Design doc

Rebecca EelbeckDesign Document

DE0983 Emotion and Immersive Media

DE0983 Emotion and Immersive Media Rebecca Eelbeck May 2012

Interactive Media Design Design Document

Research



Poster design research and print screens of Shelter website. Looked into both illustrated and photographic poster concepts for charities to gain inspiration for the project. I then went with the illustrated take on the campaign as I felt it would suit my target audience more and adapt to my own individual style of design.

I took images off the internet and out of magazines to produce my visual research. I was unsure at first wether I wanted to create an online campaign poster or an offline one, and my research persuaded me to go towards the offline.



Brainstorming ideas of what emotions to portray through my campaign. Sketch-book notes and post-it notes were used to explore the possibilities of different takes on the project.



Conducted facebook polls to find out how effective my campaign would be. I asked questions regarding how aware people are generally about homelessness and the reasons behind the issue. I found out that my target audience would be people aged 17 - 25 as they were the most unaware of the issue and the most influencial age range. I think that this was a successful and reliable way to find out what people actually know about the issue, as facebook is a social networking site that most people use in this age group.



Outcome of research and what I needed to do next. What I needed to outline and how it would be successful. A general outline of what conclusion I had created.

Salvation army showing how awareness of this campaign and the issues surrounding homelessness can be understood more thoroughly and the issues can be obliterated if people take the time to understand the reasons.

I want to show a positive outcome - perhaps showing how the SA can provide residents and counselling as part of their aftercare program and charity policy. This may show how awareness and donations may help this happen to more people.

Stereotyping of homeless peopleTo be successful, I think we have to challenge society’s stereotypes of homeless and show that it can be anyone who finds themselves in a situation where they may fall homeless themselves. For instance, a soldier from war coming back to try and abide with normality again. People perhaps do not realise the extent and severity of the issue.

Why do people stereotype?We have to undersand the initial reasons for stereotyping. People seem to judge what they do not necessarily understand as a result of ignorance of a particular issue. Because of this, people begin to categorise almost immediately without fully understanding what is going on



Concept Development



Two initial ideas rflecting myresearch of photographic campaign posters and illustration posters.

I think that the illustration worked better in relation to engaging with the TA, however I think that the photographic image shows a relationship between the people effected by the issue of homelessness and created a more personal connection.



Ideas for online experience.Initial idea - concept taking over Facebook/Twitter to directly appeal to target audience.



Facebook and Twitter take-over ideas - developed from the sketches from the drawing book.

I don’t think these ideas worked very well for me, as I couldn’t really get a successful illustarted take onto the designs and I feel they are too serious for how I intended the pages to look.

However, I think that the infomation areas on the Facebook page would look good and portray the correct info across efficiently and effectively.



A continuation from the Twitter and Facebook takeover theme. I dislike these images because I feel they do not connect directly to the target audience on a personal and emotional level. They are quite loud, which is sometimes unattractive in poster design, and as the subject of homelessness is quite sensitive, I feel it is too much of a contrast for the designs to be successful.



DesignDevelopment



Other ideas and concepts that diverge away from the original concepts.



I had the idea of a spooky take to the project, however instead of portraying a positive outlook onto the situation where there could be help out of misery, I figured that perhaps a negative image would create a negative response, especially as the target audience are quite young. I thought a more innocent approach would be easier to attract my TA and appeal to them more. Spookiness is almost too childish and pretentious for a campaign such as homelessness for the Salvation Army, and would appear like the campaign would be trying too hard to be successful.



Idea of a tree. I liked this idea because I felt that the issue of homelessness is delicate, and the metaphor of a tree shows how other problems can branch out from one single issue. I have put issues on the leaves of the tree so when the audience would click onto them the problem would get uncovered and hopefully would help get solved by the user. This is the basis of my Flash animation website.



Poster designs that reflect the tree concept and the initial ideas for the pages for the Flash website. I liked the idea of keeping the images quite sketchy and simple, also just having one colour to seperate the page, which reflects my design for the flash website.



Poster concepts following the co-lour scheme and theme of the tree idea. These are all unsuccessful as I find that they are to simple and unappealing.

The QR code, in an ideal world, would connect to the Flash website and connect the online and offline experience together for my campaign.

The tag line ‘What does homelessness mean to you?’ was decided in my final presentation that it was too impersonal and non-influencial to an audience. I have changed this tag line on the Flash site to ‘What does having a home mean to you?’, which directly engages with the audience.



FinalPrototypes



This is my final poster/flyer design for this project. I feel it is successful eventhough it may only appeal to a female audience because of the colour scheme, however I chose pink because I feel it is a delicate colour and shows the issue in a less aggressive way than the current homelessness campaigns such as Shelter. I find that it is a current way of appealing to a young audience, as the current SA campaign and logo are in my opinion very out of date and out of touch with a young-er more influencial audience.



Print screens of the final Flash prototype. I find that this was successful seeing as it was my first ever attempt at a flash animation, however there are still some existing errors in the running of the animation that I would hope to iron out for future projects. I find that some of the infomation pages are bland with not enough infomation on them to fulfil the purpose of the campaign, however I feel that it would attract the right audience and portray the correct attitude towards homelessness.