A few months ago, I received a black, A4 plastic envelope through the post. The envelope was heavy and looked quite ominous. You don’t get black plastic envelopes through the post every day.

This Is The Order

Inside was a magazine. A magazine that was rather thick and could quite easily pass as a softbacked book. This Is The Order. Issue 03.

For a few minutes I wondered why I had received this book. The quality of its design proved that it wasn’t just a random mailshot. And then, having taken a look at the following pages, I realised it was from the makers of Relentless. Yes, the energy drink. I remembered that I had signed up for something on their website months previously about receiving a magazine. I expected a few pages of token information about their products with some half hearted stories about something to do with energy. I was quite clearly mistaken.

The front cover itself was enough to pique my interest.

Raised bars on the cover help provide a tactile feel.

As the introduction on the first page explained, this issue was all about sound and to promote that, their cover employed a series of raised bars that, when someone ran their fingernail over them, produced a sound that reflected a different music beat.

Each column of bars represents a different beat.

I can’t say that the bars truly reflected any sort of beat you’d hear with actual musical instruments, but certainly the experiment and the implementation of the cover made me smile and made me explore the magazine further.

As mentioned, the first page details the front cover, while on the opposite page, there is a fantastic illustration, complete with gold overlays.

Fantastically detailed illustration. One of the first things you see when you open the magazine.

Relentless’s style is one of exaggeration. On all of their marketing materials and indeed on their drinks cans themselves, it’s always designed with a sense of “You are everything. This is amazing. We are beautiful”. I’ve never really been able to tell if it’s tongue in cheek or not. Whether they’re serious about or not, the design and tone of voice they employ is fantastic and I’ve always been a fan of it.

Throughout the rest of the magazine, the design changes according to whatever is being discussed on that page. It doesn’t feel like the magazine has an overall style, but rather, has many styles suited to the content on that page. Usually, I hate this because it makes everything feel disjointed, but when the magazine is all about freedom and expression, I can understand how and why it works here.

Another great piece of artwork, this time 3D.

Nowhere in this magazine is Relentless mentioned. In fact, the only way you can tell this is produced by them is their trademark serif typography and overexaggerated style. Nowhere in this magazine do they refer to anything product-related or anything that gives you a sense that they’re trying to shift a few units of their products. Instead, the magazine focuses solely on what their product is meant to stand for.

Digression

Businesses seem much more open to doing this in the last few years with the likes of Nike now a lifestyle, not a brand. My favourite example of this sort of “values before product” advertising was earlier this year in the form of a short film by Spike Jonze, funded by Absolut Vodka entitled I’m Here. At the heart of it, it is a simple story about what you will do for someone you love more than anything. It doesn’t promote Absolut or feature the product. The only place you’re likely to find any sort of branding is a small footnote at the bottom of the film’s website.

At 30 minutes long and with a top director, this isn’t just a quickly whipped together production to cash in and sell some vodka. While Jonze can be credited with actually making the film look as it does, Absolut can be credited with wanting to spend such a large amount of cash on something that doesn’t tell people to buy their product. Instead, it tells people to buy their lifestyle. Their values. In other words, you don’t need to tell someone to buy x product. If you can get them to believe in your values, they will always choose your product over another.

End digression

Promotion for "Lives of the artists"

Throughout the magazine, their are double page spreads promoting “Lives of the Artists”, a documentary produced for Relentless about people with a creative passion. The shots they use to promote the documentary are fantastic.

With the full page photos and designs comes the smaller, less often noticed page devices. Like the larger pieces of design throughout the magazine, these smaller pieces seem well thought out and really add to the overall experience of reading the magazine.

Small page devices help make the magazine stand out more.

The same can be said of some of the typography used throughout the magazine, with its less often used ligatures.

Rarer ligatures in use.

My favourite page in the book is towards the middle. While the preceeding page is an article, the page after is a fantastic double page spread of an amazing ceiling. Because its full page with full page, you can really appreciate the beauty of the ceiling.

My favourite page.

As mentioned, the magazine does a really great job of presenting information in a readable, but visually appealing way, using extra background textures and details to frame the content.

