upsidedowns

touchpoints and brand extensions by Cassie Khoo & Chelsea Strickland

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Cassie’s Reflection

This semester, extending a brand established by another team was a great experience and learning curve. I found it exciting to be able to work with something that someone else in our class had created. I was particularly excited to have pulled out UpsideDowns from the lucky dip. Anna and Nathan did a really good job with the Brand identity refresh which gave us a great base to spring off from. While it was a good challenge to design more material within the guidelines they had set, the rules and guides weren’t too strict, which allowed us to explore other potential looks while still remaining on brand. (Or at least that has been the intention.)

I felt overall, the process and pace at which our team worked to complete all the extensions, touchpoints, video, and final presentation was great. We were on track pretty much and were always making good progress. I think a lot of that can be attributed to a great match of our working styles. We were able to easily identify what needs to be done, and both of us were capable of doing pretty much anything, which meant we could simply assign the workload between ourselves in the last few minutes of each class. This really set us up for some good feedback in class critiques and team critiques with Eden as we almost always had something to show and get feed-forward on. And I believe that really helped us to push the quality and execution of the designs a lot further.

Overall, I was assigned to complete the majority of the extensions, touchpoints and the budget, while Chelsea worked on the video (which turned out really well) and Library Bus touchpoint. We both worked on the presentation simultaneously to put everything together, and shared the other responsibilities like client liaison, administration and research between ourselves.

Working with Chelsea was a breeze. Like working with my previous partner Maria, I felt we were able to collaborate well and critique everything we did, which helped our designs to improve and progress forward every week. Everything I valued about my partnership with Maria, I felt the same with Chelsea. Perhaps even more so, because I now had experience working in a team with different people (not just in our major, but also in my minor), so I knew what to expect out of working as a team, and working with Chelsea certainly kept up those expectations. Overall, Chelsea had been great to work with, she was absolutely fantastic at getting work done. She always kept me informed when she had work and couldn’t make it. There isn’t really anything bad to say, or anything I thought she could have done better. I really liked that she was willing to try anything and would gladly offer to take on a task, but would ask me for help or feedback if she was unsure. This made it so much easier to get on with what really needs to be done, and I felt at ease throughout the whole project. I wasn’t overly stressed with the workload, and felt we had really paced ourselves well. I think thats something that can only be achieved with the right combination of people in a team. Chelsea did a fantastic job with the video. She responded well to feedback, and would always bring in some kind of progress so we could look over it together and identify areas for improvement. 

I’m kinda glad we changed teams, it allowed me to work with someone new, and with a new brand.

One of the things I learnt from this project was that the opinions and views of others on even the initial ideas is valuable. We discovered the plot we had originally come up with for the video had a unintentional meaning we were unaware of. While its good to have knowledge about as many things like this as possible. You can never know everything there is to know. Thats where the value of showing others and testing your idea with others becomes important. Had we not been told until much later on, this would have resulted in a lot of time and work wasted.

I think I really challenged myself with the storybook. I’m not a naturally talented illustrator, so taking on the task of creating a storybook was quite daunting at first. Having the support of not only Chelsea but my other classmates, helped to quell the uncertainty about doing this. I’m quite proud of it. I think though the actual story and writing could probably be more interesting, but that wasn’t really either of our strong points. Visuals are however the best for teaching children with Down syndrome, so I guess it isn’t too big of an issue. It would probably be wiser to get a proper creative writer though, if it were to actually be published and distributed.

The one thing we got to experience this time round was getting in contact with Hannah at UpsideDowns. Unlike my previous NGO, we were able to get in contact and go speak to Hannah. This really helped the decisions and choices we made with our ideas and designs. And it was overall one of the more valuable things I took out of this project.

On a final note, I’ve really enjoyed this entire first year of branding. Particularly the second half working in teams has been the most exciting. Looking back on the entire years worth of work, we’ve really done a lot. And I feel its going to really boost my portfolio. I’d really like to work on more team projects, perhaps slightly larger ones that is more like what you would experience in a studio. But overall, I had a lot of fun with the project set by our tutors this year. I look forward to another exciting year.

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Presentation + Budget

This week Chelsea and I have been meeting up almost everyday to work on the final presentation. While we used the general layout Anna & Nathan designed for their presentation as a guide for ours, we’ve tidied it up and made some minor improvement or changes to better suit the kind of presentation we needed. The basic layout we’ve come up with uses a navigation menu/page accessible from every page. The reason we’ve done this is because our presentation is quite long (about 60 pages). So putting in a navigation will make it easier to jump to certain sections. Originally we wanted to put a menu on each page, something like this...

