Digital Advertising + Design

Advertising + Design

[joedurrlvl3]

Portfolio brief reflection

I was excited to start this project with Hugo. We were going to create a parody of Vice News together called Clamp News. It was going well, seemed pretty funny and we had half a decent script down. But predictably, our erratic schedules weren’t aligning, so I continued with the back up project I had created - All Sought Inc. 

The name is one of my favourite things about this project, I love the play on words, I think ‘sought’ is a little intriguing and ‘inc’ or incorporation is what we’re also in the business of - incorporating brands. Finding a branding identity for this project was the most challenging branding I’ve created so far. This is as I wanted it to look sleek and cool but also having the design quality of looking still in development, which emulated what my company’s process. 

After speaking with Brian about the development of my project he flagged a concern that maybe a website, brand and pitch may not be enough to satisfy a high marking criteria. So I decided to flesh it out by taking a leap into the void and creating a VR co-working office space. I felt like this perfectly fit in with my project so far as I planned for the group to meet up on a weekly basis, which I wanted to do so that people could commit to all sought whilst still maintaining a full time job. This meant there was a sizeable gap between each time we saw each other, which I worried may impact the fluidity of project progression, with the VR space it means that we can all engage with the project whenever we get a chance. 

If this project has taught me anything, it’s that VR still needs a few more years. I’ve been working on High Fidelity, I software created by the founder of ‘Second Life’ the alternate reality that blew up in the early 2000’s. Since then the open source software has come a long way and now has a cryptocurrency and marketplace built into it, enabling commerce in virtual worlds. This was an imperative factor when I was researching and deciding which VR software to use as there’s a fair few now. However High Fidelity looks like it’s here to stay. It took me nearly a full week just to set up the world and troubleshoot what the actual issues were that weren’t allowing me to access the asset server and start creating the world. After going through umpteen IT staff I finally managed to get whitelisted on the network! I thought it’d all be plain sailing from here but it really wasn’t, setting up the world proved almost as hard and I begun to see the gigantic learning curve ahead of me. What made the curve even steeper was that there wasn’t a super large community like there is for the Adobe Suite, so if I needed something answering I often had to discover the solution myself. Normally I’m guided by my software intuition, but as I’d never worked with 3D software before, everything was brand new to me. From my research I found that High Fidelity was definitely the forefront of the social VR world, but despite this I still found so many errors and had so many crashes with the software, some things simply didnt make sense and others were impossibly difficult with overwhelming scripting in unfamiliar languages. In spite of this I think I’ve created a pretty great world. It was very frustrating having to spend the majority of my time finding out solutions to technical issues as it was a different workflow from what I was used to doing - where I couldn’t focus the majority of my efforts on creative pursuit, and making little if any progress. In the end I got it all up and running and it’s finally accessible to everybody, although I spent a considerable amount of time learning how to texture primitive objects, going through the most convoluted (and only) system involving server management. You will be able to see the outcome of my efforts on the right hand side of the main desk, a small textured ball. I spent further days attempting to attach this imported texture onto the primitive object I had created in my VR domain, which I think I would have endlessly attempted if it wasn’t for the luck of a ‘help desk’ suddenly appearing in the High Fidelity world. After spending nearly another full day just trying work around solutions with them they finally realised that texturing primitive objects is currently unsupported, which is completely illogical in my eyes - especially when it doesn’t state this in the High Fidelity documentation which I must have read 20 times by this point. I also was unable to export my world, texture it in blender/maya then reimport it, so unfortunately I’ve had to leave it as an untextured world. I think when I get the time I’m going to rebuild the entire world the same from scratch, but with textures. Despite the world being untextured I think it still looks great and I love some of the features that I’ve built into it, which make it genuinely useful as a workspace. For example, after walking through the first arch you’re met with an embedded Trello board where progression can be monitored and updated (if you’re logged in with permissions). I think it also plays to the advantages of VR with straight access to the painting room it allows the team to quickly express what they’re envisioning in front of us, in three dimensions. It was fantastic to get a great insight and a thorough exploration into VR and the VR community (of which I actually came member of the month in the High Fidelity forums) as it is definitely something that will be prevalent in the future and it’s easy to see the amazing opportunities ahead of the technology. Although I would note that building in VR is currently extremely nauseating. 

