Session 6 - Introducing Photography And Illustration - 23/11/11

Today's session started a recap from last week's session and a catch up on the project timetable. The outcome of the session is to brief the illustrator and the photographer.

We were introduced to Aaron who will be working with us a our poster illustrator. He told us a bit about himself and passed around some products he had worked on and his portfolio. His work is amazing.

- His inspirations are Japan

- Draws images in then scans them

- Uses fine liners to do all of his pieces
- He has worked on stuff for the Playstation game 'Lonely Planet', murals, t-shirts, etc.

We were introduced to the photographer, Niall who will be working with us to create the photography for the poster. He is a really well known photographer who worked on the poster for tv show, Top Boy. We were all really impressed by Niall.

We all discussed the vision for this project:
- Niall - the poster's background - blocks, rough, estates, negative
- Aaron - illustrate the people in the evolution line

The evolution poster will be giving the worst case scenario. Leading to death and jail.

We all discussed with Niall and Aaron:
- Sizing is important for the poster
- Black and white - more powerful
- Shoot in colour and mute colour

We looked at the evolution stages and after much formating we came up with:
1. Toddler (3)
2. Primary school age (10)
3. Secondary school age (12)
4. Secondary school age (16)
5. Unemployed (17)
6. Prison/death (18)

Group activity:
The group split up into teams of two, Niall worked with one group and Aaron worked with the other group. The task was to look at and plan all of the stages of the evolution poster.

- It needs to be consistant as it is building a character and this will link them together better.

The group discussed that the guy on the evolution poster will be side on.

1. Toddler
- Start off good as there's more to loose
- Playing with toys - perhaps toy blocks spelling out 'Stop'
- Dressed in spiderman or superman t-shirt
- Happy

2. Primary school
- Messy uniform - to big - hand-me-downs
- With hoody - negative
- Holding football under his arm - positive

3. Secondary school - 12
- Stealing fags out of his older self's pocket - links it together (image 4)
- Uniform untucked
- Trainers

4. Secondary school - 16
- Messy school uniform
- Fag behind his ear
- Bad looking - knife in his belt - on the same side as younger self (image 3) steals fags from
- On his phone
- Bunking school
- Dealing drugs

5. Unemployed - 17
- Tattoo - mum, dead or alive
- He's robbed someone and stabbed them
- Blood on his hands
- Scruffy
- Canabis
- He's a big guy in his community

6. Dead/in prison - 18
- In prison staring death in the face
- Behind bars

We all discussed ideas of where we may like to shoot some of the photography.
- Haygate
- Wood Green

Real objects in the poster - blocks, knife, fags, the background.

We were all asked to look at locations to shoot our photography at:
- Somewhere with a lot of open space
- Take some test shots for the photographer

Residential plans were completed and everybody filled in feedback forms.

Updates:
Tuesday 29/11/11 the group will meet with a friend of Niall's (the photographer) and scout out some locations and take some test shots.

Session 5 - The Power Of Social Networks In Campaigns - 16/11/11

The session kicked off with introductions and updates from last week's session and the youth feedback from The Salmon Centre. This week's session will be about social networks and their importance whilst working on campaigns.

Social network sites offer a great way of reaching your audience, measuring their response or commitment to your campaign or sharing your message.

We looked at some social media stats:

How many hours do U24s spend on the internet a week, not counting on mobiles?

- We all made guesses of 60? and 100? hours

The facts are:

- U24s spend an average of 31 hours online a week, much of this is on social networking sites.

Task:

Name as many social media websites as you can?

- Facebook

- The new Google feature

- Twitter

- High 5

- MySpace

- Tagged

- Piczo

- Profile Pics

- YouTube

- Skype

- PS3/Xbox 360

- FlickR

- Tweet Deck

- Tumblr

- Dating sites

- Bebo - died a long time ago

We talked about what they all do and agreed that they all do different things but for the same purposes. They are all about communication and sharing. We discussed how social networks have evolved from MySpace - Facebook - Twitter.

We looked at Facebook next and the stats are staggering:

- 1 billion users

- 1/2 the UK population are on Facebook

- The average person spends 14 minutes a day or 7 hours a month on Facebook

- Facebook counts for 44% of social network interaction

98% of everyone in our group has a Facebook account - it's powerful, people are on it

Do it on Facebook - things can be spread faster and easier and you can track and measure response.

Group Task 1:

In groups we looked at:

How/why do people use Facebook?