However, we felt it would take away important space. The solution we came up with was a separate navigation page on its own. Much like a content page, it now looks something like this... (we kept on brand by following the same ordering system and format Anna & Nathan have used in their style guide.)

Our layout uses two master styles – one for text and another for visuals. It is quite similar to what Anna and Nathan did, except we removed title/section slides and added titles to every slide instead. Here is an example of a text slide and a visual slide.

Overall the presentation wasn’t too hard to put together, it took a while even with both of us working on it simultaneously and at home. We did run into some challenges trying to show the storybook and community board animation as interactive PDF’s don’t support object states, scrolling frames, etc.

I’ve also put together the budget. We weren’t able to quote for every brand extension and touchpoint as some of them we can’t quote for because either there is not enough detail to ask for a quote – like the library bus we’d need to source a bus, and then get a interior/spatial designer to design the interior space before we can produce printed designs and livery to fit. And with the community board, as I learnt from my previous project most web design places don’t give you a quote unless you know exactly what you want. Additionally the community board would be even more complex than a simple website. As for the optometrist partnerships, those would have to be further discussed and worked on a case to case basis. Some optometrists wouldn’t want to use all the brand collateral we’ve suggested. Some might pick a few or suggest their own. Overall, each would have to be catered to the specific partnerships in order to make it work best for both parties (UpsideDowns and the optometrist) 

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Chelsea’s Reflection

Reflecting on the past couple of weeks that we had to put this project together, I have learnt a huge amount both from Cassie’s skills aswell as working through trial and error.

Cassie is a super organised person and a great leader. The way in which she kept us organised, through time sheets and budgets made it an easy project to work through. Working with Cassie has been a great learning experience as her constant flow of ideas made it possible to continuously produce and imporove on our work.

As I was in charge of creating the animation, this presented a huge challenge for me as I had not really worked a great deal with animation before. Through a lot of trial and error, the UpsideDowns call-to-action video was created. Rather than putting off tasks that I was not familiar with or have not come across before, and trying and failing and trying and figuring things out, I was able to learn new skills and eventually enjoying them.

Anna and Nathan set the tone of UpsideDowns so well and it gave us a real head start knowing that we had taken over such a well established rebrand. It was essential that throughout the design process we constantly checked back to what Anna and Nathan had created and ensured that what we were designing matched. This presented one of the biggest challenges, staying on track with what someone else had created. In a way it was good as it gave us constraints to work against. 

As my previous project (TerraNature) didn’t require an interview, it was both interesting and a learning experience liaising and working for someone, that someone being Hannah Reynolds. At first, it was scary conducting an interview, however, Hannah was extremely welcoming and helpful. 

All in all, we are very happy with the way our project turned out. The level of design we have created is beyond what I expected. I feel that we successfully created touchpoints and extensions for UpsideDowns that will help them to achieve funding and support from their donors and corporate sponsors, which is what we set out to do. 

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Video

Here is our final call-to-action video. The video comes complete with a voice over advising viewers to donate to UpsideDowns to help children with downsyndrome achieve things that other normal people can achieve. The voice over informs the viewer of what their donations will do for the children, aswell as outline the tier process that UpsideDowns has towards the amount of donations corporate sponsors make. Overall, we think that this video achieves the goal that we set out to, which is to reach corporate sponsors and inform them of how and why they should donate. 

At times, the video was very frustrating to create as I had to flick between Illustrator, After Effects and Premier Pro, rendering each and and importing them into different programmes to work in. 

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Storybook + Slap Bands + Glasses

The storybook is now done. And has been sent off to the printer. I’ve also mocked them up using a psd mock up for use in the presentation – which will be a digital version of the storybook in addition to some other images of the book (like someone reading it). I also did a quick mini mock up prior to sending it off to the printer for a last check and to make sure the arrangement was correct as this is a saddle-stitched book rather than a perfect bound book.

Now that the storybook is done (for the most part), I’ve been finishing up a lot of the other collateral I had started earlier in the term, but had not yet gotten around to continuing as the development of the storybook (and video) took over. As mentioned earlier, we changed the wristbands to slap bands for their more interactive and playful nature. The design for the actual slap bands hasn’t really changed (see new design below). 