Information is laid out legibly and still manages to be visually interesting.

Visually appealing without the need for paragraphs of text.

The emphasis on exploration of sound is found on one of the later pages in the magazine, which attempts to map London by how quiet a certain area is.

The silent map of London.

Additionally, there’s also pages which try to visualise sounds in different ways.

Visualisations of sound.

Visualisations of sound.

The last few pages of the magazine are dedicated to a short comic, beautifully drawn, that details the story of Paganini, a violinist. It’s a really nice way to end the magazine and it feels as if it’s been thoughtfully added, rather than tacked on at the last moment.

The Paganini comic spans the last few pages of the magazine.

The last frame, on the last page of This Is The Order.

This is the Order is a fantastic magazine, one which certainly caught me by surprise. I’m looking forward to receiving the next issue.

Written: 30th August, 2010

Comments: No comments

Tags: Absolut Vodka, energy drink, I'm Here, instruments, ligatures, Lives of the Artists, magazine, music, nike, relentless, sound, Spike Jonze, this is the order

Two weeks ago, I received an email from a Doctor G Neil Martin.

Hi Neil

It’s Neil Martin.  I thought your Neilz Beanz tinz were brilliant.

Can I buy one?

Look forward to hearing from you.

Best,
Neil

Now, as you might imagine, being Neil Martin myself, I found this email to be quite odd. It’s not every day you get emailed by a Neil Martin. I have to admit that I was a little suspicious at first. I thought perhaps it was some sort of spam, scraping my name from somewhere on my site, but the email had an attached signature, identifying Neil Martin as the “Research Degrees Coordinator” at Middlesex University. The email address also had a Middlesex University extension. Curious to find out more, I replied and sure enough, I got a human response from Doctor G Neil Martin asking again for some tins. Three to be exact. I asked how he had managed to stumble across my site.

In a typically narcissistic, Google-driven way, I sometimes search for any new comments on my books and papers (if you type in neil martin and psychology/middlesex in Amazon/Google, you’ll see what I do) and came across the Royal Mail stamps designs and then got the the actual website.

I explained to Neil that although I was more than happy to send him some tins, the labels and postage actually cost more than the beans themselves! He was very happy to reimburse me for this, though and so I went to the post office with three tins of beans, ready to post.

The last time I posted the tins, I posted six of them, all at once to different design agencies. The postage was attached to the bottom of the tins. Although I got some funny looks from the cashier, they were happy to let me send them as is and so I thought it’d be fine to do the same this time as well. Not so it seemed. In fact, I had to 20 minutes while the manager of the post office called up Royal Mail HQ to ask if I could send them as is. The ultimate answer was no. This really disappointed me as they were happy to send six previously! Reluctantly, I stuck them in a box instead and sent them that way, although it took a while to peel all of the stamps back off the tins!

Thankfully, Neil received all of the tins with no problems. He was even kind enough to send me a photo of them:

Neilz Brain with Neil's brain!

Written: 29th June, 2010

Comments: No comments

Tags: beans, doctor g neil martin, heinz, middlesex, neilz brain, university

This is just a quick post for now.

An hour ago, I had need of an A4 envelope for a CD and I didn’t have a template to hand. I had a quick search online, and found the tutorial to make a CD envelope out of an A4 piece of paper, but no templates with exact dimensions of each section once folded. So, I made my own. Since I had a need for it, perhaps you do too.

If you do, click here to download a PDF of an A4 CD envelope template.

Written: 26th May, 2010

Comments: No comments

Tags: cd, dimensions, envelope, free, origami, paper, template

Chester Charity Beer Festival is an annual three-day event that takes place in Chester. Run by Round Table, It raises money for good causes and charities through selling festival tickets and of course beer. You can see the project here.

I had already worked for the festival last year. In 2009, I developed the front cover of the programme, along with some A1 posters that were hung up at the festival. You can see that work here.

Before I began to work with the festival, they did not have any sort of true identity or promotional materials, with most of the posters and programme design being very sporadic each year. With no tight branding integration, the festival was lacking that spark that made it more appealing for people to attend. It was my job to design all of this year’s promotional materials.