- Profile

- Games

- Promote your company

- Ruin people's lives - bullying, etc

- Sharing videos, pictures, music, etc

- Chat

- To like things

- Find family and friends

- Plan events

- Find out about events

- Follow your fav bands, celebs, etc

- Video chat

- Share links

- Organise

- Vote

- Polls

How do they talk to each other?

- Casually

- With slang

- Reminders

What else can Facebook do?

- Start a revolution

- Act as a petition

- Brands

- Builds contacts and communication

Make sure that there's enough information in your profile so people know facts and enough about your campaign and the people behind it.

We were left with a few questions to consider:

- Which ones will work for you?

- Do you want Facebook to be personal or a computer?

We looked at campaigns that had used Facebook successfully:

Ghonin organises revolution through Facebook - newspaper article

BattleFront

- They keep in touch

- Tell people what they're up to

- Run by young people for young people

- They want people to post things and like them

Red Bull

- They excite

- Gives you wings

- They are a well know brand

Compare the meerkat

- They add personality

- Humour

If young people know that it's for them then they will be more engaged with it.

Things to consider for our campaign social networking:

Facebook 

- It's the daddy for sharing more information

- You can add lots of pictures, videos, etc

- Like similar campaigns to yours

Twitter

- Do the basics

- It's shorter

- News spreads quicker on it

- People can re-tweet you (RT)

- Follow people who are relevant to your campaign

- Remember to use hash tags (key words) - #stopknifecrime

- Find people with relevant hash tags to add to your friend list - they believe in the cause

We went onto looking at Twitter. The goal of Twitter is to build friends, likes, comments, and traffic to blog.

Stats:

- 19% of time spent on social networks goes on Twitter

You are more likely to get a response on Twitter as tweets tend to have a faster turn around and are updated more frequently.

Group Task 2:

In groups we came up with ideas on what our first tweet may be on twitter and it could only be 120 characters.

Group 3:

- Their hash tag would be #Lifecan

Group 2:

- Their hash tag would be #cleanthecrime

- If you don't want to see blood on the streets, join our campaign.

Group 3:

- Did you know x amount of people die of knife crime a week, heart breaking news, retweet.

We talked about YouTube and the group discussed and showed us a video that they had worked on called 'Pressure' and it looked really great.

Here it is:

YouTube stats:
- 20 million unique users per month
- Video's like 'Charlie bit my finger' get 332 million views

We looked at YouTube and how people use it:
- To say something slightly different
- Show things in a different way

Group Task 3:


Set 5 goals for the online/social network aspect of the campaign:

We discussed options for both the photography aspect and the illustration aspect of the campaign.

We had a few options and here are the ones that we chose:
Photographer
- Niall O'Brien - he's well known and his work looks good.

Illustrator
- Moose and Yeti - black and white, dark and strong - liked the style the most
- Steve Malloy - manga/fantasy.

A Big idea that we came up with was:
- Have a real background and a sketched person (very detailed)

The group filled in evaluations and the session finished.

Session 4 - Poster Ideas Target Audience Feedback

This week we had mock up of last week's poster ideas to take to a youth centre called The Salmon Youth Centre for feedback.

We discussed the poster's as a group before leaving and this is the feedback and the suggestions that we came up with:

- Black shadows and one person standing and saying, "you are not alone."

- An older person - trust worthy with a hand on a shoulder.

- Somebody dropping the knife in a bin in stead of on a table and then saying "Let It Go".

- It should be bold - strong impact.

- The poster doesn't have enough impact - the pose.

- The photograph should be the knife in motion being thrown away or being dropped.

- The evolution should be the steps progressing to how they got involved with knife crime.

- They should all be in the same scene.

- The person should actually be going through each stage.

- Strong Point - show an image of the person's face in prison.

The idea is that we are trying to use the poster concept with the most impact, making it more shocking.

We devised a list of questions to ask young people at The Salmon Centre to get their opinions on the poster concepts:

- What are your experiences of knife crime?

- If one of your friends was involved with knife crime, what would you say to them?

- How do you think these posters relate to you?

- What do you think these posters mean?

- What would you change about the posters?

- Which poster do you think is the best?

When we arrived the young people were playing football, so their coach sent them out in groups of 4/5. We decided to ask them questions as one big group and change the order of the questions around to suit.

Group 1

(5 young people)

- They had no experience of knife crime

- They will listen to people who have been there before

- Well respected if it's somebody famous

- The Gigs poster was more effective

- Don't make it to fancy - just simple and bold

- Use a bold picture with not much writing

- Something that catches your eye

- You're not alone - has no point - gives the wrong idea

- Likes the 'evolution' idea and the 'nobody's going to change your life but you' idea to

- With a celeb - the Gigs poster looks a bit like a song poster

- The 'nobody's going to change your life but you' poster looks like it's for older kids aged 17+

The youth group's manager mentioned that they had somebody come in and talk about knife crime a while ago and that the topic is very hot on the agenda right now.