However I’ve decided to redo the display box. Well, I hadn’t really done much aside from this possible visualised look. 

Anyway. I tried looking online for a mockup of a display box, and couldn’t really find a suitable one. The quality of the photo was poor, or it wasn’t the right configuration. So therefore I decided to create my own one, based on the aspects I felt worked best from a range of different examples. I’ve yet to consult with Chelsea on the content that goes on this display/donation box, but I’m thinking it will probably look something like this.

I also printed it out a tested it. As there isn’t really a mock to use, we’ll probably print a small version of this to photograph for the presentation.

For the glasses, I managed to find some decent product shots of glasses similar to the illustrations I drew and mocked up the design onto them. I also created a bag that would be used to put the glasses in when someone buys it as part of the buy one give one offer. This acts as another touchpoint that goes home with the consumer.

As I was unable to find a decent image to mock up a side banner next to a glasses rack/display, I decided to do the poster that they hang in the front of their store. Using Specsaver & OPSM as examples, I have come up with a few concepts. This one below is the one I’m favouring at the moment. But I intend to consult with Chelsea about this when we next meet up.

Overall, all the touchpoints and brand extensions are coming along well. I’m in the final stages of mocking them up ready to paste into the presentation, which I intend to start working on next. Chelsea and I intend to meet up probably everyday over the next few days as we come up to the final due date. This will mainly be to polish off any of the the touchpoints, brand extensions and video, as well as collaborate on the final presentation.

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Our last critique.

Monday was our last critique with Eden. At this point we got some valuable feedback on our animation. Mainly bringing up and identifying aspects that were working, and those that weren’t quite flowing as well. We decided after some discussion that it would be best, easier and more efficient to do a voiceover for the animation rather than using solely text. We also had a look at the storybook, which I had printed out to show Eden and get it checked (even though it wasn’t yet complete). During this session we also went over the presentation order/content we had come up with, to make sure we were covering everything needed and whether or not the order of the content was flowing correctly. That was given the ok, and that was pretty much it. All the other touchpoints and extensions hadn’t been worked on significantly (we had the main gist of each one already established at the beginning) so it was simply a matter of quickly showing Eden the latest update of each of these. The only major change for these other collateral was I thought instead of the standard wristband, it would be more fun, interactive and playful to use slap wristbands I remember playing with as a kid. This better matches the personality of the brand – fun and playful. Also, one cannot help but be entertained with it for a while. Much more than a simple wristband, most people probably won’t even wear.

After the session, Chelsea and I discussed the last bits we needed to do for each collateral – most of them just needed to be finished off and mocked up in situation for the presentation. We took the remaining time to head down to Printsprint and get the swing tags for the pillows and printed and ask for a quote for the storybooks. I later enquired at 3A for their pricing. As we’ll be presenting the storybook as a digital gif/interactive section in our pdf presentation, there isn’t a real need for a physical storybook. We’ve decided that if we can find a good image to mock up an in situation pic, then we don’t need to get the storybook printed. If not, Chelsea and I aren’t too fussed about getting this printed (probably with 3A) and using it to take in situation photographs.

That Wednesday was our last class. Chelsea and I spent most of this time either working on the designs of the video/collateral, or discussing things. One of the main things we discussed was the script for the voiceover, as well as storyboarding the final scenes for this section which comes after the animated sequence of the oranges and apple. I also spent the day trying to source a supplier who would make a small sample of the slap bands with our design on it. This was relatively unsuccessful as they all required a minimum quantity of at least 100. Instead, we have decided to get some slap bands, take pictures and mock the design onto them as best as we can. Though there were paid mock ups of the slap bands online, many of them looked fake. Not much better than the flat vector illustrations I had drawn. So we decided it would be better to just buy the slap bands. This way we probably have better control over the photographing of it.

Chelsea’s unavailable for meeting up at uni over the next week, so we’ll be each focusing on our assigned tasks, bringing them up to its final stage ready to place into the presentation. We plan to meet up in the final week before hand-in to put the presentation together and photograph the pillows, slap bands and maybe storybook.

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Pillows

As we are unable to source mock up pictures of the pillow, since its quite a specific design, we’ve decided to make an actual prototype of the pillow, photograph it and use that for the presentation. 