The logo

Because 2009’s logo proved to be successful, I decided that instead of starting from scratch, I could use some of the equity of it and update rather than redesign it.

Last year's logo on the front of the programme.

One of the things that was added to the cover last time was Round Table’s own logo, seen above just below “2009″. Because the festival is run by Round Table, I thought it was important to keep this association as part of the new logo as Round Table do much more than host the festival. Eventually, this is what I came up with:

The festival's new logo for 2010.

As you can see, it’s quite similar to 2009’s design, but with some improvements including the integration of Round Table’s logo directly into the festival’s logo. There’s also more refinement in the placement and sizing of all of the type. For those that are interested, the fonts being used are Cheboygan and Arno Pro.

The programme cover

With the logo complete, I moved straight onto the cover of the programme, which would be distributed to 2,000 people over the course of three days. Again, using a little equity from last year’s cover, I designed it in the style of a beer label.

The festival's programme cover for 2010.

I wanted this label to have much more detail than the 2009’s. Last year, I only had a few weeks to put the cover and poster designs together all whilst getting my coursework done as well. This year, as the project began in February for a May launch, I had more time to put something together. With the programme designed, I could then use design elements from it to influence everything else that needed to be designed.

The poster

The first thing that needed to be designed was the poster so the festival could begin its promotion. I started with something simple as the information that was going on the poster was a little scarce to begin with.

The festival's poster, version 1.

Once I had sent this over, it was clear that there was more information to go onto the poster and everything needed to be reworked for everything to fit on including ticket prices and of course where about the festival was being held. As I was struggling for information, I removed the frame altogether and went for something even simpler.

A much simpler version of the festival's poster.

It was pretty clear even as I was designing it that it didn’t feel right. It got across all of the information, but it wasn’t very attractive and it didn’t contain any of the design elements that were present on the programme’s cover. So, I redesigned again.

A reintroduction of the frame with a better layout.

After sending this over to the client, they were happy with it but I felt that there was still something not quite right about it. I felt that the logo was far too small and the dates were out of proportion and it still looked a little empty at the top. So, after another redesign, I ended up with this:

A bigger logo and better use of space.

Widening the top half of the frame meant that I could move the logo up and make it a touch bigger. By adding some feature circles, it reduced the amount of blank space that was causing a problem and I could also make the dates a touch bigger to go with the larger logo. After sending this over to the client, we were both happy with it. In total, there were 8 redesigns of the poster that got me to this version.

The t-shirt

Along with last year’s A1 posters, the client had asked if the design could also be used on t-shirts. Again, at the time, I didn’t have much time to come up with something but what I did come up with was a design that formed a pint glass out of beer-related words. With more time this year, I felt that I could improve on the design and make it look a bit more glass-like, as the previous version looked a little too blocky.

Left: 2009's t-shirt design. Right: 2010's t-shirt design.

The ticket

With three different nights for the festival, one ticket design wasn’t enough. Not only were there different prices for each ticket, but on the first day, there would be two events. The festival also offers all sponsors of the event free tickets and so a ticket design was needed for that too and so in total, there were 5 tickets designed.

Left: Saturday evening's ticket. Right: Sponsor ticket.

The sponsor ticket proved a bit of an issue to begin with. Sponsors are allowed to attend any of the events that are on over the three days. They’re also invited to the special sponsor’s bar and buffet. All of these days and times needed to be on the sponsor’s ticket which meant reorganising things on all of the tickets to allow for more space for all of the dates and times to be written on the sponsor’s ticket.

The back contained a map of where the Festival was, with directions from various parts of the surrounding areas.

The back of the ticket provides a simple map with directions.

The beer card

Having attended last year’s festival myself and actually gone through the process of going to the bar area to get a drink, I quickly discovered how annoying it was carrying around 3cm wide raffle tickets which were very likely to get ripped or simply lost. The client had asked me to come up with a better way of exchanging money for tokens for beer. Initially, I advised that it probably wasn’t worth redesigning the tokens because ultimately, they were going to get thrown away anyway a few minutes after being purchased. However, after a bit more thought, I realised that there was a good opportunity to come up with a better concept of mere tokens.

