Reflecting on recent promotional work

In a previous blog post, I talked about how I had done very little practical work in my sketchbook in terms of branding.  However, I am forgetting that I have done a fair bit of work in this vein in recent months.  My research into the "why" of branding is fairly new, but it is perhaps useful to look at my previous works to examine if I put the brand and it's values across, what emotional reaction I could arguably get out of people with my work, and to see if I would change anything now.  A lot of these were commissioned with limited time, and I admit that in some cases I dived in and gave less thought to what I was being asked to represent.  Examining the brand - who they are, what they do, what are their values - will hopefully give me pointers on things to bear in mind in future work.

Promotional poster for The Saltire Foundation

The Saltire Foundation, in its own words, "exist(s) to find, fuel and spark Scotland's human potential, in turn creating our next generation of business leaders."  I was lucky enough to be a Saltire Scholar over the summer, so I knew that the programme is aimed at students of any degree, with positions both specialist (chemical engineering, law, history) and general business and HR placements for people like myself who hold degrees in liberal arts, creative degrees or languages.  The current identity of the Saltrie foundation is black and white, and associated buzzwords include "opportunity" "business" "further" "potential" and similar. 

After speaking to Efia, a fellow Scholar who collaborated with me on the poster and gave me feedback, we agreed that the current representation was a little misleading as it was very stark and minimal in some places.  The programme was exciting and fast-paced, and the opportunities that come from being  a Scholar can be great.  Many scholars were placed abroad and basically got to live it up, so to speak.  The website and promotional materials from 2013 were certainly classy and restrained, but visually they said little about the amazing experience of being a part of the Foundation.  The aesthetic look suggested a programme steeped in "prestige" rather than an open opportunity to applicants of varying experience. If I wanted to encourage students to apply I didn't think I could continue the full visual scheme as it was.  

A screenshot from the Saltire Foundation's website

We decided the poster would have blue in it to reference the Scottish element instead of black, and swapped out the more serious headshots for photos that suggested energy and friendship.  Efia was very keen on the "Opportunity of a lifetime!" slogan as it is one that is used a lot by people who have been in the programme, as well as the "Are you…" section to encourage more people to apply.  Visually I was inspired by dynamic posters by Emilio Jose Bernard (below) and some cool poster templates by Graphic River, as I wanted a poster with some movement that suggested a dynamic feel.  Did I succeed in leading the eye to the right places?  Maybe not, but the main feedback I got was that it did indeed look "really dynamic"and "a lot more eye-catching than last year's" from the client.  

Poster Template by GraphicRiver

Work by Jose Emilio Bernard

My aim for this poster was to motivate people to get involved, and try to suggest the opportunities that a person applying might get from being an intern.  But while that is an aim of the Foundation, I do think there are ways I could have incorporated the current brand's identity further into the poster even if it is fairly restrained.  I did not have space to include anything about the Foundation's other benefits such as business partnerships and the Alumni scheme, and I do wish I could have made Arial font work on the poster (readability didn't really work out).  So the current brand identity was not carried forward fully, however I do feel that the poster will appeal to students who are looking for a experience such as the one the Saltire Foundation offers.

You can find Efia over at Effy Talks Life, her lifestyle blog.

The Music Brewery Logo

The Music Brewery do online reviews of gigs and albums, particularly on the Scottish music scene.  The guys just wanted a logo for their Facebook and Twitter pages, and are still a fairly fledgling company so I did what I was told here, there was hardly any brand identity to use as a springboard so they asked me to keep it black and white.  They asked for a factory with speakers at the side and I did my best to comply quickly.  Looking back I feel that it's a little angular for anything associated with music, as music logos such as iTunes and Spotify are usually constructed from circles or more fluid shapes.  Removing myself from being the designer, it looks like a nightclub of some sort - not quite the same as the service The Music Brewery do!  This is perhaps one to re-work later when TMB has more of a brand story behind it.  The guys were very polite and easy to work with, and you can find their blog here.

Full Fat gig poster

My friends at Full Fat commissioned this poster for a gig at Cerberus Bar Back in May.  They are a blues band, although from the poster to be honest I'm not sure you can tell that.  Band posters are a tricky one as they can get very ambiguous, with the exception of certain genres such as heavy metal.  What I did try to do was put through some of the emotional elements of the band's songwriting - the band are very much their own bosses and are in control of all elements of their music production so some kind of "manufactured" or overly-polished gig poster wouldn't have done their authenticity any justice.  The logo is their own (Edwardian Script) and the font used was called Baron Neue, a nice non-serif font that contrasted the title nicely and was still readable from a distance. Had I had more time I would have loved to add to the illustration with more lyrics as these are a big part of the band's "bluesy" identity, but deadlines are deadlines!  You can listen to Full Fat's music here.

Abertay Mental Health Nurses rebrand

This project unfortunately stalled after a while, but it was a very interesting one that I may even keep on developing as in terms of psychology there is a lot here.  The head lecturer of the Mental Health Nursing Course at Abertay came to Dave, who was one of my lecturers in third year, about doing a rebrand of the course which would help make the conversation around mental health more accessible to people and encourage them to look at it in a different way to the usual stigma.  

(The following is a condensed write-up of the process)

I looked at a lot of existing mental health information leaflets out there, and then at logos and shapes that inspired a feeling of care and support.

Nurses' values draft icons

Emma brought a few mental health students along to talk to us about their experiences, and they discussed what their core values are in the psychiatric nursing practise.  These were the 6 values seen above, which I drafted up lifework illustrations for as a starting point.  I had seen a lot of mental health campaigns use simplistic imagery so I suppose I had been influenced by them when I did these initial drawings.

Other ideas included a "tree of life" to represent growth, a "helping hand", and shapes that suggested speech bubbles.  You can see this below.

Experimenting with art styles - what suited the subject matter best?

The reverse teardrop shape really stuck, as it was quite ambiguous and could be taken as a speech bubble, a tear or an "opening up" as Emma pointed out.  This combined with the nurses' values led me to try out the styles in various illustrations like the ones below.  The idea here was to suggest that different patients need all the values that the nurses have, but in different amounts.  There is no recipe for treating someone with a mental health disorder, and here I was trying to say that one patient might rely more on medication than another one does on someone to talk to, and so on. 

The final paper craft-y style

I decided on this style as it was quite quirky and personal, and hoped the faux hand-made style would encourage a sense of familiarity in those who were being educated about the work of the mental health nurses.  A lot of medical leaflets and pamphlets out there are very serious and restrained in their design, which is what Emma encouraged us to move away from.  The colour scheme is bright, which was a deliberate move in order to focus on the possibility that there is an "other side" to the mental illness journey and it does not have to be the end of someone's life as a "normal" person, that with the right support and treatment a patient can get back to being themselves to some degree

Final illustrations.  I kept the teardrop-style shapes consistent and brought them in to the logo type.

Arguably, this is not recognisable as a mental health "brand", but in this case that was the exact aim. Emma wanted to move away from the sterile image the nursing course had garnered.  The nurses' work is focused on helping the patient recover while understanding fully what they going through and what they need.  I aimed to put this across visually in a way which said their practise is open and encouraging, while addressing all the emotions a patient will go through.

I think looking at my past work has helped clarify a few things about the emotional reaction visuals can bring out in people, particularly the mental health project but also with the Saltire poster (perhaps less so with the music-relatd stuff but that is arguable).  This ties in interestingly with the conversation I had with Dave on Tuesday, about using emotional branding to drive something, even subliminal messaging.
I have started to look into things such as after imaging which I will write about in a future post.  The emotional psychology in creating a brand is key so it is something I will consider more in subsequent work.