(B4) The Guardian: Crit and Instagram Development

Project is focusing on increasing affinity between the Guardian and 18-26 year olds by highlighting their honest reporting on activist, political and cultural movements through the years. 

18-26 years olds are more politically, culturally and socially aware and engaged than ever before and the guardian has been at the forefront of reporting for a wide range of issues. By honing in on this aspect of the guardian younger people can develop a closeness for the Guardian as a brand and can therefore be more likely to support. 

Young people receive the majority of their news from social media, so having a strong social media presence with shareable content will be integral to the campaign. 

The interactive elements of the campaign allow young people to engage further and increase closeness as well as encourage repeat interest from that age group. 

Harnessing the bright and playful colour palette n the brand guidelines allows for enticing, eye catching imagery to be produced which shall complement the existing ephemera produced by the Guardian while standing out on various social media platforms. 

Crit with Zoe:

• Prefers this:
  
  
  The white stands out against the imagery. 
  
  
• Should play with colour of background on other pages when there is no image behind it, making it look more refined (stark white looks unconsidered).
• Likes when the images and text are incorporated together, it feels like they show layers and represent some more complex content visually well. 
• Zoe responded well to the design your own placard idea, but felt it could be used on instagram rather than a separate website as this is more appropriate for the target audience.
  - I agree, I think the idea is great but what could be better is getting people to share content on instagram.
  Could use pen tools to draw and make their own posts to share on stories, could develop a filter or stickers people could add to use on instagram. 
  - I think the website to make your own placards is still a good idea but it isn't as directly related to the target audience as instagram features. Should focus on these moving forward and then revisit the placard idea to see if both would work. 

Refining typeface:

The typeface I developed worked as a hand drawn element but it looks more light weight and slim compared to the original hand drawn text which was more short and heavy. Re-writing out the letters to make a new working typeface more similar to the original hand drawn text I used earlier on in the project.

Using on elements:

(left = old, right = new)

This typeface makes much more of a statement than the previous, as it's a heavier weight it catches the eye more and looks more hand drawn.

Thinking about the imagery not having altered colours:

- It blends in to the rest of the posts, the gradient map imagery makes it stand out and has a more youthful tone, should stick with this. 
- To prevent them looking odd the considerations of colours used with the existing posts to prevent any clashing of colours or tones when looking at their account as a whole. 

Working on filters/stickers for instagram stories:

Research:
'Two of the main components of any successful marketing campaign are reach and engagement. Before you plan your campaign you need to know where your target audience is - places they frequent, media they consume, people they follow, their tastes and preferences and so on.'

- Links to the section of the brief that discusses appropriate channels as well as the YCN workshop I attended with the Guardian when discussing engagement and how this leads to affinity and likelihood to support. 
- As questionnaire earlier in project showed, young people consume a lot of their news from social media, so using this platform would be the best way to increase engagement. 

'While more than a billion people are already using Spark AR filters, they are bound to get more popular and viral as they are by their nature a shareable form of content i.e. if you use a filter and take your picture, you would want to show it to your friends. Hence, with minimal spend, you can leverage the emerging tech and become a part of your user’s memories and they can become your brand ambassadors giving you a limitless reach.'
- A wider reach is positive for the Guardian, shareable content can spread on social media quickly and easily which works well with a younger audience who use social media for short abouts of time. 

Source of quotes: https://www.wowso.me/blog/ar-filters-brands-marketing-examples

General filters that have a message, communicating to the audience without an obvious place/organisation/company the filter came from. 

Brands making more interactive filters, changing the environment, can fit into a campaign or specific to ads. 

Brands use them to put their logo across the face, make people share pictures. 

Experimenting with stickers that could be added to instagram, placed over imagery:

Using the colour scheme to develop vibrant stickers than could be placed over the top of imagery encouraging people to take a stand.

The G is the most prominent thing over the text, it's too dominating, can't alter the logotype too much otherwise it won't be able to be used. 

^What effect does the punctuation have, does it appear aggressive to the audience?
- Feel without punctuation it is more neutral, feels less persuasive. 

^Could use these for the filter, could be placed over the cheeks of the face. 

Experimenting with using these as instagram filters:

^ Experimenting with the different effects like blinking to reveal more information. 

Feel like they aren't as shareable as they're hard to read, too small. 

Could make text the focus in a shape that it's more suited to. If having the circles as stickers could use something different for the filter. 

Going with a direction that's more text based. 

- wraps around the face in a weird way, look like caterpillars.

Try without the face filter and use as an object/frame in front of the face, could prevent warping. 

^ Experimenting with world filters that exist off of the face rather than on the face. 

- These feel more appropriate to the project compared to the previous ideas. 

User could blink and it'll change to say "We are here now". 

Refining the filter, combining the text and icons to have. amore suitable composition that fits around a face:

The user would then blink and it would change to...

Like the way this looks, works well with the blinking feature to show the slogan for the campaign.

- Concerned it looks rather different to the rest of the campaign as it doesn't use imagery of events, the lines behind text have a different tone.
- Imagery provides context for the text

- Could try and bring in imagery, think more about translating the video aspect of the campaign to a filter.
- Or could change the visuals of the campaign text to match?

^Adding text in the shapes to the campaign video.
- It has a clashing effect to it, the imagery is so serious but the text is more playful. 
- Feels a bit ignorant to the events, a little offensive to the seriousness and harm caused by them. 

Trying with the original imagery:

Here using the imagery so when the user blinks it changes from one to the next, is a way of displaying the campaign using imagery but in a more shareable format. 
- The colourful logomarks are the right balance between being serious and playful. They lighten the tone without appearing oblivious to the seriousness of some of the events depicted.  

What to do:

• Complete campaign video for billboards (landscape and portrait)
  - Play with text layout and colour
  - Think about adding in the guardian to the end
• Finalise instagram posts