Since the price of the beer tokens had already been set at £5 for 4 beer tokens, there was no need to have any less than that. In other words, regardless of how many tokens you might want, you always bought in sets of four. With this in mind, I came up with the idea of having a beer card, containing four tokens. This way, the card itself could be designed at the same size as the ticket (A6) on card. This meant no more misplaced tokens or tokens torn because they had been covered in beer. Additionally, instead of giving in a raffle ticket, the customer would give in the card, have it marked by the bartender and then have it given back. The client really liked this idea and so I went ahead and designed it.

The beer card replaces small raffle tickets.

The programme

With everything else out of the way, the programme was the last thing to design. Although the festival began on May 13th, I had to wait until May 1st to design it because there were sponsor adverts and a full beer list to go in it, which weren’t finalised until late on. The design was influenced by the things I had already designed, using the thick yellow and red frame on each page.

Each page has its own frame similar to the poster, tickets and beer cards.

As a final touch, the client asked for a ranking system next to each of the beers as some of the die-hard festival-goers enjoy rating them. Scores were placed next to each of the 70+ beers.

The rating system was placed next to each beer listing.

The festival

With everything now designed, it was now time to look forward to 2,000 people descending into Chester to take part in the festival. I decided to take a trip to Chester myself and see my work in action.

Hundreds of glasses with the programme inside.

As a designer, it’s always fantastic to see my work ‘live’ and to know that so many people are not only looking at it, but using it, picking it up and reading it. It’s a fantastic feeling to see a room full of people all with the above programme in their hands.

Nearly everyone I met read the programme.

Throughout the evening, I took photos of people having a good time. Thankfully I got some shots of people with the guide in their hands.

The festival tshirts, modelled by staff.

It was also fantastic to see the t-shirts that I had designed on sale at the front of the marquee, as modelled by staff above.

It conclusion, working with the festival has been another fantastic experience. I enjoyed my minor role in working with them last year and I’ve enjoyed developing an entire campaign with them this year even more. In particular, I’m very happy with the beer card idea, which was very successful on the night, as I saw many people buying more than one card every time they bought some. It’s also quite an unusual experience for me as a designer seeing someone hand over money to buy a piece of card which is then valued at £5 each.

As mentioned at the start of this post, the festival’s profits all go to charity. This includes charities such as Claire House,  who support families with sick children. Because these types of charities rely so heavily on donations, I decided that early on in the project, I would donate my whole fee to the festival’s fund. I am proud to support the festival for free because I believe that my fee will be put to good use by the charities that the festival supports. It’s also fantastic news that the festival this year raised over £10,000. A great festival and a great cause. I look forward to working with the festival in 2011, should they wish to work together again.

Written: 18th May, 2010

Comments: No comments

Tags: advert, arno pro, beer festival 2010, campaign, cheboygan, chester charity beer festival, drink, grosvenor, poster, round table, roundtable, t-shirt

This is a short post, but one which I think is important and experimental.

Today, I’m starting a small advertising campaign using Facebook’s advertising system and if you’re here because you happened to click on my ad, then thank you for taking the time to have a look at the site.

As Facebook is constantly being used to promote parties, weddings and gigs, I thought it may be a good idea to focus the advert on designing specifically for these things. For the next few weeks, I’ll be offering A3 event posters designed to your specifications for a fixed rate of £50. Provided that you’re not looking to have something too complex, I will charge £50 for designing you an A3 poster for pretty much anything you’d like. This could be an upcoming gig for your band, someone’s birthday or maybe something a bit more refined such as a wedding. Whatever it is, I will keep my price at £50 for the next few weeks while my advertising campaign is running.

If you’d like to get in touch, please email me at neil AT the workof.co.uk.