The pillows are to be based on the characters from the animation (without the legs and arms). I first made a basic pattern using the characters Chelsea had drawn as a base. I tweaked them slightly to make them easier to cut out and sew. I then printed these out, cut them and sewed them together.

Unfortunately the suppliers in NZ have a limited range of colours for the polar fleece materials I used for the pillows. Ideally, they should be lighter/pastel to match those on the computer screenshot above. However, for this prototype they should be fine. Hopefully we can tweak the colours on photoshop once they have been photographed. If this were to actually be produced, there are overseas suppliers who have the correct shades needed, or it would be easier to source the correct colours if it were being made in large quantities.

The size of the pillow is approx. 30cm in size. Ideal for children to hug. It was a bit on the small side for me. But I think it would be the perfect size for young children. 

I also made a label that would be attached to the pillow. This serves as an anchor to attach the swing tag, as well as promotion of the UpsideDowns logo. 

The swing tags were relatively simple. An image on one side and the information on the back. They are attached with string currently, but depending on manufacturing they could be attached using other methods, like those plastic cables. 

Overall, the pillow-making process was rather fun. What I took out of this was learning how to make those labels. I now know I can print on fabric! I have made plush toys before, so I was already familiar with how to make a basic pillow. That wasn’t too hard. I guess the only difficulty I found was trying to sew the leaves and stem of the apple/orange onto the main body. This resulted in one of the oranges having its leaves positioned as bunny ears (upright) rather than leaves (tilted to the side). What I did notice was the pattern can be improved to made the leaves shaped more like leaves. Because the process involves sewing the shape and turning it inside out, smaller pieces tend to lose their edges. I would probably solve this by making it bigger, therefore more obviously pointed and leaf-like. Overall, I think the apples turned out best. The oranges, were in fact actually harder to get right since its a circle. A lot of the process involves sewing and turning it inside out before filling it up and sewing it closed, which means a lot of how you align the parts together for sewing is back to front, which makes it trickier to align. I’m pretty sure several tests and prototypes of the pillow would be needed in order to bring it up to a standard people would really want to buy in stores. But as a proposal for this uni project, I think this level is sufficient enough to get the general idea across.

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Video Update

After taking this idea to Hannah Reynolds at UpsideDowns she suggested that we not imply that children with down syndrome are just like other children because they aren’t. They have difficulties with doing things like reading, writing and speaking, so we had to show this some how. She also brought to our attention that using lemons isn’t such a good idea as there are some negative connotations that come with lemons. 

So we decided to change the concept of our video where, in keeping with fruit, they are competing in a race. The characters featured in the race are three oranges and an apple. The reason behind using these particular fruits is that oranges are able to roll freely and easily whereas we wanted to pick a fruit that would have a bit of difficulty rolling and had an irregular shape. Hence, the apple.

We then went on to storyboarding our video idea.

Our race featured obstacles along the way in which the apple (child with down syndrome) would show to have been going through some difficulty. The three main points that we wanted to highlight in our video are:

down syndrome causes a delay in a child’s brain > shown by apple having a delayed start to the race whilst others take off.

with donations, children with down syndrome are able to get back on track and that donations really help > shown by a rock in the path that causes apple to fly in the air, help is shown by something that helps the apple down gently to the ground.

Children with down syndrome often take a lot longer to do the basics compared to other children > shown by four paths available and apple takes longest path.

But at the end, all the fruit, including the apple, manage to finish the race although the apple comes a while later. Then to show our call-to-action which is ‘donate now’ we will have a podium with fruits on it, explaining the different tiers that UpsideDowns has depending on how much corporate sponsors choose to donate. E.g. Gold- $6,000, which provides for 3 families with a child with down syndrome, Silver- $4,000, which provides for 2 families with a down syndrome child, Bronze- $2,000, which provides for 1 family with a down syndrome child.

I then created a more in-depth storyboard showing close-ups, pans, long shots etc that will help me to create each scene for the animation.

I then went on to drawing some of these scenes in illustrator, which I would then export into AfterEffects. We decided on a colour scheme which uses the blue and yellow from the UpsideDowns logo but also, all the other colours of the rainbow that have a similar tone to the UpsideDowns colours.

We then thought of using more abstract colours for example, changing the hills to pinks and yellows instead of the usual green. 

We felt that this looks more playful and inviting. We then presented this still to the class in a critique to get their opinion as well as gaining feedback from Anna and Nathan. The feedback that we got on our video was that although the characters and story line portrayed the friendly nature that we wanted to show was there, the colours of UpsideDowns not so much. Anna suggested that we bought back the actual blue and yellow used in the logo and use this for the bigger, more dominant shapes.