I believe there’s true strength in the core idea and model of All Sought Inc itself. It’s a new approach to developing ideas, products and profit. It’s extremely appropriate from my standpoint as I have no money of my own to invest into paying salaries, yet it’s still a fair system which people are happy to work for. I think it’s also extremely appropriate for myself as it frames the rest of my aspirations, creating a parent company for my commercial successes to live under will help bring respect and direction to the holistic body of business work that I will be completing. I’m impressed that I have managed to sign up five impeccable individuals to the think tank already and I think I’m in an excellent position striding forward with it into summer. The next step for me will be securing a spot for the Sunday sessions.

[joedurrlvl3]

FMP Reflection

This is has been the most ambitious project I’ve completed so far and appropriately so. Determining the different aspects of the business and finding out how it would work and operate was a huge learning curve for me, researching into radio frequencies and wireless technologies was certainly a head spin, but luckily I connected with a lot of people in the industry online who helped tech me. The most difficult and frustrating part of the project was deciding the brand name, everything is taken! I must have came up with at least 300 different names over the course of two weeks, taking a notepad with me everywhere trying different things hoping I’d be inspired. Finally I came across ‘vibre’ which I love due to the play on vibe and internet fibre, whilst still sounds pretty cool. For a few weeks I sidelined the name due to it’s similarity to Viber, but after seeing companies like Hubble contact lenses and reading articles on the dying usefulness of SEO I decided to go ahead with it. I had quite a clear vision in mind for the logo when I started creating it, bar the colouring, and I think the final silhouette is great! It’s sleek, modern and communicated one of the brands USP’s - that the connection is signal transmitted. I went through about 20 different gradient variations of the logo, I asked for Abbie’s opinion on this as I was unsure and she seemed to love the tri-colour option, so I stuck with it. It was also a good choice as it was something I could distinctly carry through the rest of my visual identity which embodies the vibrant diversity of the web. 

When I boiled down what I wanted for my advertising campaign I realised that I needed to communicate ‘better, faster, cheaper’ which annoyingly is A LOT of campaigns, so it was difficult to mould it into something original. One way I thought could be effective is if it was a little zany, to make it memorable and leave a mark on the prospective consumer. In the end I decided upon ‘Waste your time, on your terms’ which targeted a lot of desired points for me that I listed in my presentation. I feel like it’s led to a nice open concept with a lot of room to move with different campaign ideas in the future. 

Assuming every single role of the film production of the adverts was insane from the get-go, a project of this scale shouldn’t normally be undertaken by one person. I tried to pull in help from people I knew but FMP season seems hellish for everyone. Creating the time-wasting machines was great to get some hands on experience of set design and what I can take from it is: it takes far longer than you can ever expect and moving sets around is expensive! I think both of the machines looked pretty great on camera, I feel the art direction of making them like studenty paid off and I was right to avoid the whack-a-mol style set that may have looked too professional (and taken ages!). On set the scrolling paper didn’t actually work due to the bike-shop man giving me the wrong chain for the sprocket, but I feel like it didn’t matter too much anyway as I think I simulated it very effectively. I did this with the help of an assistant who was the only other person bar the actors on set. The production was definitely the most stressful part of this project due to locations dropping out, actors being unreachable and assistant bailing last minute. Although I guess that is more likely to happen on a student production. One of the things I’m most satisfied with in the pro films is the casting of the actors. I feel as though they all did a pretty good job and the presenter put his all into the role

[joedurrlvl3]

Digital McKinsey Reflection

For my longer project I tactically chose the Digital MicKinsey brief, as I thought it may be one less people go for (although in our class it didn't turn out that way!). I wanted to focus my project on something a little closer to home and the issue of homelessness in the UK has been weighing on my mind a bit recently, who were also a community that I thought could massively benefit from more financial structure. Our outcome was very difficult to achieve in the early days, where I'd find more and more loopholes in the system the further it was developed. These were ironed out in the end, but I feel as though it was difficult to communicate the system at the beginning. With a lot of planning I feel that a comprehensible video has been created, which entirely explains the concept, despite it's breadth. It was interesting collaborating with a student from Architecture to create the models, as art direction in a 3D space is never something I've really done before. I feel like the final model is about 90% of where I'd like it to be, but is definitely an excellent outcome that really brought the video to life, helping the audience succinctly visualise the system that was planned. Animating the rest of the video proved very challenging for me, having hardly touched After Effects before, but it's definitely taught me some invaluable skills and tools to use once in industry. I feel the animation does it's job of keeping the audience focused whilst making the video more understandable. The 3D renders of the model in live action certainly brought the most WOW factor to the video, which I feel helped legitimise the concept and enabled it for industry reception. The renders weren't quite perfect though, but perhaps if I reshot the live action so that it was even smoother, or if the 3D artist spent longer on tracking, then they could be impeccable. It was great to have the opportunity to record another voiceover, maybe I'll have a portfolio of VO's by the end of the year, who knows? Producing the branding for KeyPool held it's own challenges; deciding whether I was designing for the donator or the recipient and balancing the branding so that it was serious yet attractive. Developing the UX prototype also made me approach designing differently, where I endeavoured to make everything as easy and understandable as possible. I hope this will be a contender for a pencil, but if not it's still been a great experience, where I feel like I've actually contributed something back to wider society. It would be great if I could get some feedback on the concept from people who may actually instate something like this.