Written: 9th May, 2010

Comments: No comments

Tags: a3, advertising, birthday, event, facebook, gig, poster, £50

It’s difficult to describe what Round Table is and so instead, I shall quote from Round Table’s website:

The first Round Table was formed in Norwich in 1927. …a need existed for a club where the young business men of the town could gather on a regular basis to exchange ideas, learn from the experiences of their colleagues and play a collective part in the civic life.

Today, Round Table hosts a number of events and has numerous organisations (or Tables) all over the UK. They are also responsible for producing the annual Chester Charity Beer Festival, which I worked on last year. Chester’s Round Table hired me to develop a flyer to promote their 75th Charter Night. A celebration of Round Table open to anyone. In addition to being their 75th Charter Night, it was also a black tie event and the flyer needed to reflect that.

The front and back of the flyer.

Round Table also needed a ticket to go with the flyer to send to those who would be attending the event. The ticket was designed at A7 so 8 would fit on an A4 page, reducing printing costs. Nick  Wheeler, Chairman of Round Table took responsibility for printing.

Ticket for the 75th Charter Night.

Although a small job, it’s always nice to add a touch of design to an event which may otherwise not have any. I hope that it does the job at getting people to the event.

Written: 14th March, 2010

Comments: No comments

Tags: 75th, black tie, charter night, chester, flyer, round table, ticket

I’m sorry for the lack of posts recently. I have actually been quite busy working on a number of projects and will hopefully be able to find time to collate and upload them soon once they’ve all been signed off on.

Since January, I have been very lucky in the fact that I’ve had quite a number of people wanting me to work with them to develop some fantastic campaigns, logos and websites, all of which are going really well. I’m really looking forward to some of the projects going live and getting them out there into the public.

In the meantime, please stay tuned and I’ll be posting another update very shortly.

Written: 9th March, 2010

Comments: No comments

Tags: busy, delay, neglect, projects

Firstly, I hope everyone is having a good new year. Welcome to 2010. That’s “twenty ten” and not “two thousand and ten” according to the American National Association of Good Grammar (NAGG).

To kick off January, here’s a new identity for Impossibly Stupid, a blog run by Doc O’Leary. Doc writes about many things, but with a particular interest in some of the mindless things that people do that make you think “Well what was the point of that?”. Here’s his original logo:

Impossibly stupid original logo.

It’s not actually that bad of a logo, but it was lacking communication between it and the blog name.

This was a very short project, but one which still required the sketching of ideas between any digital work was done. I started by trying to incorporate the ‘i’ and ’s’ of ‘Impossibly Stupid’ into one solid logo and I think this is where a lot of logo designs start from. Some are fantastic, others don’t work at all. I also tried to play with the idea of taking one step forward and two steps back to reinforce the idea of something being stupid.

Initial ideas for Impossibly Stupid.

That wasn’t really working as well as I had hoped it would so I moved onto something else, playing with the simple equation of 1+1=3. Something so obviously wrong that everyone knows it’s wrong. It was a simple equation, but one which I felt reflected the tone of voice of Doc’s words perfectly.

I tried a number of variations of the equation, trying to design it in such a way that it looked more like a graphic, rather than numbers but I found that the message became too complex, making people look for the connection between it and the name.

Initial ideas for Impossibly Stupid.

I also tried different placements of the equation, including a vertical alternative.

Initial ideas for Impossibly Stupid.

But in the end, I came back to something much simpler – I+I=III

The final idea used for Impossibly Stupid.

Using ‘I’ instead of ‘1′ and using ‘III’ instead of ‘3′ helped the logo to stay unique and relate back to the name. With three ‘i’s in the name, it just gives a little nod, but not so much that it’s too obvious.

From the final sketch design, I then worked in Illustrator to refine it, trying different varations. The final logo:

The final logo for Impossibly Stupid.

I manually kerned the equation using VAG Rounded as a basis for the numerals. I also enlarged the plus/equals symbols and tightened up the words a little bit so that the logo as a whole wasn’t too elongated.

Doc was very happy with the final result and was kind enough to leave a permanent credit link back to my site, which I appreciate.

A quick, but enjoyable project to work on and one which had a very simple solution!