Although other colours have been used, the colours of UpsideDowns are more noticeable. From here, I begun creating the scenes in Illustrator and then putting them through AfterEffects for animation according to the storyboard. Animation has proved to be difficult as getting the characters to have natural and fluid movement is a difficult task. 

In the scenes where there will be text like the countdown scene (3...2...1...GO!) font Oduda has been used as this is the original font that Anna and Nathan created the UpsideDowns logo from. However, the font they created did not have numbers in them. So I have used Oduda and altered the forms slightly so that they reflect the UpsideDowns font.

For sound, we wanted to have a backing track that is cheerful and that goes well with the look of the animation. 

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Progress Update

Since our last update on where we were at with each touchpoint and brand extension, Chelsea and I have made a start on all of them. Everything at this point has been finalised in detail and started. All we need to do now is to simply execute it. The storybook and the video have gone under quite a few changes in terms of plot/story. But we made sure we got that sorted last week, which meant we were able to get started on those two and bring them up to speed with our other touchpoints and brand extensions.

Community Board

The community board has come quite some way from its mere conceptual stage. I went ahead last week and started to mock up some of the key pages. Basing it somewhat off a combination of Hometalk and Pinterest I came up with this design. At its core its essentially a forum with a visual element to it with the image browsing. What needs to be done now is to finish it up by adding in any missing example content and images in the big yellow boxes. 

From the presentations on Monday it was good to be able to show this to the class and get the positive response that it was in fact ‘on brand’ from both Eden and brand identity design team member Anna. Having recently done a website mock up for a client, I was able to get through this without too much trouble. I’d learnt that there is a lot more that goes into a website than just making it simple and look nice. There’s all sorts of links, buttons and different elements that make up a full and complete home page.

Storybook

Last Wednesday as planned, Chelsea brought in the children’s library books we had borrowed from the library and sat down to read and analyse them. The main things we got out of that exercise was how to ‘talk’ about a child with Down syndrome in an appropriate way for kids. We found all of the books addressed the fact the child had Down syndrome, however they aimed to counter any negative ideas or connotations around that, in a way, educating the audience about the limitations children with Down syndrome face as well as breaking the myths surrounding Down syndrome. Also each book at the end had a more informative note targeted at adults/parents explaining Down syndrome in a more technical manner – this was something Chelsea and I found would be good to have at the end of our book. We have touched on Harry (the main character) as having Down syndrome, but we don’t elaborate on it as much as the books we read did. The books also gave us a better idea of how to write a story for children. It was in fact quite long, longer than I remember children’s books to be. However we’ve gone with a reasonable length, its not overly wordy as we want children with Down syndrome to be able to read and enjoy. From the research we’ve done it seems visual elements have helped to tie into a child with Down syndrome’s ability to pick up words as they go through speech therapy. So we wanted to show the story more through its visual, and supported by words. Rather than a story of words supported by visuals. This way hopefully a child with or without Down syndrome can equally enjoy and learn from this book. On that Wednesday together we formed the basic storyline, drafted out the story and drew up a storyboard.

Design wise: Initially Chelsea was assigned to draw the illustrations, however after some discussion and finding the video and the storybook ended up being two of the biggest aspects we need to create content for, it was decided I will be doing the storybook. So far I’ve create the two main characters Harry and Sarah. And have tried out some of the scenes. The book essentially follows Harry and Sarah starting their first day at school. The overall message we are trying to communicate here is that regardless that Harry has Down syndrome and Sarah doesn’t both of them are worried about their first day of school and making friends. The story goes through and ends with them having made good friends and excited about going to school.

Wristbands, Pillows & Glasses

As for the other three brand extensions/touchpoints I’m in charge of at the moment, I have since the very first individual extensions/touchpoints posts done vector illustrations of the designs. Have also shown them to Eden and Anna & Nathan, and gotten feedback on how to improve them. The only main difference is that the pillows are now going to be the fruit characters pulled from the video. It will still be packaged under the brand, but might be more sellable as a retail product if it isn’t so brand focused.

Work still needs to be done on these, for example making the fruit pillows, trying to find realistic mock ups and doing up some of the extra bits of the design – boxes, displays, packaging. For now I’ve been assigned to do these, but depending on how long the storybook and video take, whoever has more time will carry on and finish these up.

