The five that I got where Black Beauty, Peter Pan, Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes and The Hitchhikers Guide. We decided to take memorable quotes from each of the books and pair an illustration with each of these to broadcast on the large scale billboard ads that would feature at every train station specific the area. Below are the final ten designs that we settled on. The first five are Karl's designs.

The next five are my designs. I realise my illustrations are a lot simpler than my partner's but I just can't draw like that, and thought by creating illustrations that are true to my style then I was bringing my own personality to the project.

The purpose of these posters is to attract the commuters eye on a journey they will travel almost every day. Therefore commuters can often grow weary and tend to not really take anything in, thats why we chose bright eye catching colours. They may seem jarring at first but atleast that means they will carry out their intended function. Once we have drawn in the commuters eye, they will then we drawn to a website were they can enter the code found on every poster. This will then lead them to a taster novel, wetting their appetites almost, drawing them in and hopefully leaving them wanting more. Along with the website which can be accessed using the wi-fi available on most trains, other aspects have been included. Such as an application for the iPhone and eBooks for use on eReaders. Below are the three pages designed by Karl for the website. As you can see the theme is continued through the use of purple, orange and white and the typeface Nilland. I think they work incredibly well and are definitely functional.

Below are my designs for the iPhone application. I chose to depict three different stages in the downloading of the novels. The first is purely visual and shows the selection of books available, but obviously you would be initially directed to the particular novel that corresponds to the code you enter. The second is a brief description of the authors life and other works they may have created, on this page is a link to the free downloadable content. The third is the first few pages of the actual novel. This is to entice readers in and hopefully lead to them buying the rest of the novel.