Written: 3rd January, 2010

Comments: No comments

Tags: 1+1=3, design, doc o'leary, equation, Identity, impossibly stupid, logo, math, sketch, two steps backwards, vag rounded

To compliment Ruby Jones’ new handmade jewellery website www.rubyandblue.com, I was hired to produce a range of gift vouchers with 5 different monetary values that customers could purchase and give as gifts for any occasion. You can see the project here.

I really enjoyed working on this project from the start as Ruby was one of those clients that there just aren’t enough of. Right at the start of the project, Ruby had already taken time to produce a detailed PDF of exactly what she wanted including links to things she liked the look of. This is really useful as a starting point for designing anything.

Upon starting the project, I already had an idea of what I had liked to try with the vouchers after Ruby had said that there were to be multiple values for each of the voucher. The first thing that came to mind was how banknotes are designed and in particular, the beautiful and intricate patterns formed by guilloches. Guilloches are the fine and complex lines that can be found on the likes of the £10 note.

Guilloches can be found on banknotes.

Guilloches can take the form of any number of mathmatical possibilities.

I had first learned about guilloches a few months ago while reading a blog post by Aegir Hallmundur of Ministry of Type. Every one has of course seen guilloches before, but how many people know that they’re called guilloches? It was really interesting to discover that they even had a name!

I presented some very rough sketches to Ruby along with some information on guilloches and she liked the idea.

A few rough voucher sketches.

A bit more searching led me to this fantastic guilloche maker by Tom Beddard of www.subblue.com and I had fun making various shapes with increasing complexity. The one thing that this was missing though was the ability to actually save the design into an editable form such as an .ai or .pdf file.

A guilloche made with a guilloche maker.

Because I couldn’t save the guilloches made into a usable format, I unfortunately had to attempt to make them manually in Illustrator instead, which meant that they would be nowhere near as complex. I tried a few different things, but nothing looked quite as good as using mathmatical processes. I had a feeling that my wish to use guilloches in the design of the gift vouchers was going to be a dead end due to being unable to find something easy (and free) to use instead.

Not willing to be too dead in the water just yet, I looked again at the various design elements of a banknote and the main thing that stood out even more than the guilloches was Bank of England, in the custom script typeface. I decided to try and incorporate this into a gift voucher design. Ruby had already said that she wanted to use “Look Amazing” to support her logo and I thought this was the perfect opportunity to do so.

Elegant swirls are used for the text on banknotes.

I began researching into some similar typefaces that might match the one used on banknotes and found one that might work quite well. What became apparent very quickly was that simply typing out “Look Amazing” and digitally adding some extra swirls wasn’t going to be enough. It didn’t look natural enough. So, I printed a few copies of “Look Amazing” and started adding the swirls manually instead.

Manually adding swirls worked better than digitally adding them.

After producing a number of these sketches, I scanned them back into Illustrator and began tracing the swirls of various revisions, before adding the final one to a voucher design that I had been working on and it looked quite fitting.

Handmade guilloches add to the voucher design.

Fine details make the voucher visually interesting.

I was quite happy with how the voucher had turned out, even though the guilloches had been made manually instead of mathmatically. Additionally, although it didn’t look exactly like a banknote, it gave just the right feeling of one. A feeling that the voucher had value.

I wanted to present Ruby with three different concepts for her to choose from. As you can see above, Ruby&Blue’s logo focuses on making the ‘&’ out of small pebbles and for the next concept, I wanted to try and bring these into the design even more.

A much simpler gift voucher which relates back to the logo.

Although not as complex as the first voucher, this one actually reflected Ruby’s site in a better way because it was a little more contemporary than the guilloche design. However, I felt that it was a little too heavy handed and that the logo in particular was overshadowed by all of the surrounding pebbles. I liked the idea of keeping the voucher clean, but I also liked the idea of incorporating guilloches somehow and so for the third concept, I wanted to try and get a mix of both things.

A marrying of the first two concepts in a more refined design.

In this design, I felt that the elements were much tighter and better reflected Ruby’s website. Although the guilloche version was visually interesting, it didn’t say the right things about Ruby’s brand, whereas I believe that this design does. Ruby agreed and we went forward with this design.