[joedurrlvl3]

Reflecting on the Bear brief

I believe this brief was one of the more challenging briefs we've had, although maybe that's as I've never seen eye to eye with sport. One sport I did play in my youth was table tennis and when looking at a brief that asks to take a sport from being a 'minority player to a majority player' I think it's only feasible to do with sports that are on the upper end of the minority. Although with 300,000 players to sign up, this would have still been a mean feat in practicality. The direction of my approach stemmed from the playful haze that surrounds table tennis, everybody treats it as an afterwork activity or something to do leisurely. So I planned to transition these players into serious competitors, which would hopefully start a snowball effect of rising British champions and the sports viewership. I also felt like this touched on the true drive for sport: winning (or participation depending on who you're asking). I created videos to demonstrate this concept, showing somebody beating someone familiar and challenging them to beat a true competitor, showing the professionalism of the sport. I also made a billboard exhibiting past British Olympians pointing out that there's a spare place on the team for a British, gold standard table tennis player. I felt my activation would have invigorated the more leisurely players, focusing on the power of the slam shot, which would hopefully drive them to consider it more seriously. It also provided people a great opportunity to take some time away from shopping, playing table tennis where it would be a lot more accessible than usual. The live UK league board would also have remodelled the public's attitude towards table tennis into one which was much more competitive. I found Roberto's feedback helpful and I'm glad that he enjoyed the playfulness of 'Bring the Ping', it certainly benefitted me when i revisited this project after the formative. I would have liked to make more of a film for this project, especially as I had UK's no. 2 (an old friend) on stand for a shoot, but it just didn't really feel that necessary at the time and I didn't want to waste his time. Although once seeing all the assets together maybe it would have been good to squeeze him into something. This was probably the worst out of my three projects, but if any of them had to take sacrifices then I don't mind it being this one, as I never considered using it for my portfolio anyway.

[joedurrlvl3]

Hellmann's reflection

Vilde and I worked on this project for the shorter of the two D+AD challenges. I begun to think about the difficulties of food waste and how it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, so it seemed quite natural to go for a young target audience, and was excited to add something to the portfolio which I hadn't done before. Working on a brief for children meant that we could create something fun, which I feel helped balance the moods of my two D+AD submissions, as KeyPool is a little serious. I loved the BinKins that Vilde created as I felt like they were perfectly designed between scary and cute. The child actor we were using also seemed to genuinely enjoy playing with them, pleading with us to leave them behind for her at the end, which of course we couldn't refuse! I think finding such great, young talent with TV experience definitely added tonnes of production value to the final outcome. However there's some truth to when they say: 'Don't work with children or animals' as although she was superb for the role, she couldn't help getting distracted and eating all our props! I'm quite happy with how I directed the girl, I particularly like the walk towards the bin before she screams off. The feedback I've received off a few people so far on the film is that it feels 'a lot like something on Channel 4' which I hope is owing to how genuine the footage seems. Colour grading also helped achieve this, with brighter and clean shots which were hard to organically capture in camera due to the lack of windows in the room we was shooting in. I feel like the editing and intertwining nature of the demo and the story flows a lot nicer than I expected, giving the audience just enough to get a full feel for the longer story. I'd say my greatest personal achievement on this project was writing the scripts. I loved having the opportunity to do some creative writing, especially when rhyming had a purpose! The shoot wasn't without it's difficulties with prototypes not quite working, but I think overall it was a big success leaving me with a finished video that I'm proud of. It only leaves me thinking what could have been achieved if we had done this for the longer project!

