Merchandising

After finalising and deciding on the final logo for light, we progressed onto exploring the merchandise aspect in order to gain more attention and to generate exposure. Here are some of the merchandise ideas which are cheap and cost effective to produce if they wanted to look into this further...

Keyrings are a cheap item to produce while being a good item to keep while the RayBan inspired glasses can create an interesting fashion statement. However, costs might be dear.

  

What we decided on having for the final campaign was some canvass bags and wristbands. The bags can create great exposure when in use as well as providing an excellent extra long life use for storage. Rubber wristbands was another decided choice due to the versatility of the item as well as something ionic which would attract the younger audiences. They're also cheap to produce.

Being a Tease..

To help enhance the campaign, I came up with the idea of having a teaser poster to get people questioning what this mysterious event is.  By keeping it simple, sweet and clean we came up with this concept..

By integrating all the 3 events into one circle with the half hour time increments still in place, we replaced the Roman numerals with large circles to hide what the circle represents. All we have is the name time, a masked photo and a QR code. This would enable light interaction with the poster in order to find out more information when scanning. Which links to the official Alight website. 

The best spot for exposure would be on the site on Arundel Gate in which the Welcome to Sheffield poster is curerntly displayed. Through such a high footfall and exposure especially from Hallam Students,  this could generate quite a buzz, especially as the Welcome to Sheffield poster has been up there for some time now.

The Final Posters for Alight...

So as you can see below, here are the final posters for the "Just Press Play" alight campaign. 

• We feel this works well with the idea of playing and getting involved through the strong recognisable symbol of the play button. 
• We also kept the use of different colours to a minimum in order to keep costs low while focusing on the colours relating to the time of day.
• In terms of displaying the time, we achieved this in a more contemporary way by displaying a simple Roman numeral clock around the play button with half hour dots displayed as time increments. 
• We also implemented a snapshot window through the play button to reveal the scenes of each of the events depending on the time of day.
• Finally QR codes linking to the website and official Facebook page have also been implemented as well as the website address itself if the user does not have access to a smartphone. 

As I whole, I feel very happy with how the posters have turned out to be!

Refning Alight Development.

After deciding on a final style for the campaign, next was the step on developing and producing it to a professional quality. I played around on photoshop with a number of different styles and layouts until I was happy with the outcome. Here are some working in progress photos...

After playing around with many styles and layouts, this was the final version in which I felt portrayed the feeling of the event well while giving it a clean minimalistic look..

Alight Development Ideas.

A new year and a new mindset. I went back to the drawing board keeping the strapline "Just Press Play" and clickwheel design in mind. Here are the ideas I came up with;

 

The Eureka moment happened when I drew up this idea above, by excluding the rest of the buttons to eliminate clutter and simplicity, the strength of the play button is still recognisable enough to include a segment of the event within the play symbol itself, a stream of more development came off this which included these ideas...

Personally out of all of them, this bottom one was my personal favourite as it has the potential to display a lot of information in a quick amount of reading time while the clock aspect could be integrated into the button quite nicely to show what times events start. As well as that, there is a lot of space to add further information if necessary. After showing these to Ryan, he really liked the last ones as well so we decided on developing these further..

Volkswagen getting all musical..

I came across this advert on TV first a couple months ago, and I thought of this advert which links into the campaign idea of having a musical score. I like the hand drawn illustration aspect of it as this is becoming more and more or a rare medium used. I'm not particularly a fan of the music, but none the less, a wonderfully constructed ad. Watch and enjoy.

A lesson learning challenge...

With the first client presentation from the Sheffield Philharmonic Choir creeping round the corner, Mel gave all of us the opportunity to express our ideas  to her and Leoni in which it could be shortlisted to the client the following day. From Mel's feedback a few days ago here's the ideas we came up with..

This is what we said as an explanation for these ideas...


"We have taken the lollipop idea and tried to link it closer to the music aspect of the festival. This has been done by adding a click wheel print onto the wrapper of the lollipop, keeping in touch with the modern age of digital music and MP3's. 


Secondly our strap line has been adapted to 'Sweet Music. Just Press Play'. This gives the buttons on the wrapper a purpose and meaning. We've then put people with the lollipop in different scenarios where they are able to control the music in front of them using the buttons on the wrapper. 


The media for this idea was initially a video where the person controls the music then unwraps the lollipop and sucks it, enjoying the music and the lollipop. However, we feel it could also work as a poster. Our Billboard idea visually explains how people can press play for sweet music. It also incorporates the main locations of the event into the design, but still closely integrates the music aspect. 


Creating awareness for the event will involve handing out lollipops with the click wrapper, which will have additional info on the lollipop stick. This is a cheap and fun way to boost awareness. If the budget does expand then we think stands around town could be set up with large prints of our ideas on, giving a visual to aid the handing out of lollipops. 


Finally, we feel the event would benefit greatly from putting our poster ideas in specific magazines or newspapers, getting the message out to different target audiences, as this event if for all ages. The lollipop with the click wheel wrapper will also be a free-bee with any magazine or newspaper the campaign appears in."


After waiting around for a few hours in terms of who got selected, unfortunately we were unsuccessful this time round. Of course we were a bit disappointed but we saw it as a good learning curve. We spent a lot of time and energy coming up with a plausible concept but at the time our minds weren't on the right mind to create a successful campaign. Looking back at this campaign to what we have now ( in which I will reveal in some later posts), this looks a lot weaker than what we first perceived it to be.

Also when we had another private feedback session with Mel, she thought the implementation of a lollipop in this way would not communicate the message well. However, that said, she really liked the click wheel idea and strap line. After discussion, me and Ryan decided to scrap the lollipop idea and look into how the click wheel and strap line could be developed further. Back to the drawing board.