There were some small changes to the design. Because Ruby would be printing the vouchers herself, some of the finer typeface strokes would not print properly. This meant a change of typeface for something a little thicker that would print even at a tiny size.

Some of the smaller details would not print on a standard printer.

A heavier typeface allowed for printing at small sizes.

For the main occasion messages such as “I love you”, “Happy Anniversary” and “Merry Christmas”, I wanted a typeface that would make the words stand out. I considered using the same typeface that I used for “Look Amazing” in the guilloche design, but it didn’t quite work. Instead, I opted for a font called Renaissance, which has some beautiful letterforms for its capital letters.

The font "Renaissance" adds a nice elegance to the voucher.

Once the front of the voucher was finalised, it was time to design the back of it. A much easier job. On the front of the voucher, I had included some hearts made out of the same pebbles that made up the ‘&’ in the Ruby&Blue logo so I included them on the back. However, after designing it, Ruby asked for space to be made to include a message box so that customers could use the back of the voucher to write something to whoever they were giving the voucher to. The back was redesigned to accomodate this.

The voucher back uses similar elements as the front.

The addition of a large message box meant a redesign for the back of the voucher.

The last thing to be designed was an envelope, which the gift voucher would be presented in. I didn’t want to make this as complex as the voucher, but to simply give a few hints as to what was inside. Three concepts were designed for the envelope and the second was chosen.

Envelope 1 was a very simple, bearing just the logo.

Envelope 2 was the same as 1, but incorporated the same type of lines used on the voucher.

Envelope 3 used the "Look Amazing" words to support the logo.

Both Ruby and myself were happy with how the design of the voucher and the envelope had progressed. For me personally, I had really enjoyed working on the project and I thought it was quite interesting to see how one of my early sketches ended up being the framework for the final design.

One of the early sketches ended up being incorporated into the final design.

Ruby was a great client to work with and one which I ended up working with again to produce some of her site images. As Ruby has just officially launched the website, I’d like to wish her luck in her new business and hope that the gift vouchers are enjoyed by those customers wishing to purchase them.

Written: 7th December, 2009

Comments: No comments

Tags: aegir hallmundur, banknote, envelope, gift, guilloche, ministry of type, olde english font, pounds, renaissance font, ruby, ruby&blue, tom beddard, voucher

With the Viral Man project completely finished, it was time to launch it, but not without a few changes.

Unfortunately, the symptom videos which we filmed were eventually not used as the committee thought that a lot of them weren’t as funny as intended. It’s a shame, as we thought that they really added to the project, rather than just the one interview video.

Additionally, Hannah had volunteered to dress up as Fresher’s Flu, a friend to Viral Man and together they’d infect students. We incorporated this into the script of the interview and Hannah volunteered to don some pink facepaint, pink clothes and even some pink hair extensions to become Fresher’s Flu for the day. Unfortunately, this didn’t make the cut and the committee requested that the interview video be reedited to remove references to this character.

Viral Man goes live

The Viral Man project was developed in the middle of July/August for a September launch and the committee had always intended us to be present at the student’s welcome meeting to introduce the video to them. Both Jerry and Will weren’t sure if they’d be around for the welcome meeting and Hannah didn’t want to do it by herself at one of the two campuses, but I was really keen on gauging the student’s reaction to the video, even if it meant standing in front of a few hundred people.

In preparation for the presentation, I made a very simple PDF with my name on it and some key points. Having sat through a similar welcome meeting when I was a new student, I knew that they wouldn’t want to listen to me go on and on and so my presentation would last no more than three minutes, though I had been told I had ten. I wanted to incorporate the video directly into my PDF, but unfortunately, I was told that there wouldn’t be time to give me a copy of it to do so. I was assured however that there would be AV technicians on the day to help make the presentation run smoothly.