[joedurrlvl3]

Corndel

Going in with this pitch I knew I’d have to make that bit extra effort as the concept wasn’t exactly the tone of voice of the company, but as I was proposing their first piece of video content, I thought why not create something engaging?

On my second slide I covered the base of the ‘rubber duck’ concept which I was happy to hear they were already very familiar with. They seemed to enjoy the idea and didn’t seem off-put by the duck. In addition to the storyboard I also delivered an example of an email news letter, featuring some wordplay surrounding the duck concept. At the end of the pitch they began to ask me more about how I would target the video at demographics within LinkedIn’s Ad service. Unfortunately despite my trying it isn’t possible to begin to create an ad within LinkedIn unless you’re already an organisation and the online community wasn’t too helpful either. I told him this and he seemed to receive it well, although I wish I could have obtained the information as this could have been the pivotal moment.  

I later found out that I got a mention from the client!

[joedurrlvl3]

Corndel Pitch

Slides 1+2

[joedurrlvl3]

Corndel Pitch

Slides 3-12 (Sorry 10 images max)

[joedurrlvl3]

I heard that pitches were running behind schedule so I regrettably turned up a little later in the blistering sun and stupidly missed my spot by one place, although unprofessional I don’t think it impacted my pitch as I managed to engage with the client before pitching. It was great to get the opportunity to hold a WWE belt! The pitch went reasonably well, with lots of nodding heads when I looked around as I pitched. Towards the end of the pitch I asked a question of Giancarlo which I wouldn’t ordinarily do, but I feel as though it created a good atmosphere. I came away from the pitch reasonably happy with how I had delivered it. 

[joedurrlvl3]

I feel like the majority of the class felt like our ideas were going to be very similar due to the constrictions of the brief, so I thought it would be a good idea to focus on the quality of the design of my presentation in this brief. I also tried to evidence things throughout my pitch based on previous analytics that Kimberly had achieved, hoping to back up my idea with some they’re familiar with. I also created a visual timeline and a costings sheet so that they could see it could be realised.

I walked away from the pitch unsure of how it went as I felt it was anyone’s game I got feedback that I has pitched reasonably professionally. The results came back and I won second place which I was happy about

[joedurrlvl3]

Zakti Activewear Pitch

[joedurrlvl3]

Vidsy

Vidsy didn’t ask us to create a pitch for them, just to upload the video. I feel like our video delivered a a cinematically styled video of the park, which I know Vidsy normally like. It was fun experimenting with the portrait orientation, and I feel like I used it quite well with the tree and the door shots. 

[joedurrlvl3]

friends of Vidsy Video for Friends of Richmond Park

[joedurrlvl3]

‘How did it go, Joe?’

I think I came through quite ambitiously on this project, considering the week of bad weather we had ahead of us. I knew the equipment that I would need to do the job, which unfortunately mine didn’t meet. I tried to get these out of CLR with Russell’s permission, but for some bizarre reason they wouldn’t grant me what I needed. I filmed across three days, Friday at Generator, Sunday on within the mile and the same for Monday. Without the equipment I needed I wanted to obtain footage with 1/4 of the techniques used in my reference video, to demonstrate that it would be possible.

I feel like the pitch went well, I didn’t seem to blunder and the client was really engaged with the reference video. They did comment that I wasn’t too confident in the footage that I’d produced and that I should have been as they thought it was of decent quality. At the end of the day, I only wanted to pitch to them a scalable idea that could have been created around any of their city hostels easily and I feel like they could have been on board with that. 

When the results came back I got a mention and asked to contact Will again if i returned with a slightly refined video/concept. 

[joedurrlvl3]

Generator Hostels Pitch - Within A Mile

[joedurrlvl3]

Evaluation

I knew that the task of drawing a storyboard would be daunting so I begun drawing it early, and was actually quite enjoyable to do. I felt like my idea was quite strong and I liked the use of wordplay as I thought it would correctly engage the target audience. I thought it could also be quite cinematic and hoped that that would be conveyed in my drawings.

The first pitch of the year didn’t get off to a great start, as I entered the room I realised I wouldn’t have the print outs, which I feel shook me throughout the pitch. I later found out that it was as I’d put the pitch in the incorrect folder. The client was a tough man to read and I came away unsure of how I’d performed.

[joedurrlvl3]

Barclays Presentation