Group 2

(5 young people)

- 1 young person knew somebody effected by knife crime

- There's always a reason someone gets stabbed

- It's not good though.

- Let it go and only you can change posters give a good message

- You're not alone - gives the wrong reason

- Only you can change - they said that they would look at it if they saw it

We were all discovering that this was the correct age to target our poster at as they have not even considered or thought of anything to do with knife crime yet. We can get our message to them before they even get involved with gangs, etc to warn them off of it.

Group 3

(4 young people)

- 1 of the young people knew somebody who's friend was stabbed

- Knife crime is bad

- All of the ideas are good

- The Gigs poster is best

- Evolution would really make them think and they would tell their mates about it.

We finished up the session with a group discussion of how we had got on with the feedback and what we had learnt.

Session 3 - Insights And Concepts 02/11/11

This week we arrived at session 3 and everybody learnt about insights and how to put them into practice and come up with an initial idea for a poster. It's all coming together now and everybody is really enthusiastic to make this happen.

The session began with a brief recap from last weeks session and then an introduction about this week. We looked at the focus this week, which was on concepts and that we would look at:

- Who is the audience for the poster?

- How will we talk to them?

Then we all went over knife crime statistics that had been researched earlier in the day. The findings of the stats were really interesting:
 - The Metropolitan Police crime statistics - they show that knife crime rates have risen in the past 12 months.

- The Government crime research statistics - an assessment of the Tackling Knives and Serious Youth Violence Action Programme (TKAP).

- This article from The Guardian newspaper talks about the new mandatory tougher punishments for knife crime.

- Another article from The Guardian - Boris Johnson: Met records big increase in young people injured by knives on his watch.
- Centre For Crime and Justice Studies review uncovered some really revealing results. Here are a few of the more informative pages:

After a discussion we came up with the following comments:

- If there's a recession, people are more likely to commit more crime, because of lack of jobs, etc.

- The recession doesn't usually effect young people as most under the age of 18 years old are covered from paying their own bills, etc.

- Think about how other people are presenting their messages!

We learnt about insight in advertising.

- In order to sell things

- Poster for power of good

- Attached emotionally to a person

- You retain a message as it's authentic and this is more effective

We looked at some effective advertising and we all had to work out what the insights were.

Lurpak

Insight: breakfast is a treat and taking time over it is something you look forward to.

- Don't rush breakfast

- For people who are working

- Saying you get longer at the weekend to enjoy your breakfast

Lynx

Insight: boys will do anything to appear more attractive to girls.

- They are selling you a girl - saying that lynx brings you women

- For men 16+

Gym membership

Insight: exercise is a saturated market where there is not much difference between products. Fitness4less has a cheekier personality and users don't mind a sense of humour.

- We are just like you - appeals to your nature

- Aimed at cheeky people

Dixon's

Insight: whilst people wanted experience and top end goods they're realistic enough to want to save money too. This campaign offers both and makes the buyer feel smart.

- Selfridge's play on words - good for the tube as it has more text.

- Mixes fonts and colours

- Aimed at families and other people who want good products and can't afford Selfridge's

Volkswagen

Insight: We've all tried to control space/time with our minds as children.

- Appealing to all of our child-like sides

- Everyone's done it

- This aims it at everyone

Everybody split up into groups to create mood boards with magazine cuttings of ideas for the posters. All of the ideas were really great. Here is the video of the groups presenting their ideas.

We looked at:

- What do you want to say to the audience

- Who the typical person may be

We discussed:

- Poster 1 was more effective

- Elements of poster 3 were strong to (bullying) - you're not alone

- Key insight - no-one can change your life but you and you're not alone - what words will you use?

- How will you help with your poster? will you signpost to support services?

Staying in the same groups we came up with some insights. These were the ideas:

The insights and mood boards are being taken to a designer, who will do mock-up posters of all of the group's concepts to get feedback from young people in next week's session.

Finally we discussed residential ideas with everybody and as long as all of the activities are included nobody minds where the location is. Evaluation sheets were all filled in and the session came to an end.

News On The Project:

- A designer is interested in coming on board with the poster. He was the man behind one of the evolution posters that we looked at last week featuring the evolution line and a soldier at the end. He owns a successful design company called Barnbrook.

- A photographer is also interested in working with us, have a look at Niall O'Brien's website.