On Sunday 20th September, I headed over to Chester and watched everyone start to gather in the large sports hall which was now home to around 700 seats. I spoke to one of the committee and she told me that the video was ready to play on disk. I just had to open it up. As I said, I was told that there would be AV guys there who would do that and so I wasn’t looking forward to having to close my presentation down, insert a disk and play it. In theory, that sounds like the easiest thing in the world, but when you’re on a stage in front of 700 students who just want to go for a drink, it’s much harder. I was also told that I would be presenting twice, as there would be two lots of 700 students to speak to. Something which no one had informed me about! This made things twice as nerve-wracking.

Once the hall was full, I realised just how daunting it was going to be to stand in front of everyone on my own. While other staff members had done this on a yearly basis, the most people I had presented to was 30 of my fellow classmates. 700 students was on another level!

It doesn't look like it, but there's 700 students here.

On stage first was the Vice-Chancellor, Tim Wheeler and then followed other important staff, some of which I’d already met. I was up last, right after Gay Rabie had spoken to students about Swine Flu.

When Gay took to the stage and delivered her presentation, the first thing I noticed was that she had used an image of Viral Man in her presentation and while this in itself wasn’t a bad thing, it made my introduction of Viral Man a little less pronounced, especially since there was no explanation as to why the image of this green man was in the presentation.

And then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I managed to see someone enter the sports hall. As I turned to look at them, I realised who they were. Viral Man. As someone who had been playing Viral Man for roughly two weeks of my life, it was absolutely surreal to see someone else dressed as him. Green face, the same wig I had worn, along with a stripey jumper, black pants and green gloves. And holding a green umbrella.

It was at this moment that I felt just as confused as the students sitting in the hall. I hadn’t expected him to make an appearance like this, especially before he had been properly introduced by me but because it was so unexpected, perhaps it worked.

Viral Man began walking towards the front of the hall. You could even say he was strutting, twirling his umbrella as he did so and making his way onto the stage where Gay Rabie was still speaking and coughing as loud as he could. I was bemused and so were the students. And full credit goes to the person who was playing Viral Man as he did a fantastic job.

Gay finished her presentation and suddenly I was introduced onto the stage. I could not believe how nervous I was. My hands were literally shaking. I was very thankful that I had a small script prepared for what I wanted to say and a presentation.

I said hello to everyone and explained who I was and why I was there. “And this is Viral Man”, I said to the crowd, but then had to fiddle about with a laptop to get it to play. As I said, this is usually the easier of actions, but when you’re literally shaking with nerves, it was like a lifetime waiting for the CD to load.

Finally, it played and I was able to take a 90 second breather as they watched the video. To my surprise they laughed. At the right parts. It’s a great feeling to know that something you’ve created has been enjoyed by so many people.

I would call the presentation a success for both the project and for me personally. For the project because it was a culmination of five weeks worth of work and for me personally because to speak in front of so many people was incredibly nerve-wracking. I knew I would be nervous beforehand but I still wanted to do it because what better way to overcome your fear of something than to confront it?

After the launch

Since introducing Viral Man to students, the project has been featured in numerous press articles including The Chester Chronicle, The National Student and Nursing Times. I also spent a fair amount of time regularly talking to students as Viral Man on Facebook and it was great to see him being mentioned in people’s status updates. Additionally, Viral Man was also tagged in a number of photos after students had taken some of the posters from various places just because they wanted them. I think this proves that Viral Man was indeed popular and successful.

In conclusion, my time spent on the Viral Man project was a hell of a lot of fun and resulted in a project that I’m very happy with. Given more time, I would have loved to have built a website around Viral Man to better focus all of the campaign assets such as the videos and perhaps some downloadable content. On the plus side, the Facebook profile for Viral Man proves continually popular, with more people adding him as a friend every day. My only hope is that the people responsible for updating the profile and interacting with students maintains the level of fun and quirkiness that Jerry Clark, Will Bollen, Hannah Bradshaw and myself managed to create over the course of five weeks. A fantastic project to work on.

Written: 8th November, 2009

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Tags: chester chronicle, facebook, green, hannah bradshaw, jerry clark, national student, neil martin, nursing times, presentation, students, tim wheeler, University of Chester, viral man, welcome meeting, will bollen