In an upcoming post Chelsea will talk about how our library bus and call-to-action video has been developing.

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Class Presentations

Today we presented to the class where we were up to with our brand extensions and touchpoints. It was also a valuable session to see what the other teams had come up with for their NGO and also where they were at. I think its safe to say Chelsea and I are at a good stage in our project. We’ve made a start on everything, and we we’re able to show that which enabled us to get some good feedback.

From what I can remember these are the points brought up:

Wristbands : good that we were mocking it up and getting a better visual sense of what it looks like even if we haven’t yet finished it (in particular the display box). Everything was looking on brand, just that with the design to use only white and blue straps. And to just change the grey text on the white strap to blue. This makes it less harsh and would make it more on brand.

This wasn’t brought up from our presentation, but from another team’s presentation – we thought a carry bag for the glasses would be something we could also design for. So in addition to the range of designed glasses, even for those who bought standard glasses, but donated a pair to a child with down syndrome, we would package their standard glasses in an UpsideDowns glasses case and carry bag.

The only other point was about our video. The colour scheme wasn’t quite there yet with the brand. We’ve obviously done quite a bit of work trying to get the colour palette right. Such as turning it a bit abstract (as below) rather than realistically green for grass, blue for sky, etc. 

Anna suggested we can still go for the pastel abstract colours, they did in fact match the tone of the brand, however we should align it more with the brand colours of yellow and blue by making the large areas of colour in yellow and blue. We tried this quickly after the presentations and got the ‘ok!’ from both Anna and Eden.

Chelsea will be pushing forward with the animation, while I will be doing the illustrations for the storybook. These seem to be our biggest two tasks. The other collateral are about half done, and we will be dividing them between us to finish up bit by bit over the next few weeks.

Overall today’s presentation was pretty constructive. We were able to get some feedback on the colour palette (something we were in fact struggling with a bit and wanted to get confirmation on). But other than that, most of what we have so far seems to be heading in the right direction. 

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Next next step

So today we met up and discussed where we had gotten up to and showed each other our digital versions of the touchpoints and brand extensions. Here is a list of what we intend to do over the next week.

Firstly on wednesday, we’ll be reading some children’s picture books and analysing them. Then we’ll spend the rest of that class brainstorming and writing the story for the storybook. Right now our idea is to go inside the mind of a child with down syndrome and have them (a character reflecting them) go on a journey inside their imagination. On the journey, other characters will help them, teach them, and they can discover and find how to overcome obstacles – probably obstacles that children with down syndrome often face.

Tasks to do:

Start drawing the frames for animation – sketches (Chelsea)

Both vectorise illustration sketches

Animate in After Effects (Cassie)

Glasses : In situation shots as well as vector application mock up

display stand/banner (Cassie)

Pillow : Lemon + Orange pillows (Cassie)

Sketches

label > make more label-like. image and back diff.

Wristbands > mock up realistic? (Cassie)

Image from Anna/Nathan for display box

Library Bus : Interior layout  (Chelsea)

Community Website – mocking up the wireframes/draft (Cassie)

Meeting with Anna & Nathan

We briefly met with Anna and Nathan, the previous designers of UpsideDown’s Brand Refresh, to ensure that what we were working on looked on brand. We showed them the collateral which included the community board, library bus, pillow, and wristbands as well as the brand extensions which are the storybook and glasses. They liked our ideas and thought they were all on brand. We then discussed with them the idea for our animation and they liked our storyline also. We will constantly be updating them throughout the design process and check to ensure that what we are designing is on brand.

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Next steps

I’ve made a list of our next steps to take, now that we’ve finalised our touchpoints and brand extensions. Just to summarise they are: 

Brand extensions :

optometrist + glasses line

pillow / sneakers (we have yet to decide, but Hannah did say shoes designed specially to help children with down syndrome walk (as this is one of the obstacles they face) might be a good idea, however it really depends on what we want to get out of it. Do we want to generate money (pillow), or create something just for children with down syndrome (sneakers)?) I mean both would be really great, but we should just focus on one for this project.

Touchpoints :

Storybook (plot would be having a child with down syndrome as the main hero of the story)

Wristbands (donation collects + Instagram campaign)

Library bus

Community board (website)

Tasks to do :

Create characters for video and storybook. 

Technical drawings exploring possible interior layout and exterior design of the library bus.

Video : come up with a good metaphor and create a new storyline/storyboard

Optometrist : start sketching designs for glasses, glasses case and display case.

Pillow/sneakers : designs?

Wristbands : wristbands, display box, Instagram example

Storybook : come up with a story, go read children’s picture books

Community board – draft the concept and some website wireframes

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Interview with Hannah Reynolds

After sitting down and meeting with Hannah, Operations Manager for UpsideDowns, a fewpoints were clarified….  • Say ‘children with down syndrome’ NOT ‘down syndrome children’; down syndrome is a condition, not a description. 

• They solely provide funds to the families of children with downsyndrome. The process: 

Parents find the therapists they wish their child to work with o They pay the therapist 

At the end, they send an invoice to UpsideDowns o UpsideDowns reimberse parents up to $2,000 

• The funding that they get from sposors is more a one off thing, many of the corporate sponsors on the website should be removed as they haven’t contributed in a long time.

• There are different levels at which corporate sponsors can donate: 

Bronze - $2,000 funds one family for a year 

Silver - $4,000 funds two families for a year 

Gold – (presume) $6,000 funds three families for a year 

• In return for donations from corporate sponsors, UpsideDowns offers visability on their website aswell as shares information about these businesses within their social networks. Also at events, the corporate sponsors collateral such as banner, flyers are given out, which drives their businesses further. Further, UpsideDowns will support their corporate sponsors as CSR 

• Although they get corporate sponsors, the funding is very insecure. This makes it hard to operate with no fixed income. 

• Events are the main source of fundraising, however it is hard to pick the amount they will generate. 

• Speech language therapy is the biggest hurdle

• Early intervention is the key to the success of children who go into mainstream schools. 

• Usually the children are quite flexible, floppy, and have weak tongues. Often sign language is taught to the children they give the children the funding to gain tools to communicate. 

• Through a call-to-action video, they would like to push for donations. 

• Animation: 

Be careful to say that children with down syndrome can do things like regular children – quite often they can’t 

Hearing, seeing, walking, talking does not come easily or quickly 

General goal is mainstream education and having friends – also the dream of the parents 

• Touchpoints:

ADSA has a static library for resources and books targeted towards children with down syndrome (Penrose) 

A mobile library would save a lot of hassle with parents getting the children to and from the library. 

• Testimonials: 

Look on facebook page, there are testimonials from parents 

Nicoli- 9 years, a school librarian, participates in triathalons, trolley darbies and BMX biking. 

There are two people in New Zealand with a driver’s license.

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Touchpoint: Library Bus

For a touchpoint we have decided to go with a library bus. This bus contains books that have been specifically selected by speech therapists that would enhance the learning of children with down syndrome. This bus would go around the homes of families with down syndrome children say, once a week and children and parents are able to climb onboard and select a few books to take home. The bus would come around the next week, collect the loaned books and then present another opportunity for the children to take out books again.

While looking at existing library buses, there are two distinctive types of library buses. One that allows for people to come inside and browse the walls of the bus filled with shelves of books. The other is similar to that of an ice-cream truck where the children and parents would come up to the window and pick out books; there will be no space for them to board the bus.

We have decided to go with the idea of the bus as a walk on and browse library bus. Some down syndrome children get around on wheel-chairs so it is important to consider a way for them to access the books with ease. This means that a ramp or a wheel chair lift would need to be attached to the bus. As well as this amendment, we would need to use larger double doors so that the children with wheel chairs could enter into the bus without any difficulty. The bus would be covered in the UpsideDowns logo. 

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For our animation, we liked the idea of doing a kinetic typography animation. We felt that it would be easier to do an animation rather than filming footage. This is because UpsideDowns is not a place where the children come to get therapy; instead, therapists are sent to the houses of the families with a down syndrome child. This means that we can’t just go to UpsideDowns and film, we would have to go out to all the houses and film each child individually. This would be time consuming aswell as restricting as we could not get shots of groups of down syndrome children socialising together. 

Kinetic typography is very engaging if done right. Combined with characters (that will be the same as the characters in our storybook), the type will tell a story of how donations help children get a head start to their schooling. 

https://www.behance.net/gallery/10559101/You-and-I-Lyrics-video

This video is a clever and unusual example of telling a story as a revolving platform introduces each scene. There are no cuts. The voice over effectively supports the story line and the text that is used. The characters are very simple and have little action; the voice over and type compensate for their actions. The shapes are very simple however they all fit with the hand made nature of the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_5OMTYC_-Y

This video is engaging through the way they have played around with the type. It is very interesting to see the shapes form and warp into each other. This would be a good way of going about the different activities that down syndrome children have difficulty with (read, write, playing).

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Call-to-action Video : Storyboard

Script:

This is Harry.

Harry is just like me and you.

Harry loves to play and have fun.

Harry finds it difficult to speak, read and write.

Harry needs your help.

Children with down syndrome, like Harry, don’t get the specialist support they need.

Without this support, Harry will find it hard to fit in with the other kids when he starts school.

With your help, Harry’s family can send Harry to work with Sarah.

Sarah is a speech therapy teacher.

Sarah will help Harry to read, write and speak and get a head start on his education.

Because Harry has a bit of extra help, when he goes to school, he will be able to play and have fun with all the other kids.

With your help, UpsideDowns can help families with kids like Harry get the support they need to fit in at school.

Donate now at UpsideDowns.co.nz

Here is our initial storyboard for the call-to-action video. As Chelsea has established in another post, we’ll be going with a kinetic typography/simple animation style. Depending on how we go, we might get a child to do a voiceover along with it. Otherwise it will just have relevant background music.

EDIT: We ran this idea by Eden briefly. And she said it sounded a bit preachy. Chelsea and I agree with this as we found when writing the script we weren’t really sure how to tell the right story in a way that didn’t sound detrimental(?). We didn’t want to put it so bluntly. Eden suggested we use a metaphor. The message we are trying to get across in our original script is great. Just the way we were going about it could be different. So she suggested the idea of having a basket of oranges. One was a different colour. But the point is when you cut them open inside they are all the same. They have the potential to be the same despite how they might look and seem on the outside. Overall the idea this plays with is that children and people with down syndrome may look and act a bit differently from other children, however inside they have the potential to do the things we can do. 

Chelsea and I discussed this idea a bit further as we were waiting for the bus to go meet Hannah from UpsideDowns. We thought perhaps a lemon, rather than an orange might be better. Since its yellow, still roundish and would match the brand colours and shapes.

EDIT 2: Meeting Hannah from UpsideDowns was extremely helpful. We ran this idea by her, and she told us just to keep in mind, children with down syndrome aren’t exactly the same as everyone else – in the sense they can’t outright do everything everyone else can. However they can do a lot of the things we can, they might just take a little longer to do them, or need a bit of support and help to do them. We just need to keep in mind this when telling the story. It is a bit confusing, but essentially, the idea is right, just need to be careful how we word it — so its accurate. Another thing we might choose to add perhaps at the end would be a little bit about how much you donate can help. Hannah was saying $2000 a year can help one family, $4000 a year can help two families and so on. And for their corporate sponsors they have different levels of sponsorships for this. It would be good for the corporate sponsors to know this. She did say talking about money is not always the best when dealing with sponsors, but in addition to telling them how their donation will help children, it also needs to be more tangible, a realistic figure they can kinda ball park on the spot. 

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Brand Extension : Optometrists

Aside from having the products (pillow/sneakers) as a brand extension. We were thinking of making a partnership with an optometrist. From Anna and Nathan’s interview, we found out that many down syndrome children need glasses. So it makes sense for UpsideDowns to explore this avenue and form a partnership with local optometrists. 

• One way of going about it would be to get funding from optometrists and in return UpsideDowns will recommend or redirect their families to them.  • Another way would be to have a deal where when one person buys a pair, they can donate another pair to a down syndrome child, or the optometrist could donate a pair. Basically a buy one donate one system.

In this way the partnership becomes one with mutual benefits. UpsideDowns benefits and the optometrists benefit. As research covered in a previous post shows, the best way to get corporate sponsors is to identify what you can offer and how the partnership will mutually benefit both parties, rather than a one way benefit.

In addition to partnering up with an optometrist and in some way getting funding either in money or in glasses (both which will benefit UpsideDowns down syndrome children), we needed to put the brand on it. The way we would do this is to have a select range of glasses that had the ‘u’ smiling face logo on the side in small as seen above in the sketch. Also we could brand the case which the glasses comes in. So not only for down syndrome children, but those who participate in the buy one donate one, would get the special UpsideDowns case instead of a plain boring case. In doing so, we hope the brand will get out to more people.