Study Task 6

Initial Ideas

I started of my initial ideas by writing down slogans in various type, I wanted the tag line to be really strong to draw people in. The first idea I had for the campaign was green Friday, which would be a parody of black Friday which is the biggest day in the consumerist calender. The idea behind would be give up things on green Friday instead of gaining things like black Friday. The next slogan was ‘Love people and use things, not the opposite. I like this was because it is very blunt and personal and perfectly describes what I want to satin this campaign in just a few words. The slogan which I thought was the strongest was ’Less is More’ but having ‘Less’ in bold and ‘More’ in light. I liked this one because it was more playful than the rest using the type as well as the words to portray the message. The sketches on the right hand side was just the initial sketches I created around minimalism and what It meant to me. It also shows the early stages of my first prototype.

Prototype 1

Prototype 1 is simple posters advertising the minimalistic lifestyle, these would be small slick handouts with the logo I designed which was the word minimalism surrounded by a thin stroked square. The type I have used for this is Chapparal Pro which is a slim san serif font, which is the antitheses of big bold in your face consumerist typefaces yet I still feel it stands out as well as one due to the layout of it. The square around the type represents containment and containing yourself to what you need and not being outlandish and greedy which are the traits of a consumer. On the front of the poster I choose to create them very basic, I tried to think of what came to mind when I thought about consumerism and the main thing I thought of was times square with all the screen and the continuous showing of advertisement after advertisement. Then I wanted my poster to show the complete contrast to that which to me was landscapes, trees and sunlight, so I used this imagery on my poster. I wanted the colours to be calming and neutral so that is was applicable to anyone, I believe this has worked besides from the black poster because the black contrasts too much and doesn’t fit in with the theme, the type is also very hard to grasp. On the back of the posters there is seven steps for beginners to help live a minimalist lifestyle. I believe these posters/flyers would be successful as they would be free and very accessible to people, they could be handed out anywhere from shopping centres to magazines, the problems I can see is the colours are very light and neutral and could get lost in the consumerist environment and not stand out as much.

Prototype 2 

For my second prototype I decided to create de-clutter tokens, which would be passed out  each month to people who would like to start living the minimalist lifestyle. Each month they would get a different token representing a different thing to de clutter in their lives for example books/DVDs, Clothes, shoes and so on. I decided to produce these because it is a big ask for someone to just throw away all there possessions in a instant, so this way it takes you on a step by step guide to becoming a minimalist, instead of just asking to throw away all your possessions straight off the bat. I have used the same colours as my posters as I believe it too be a nice calming colour and makes you feel comfortable and relaxed, because the actual information is a lot to take in. I tried to make the images as simple and to the point as possible, to make it clear what each one was. However these are only prototypes, If I was to continue this idea the images would be a lot more illustrative and personal.

Prototype 3

The third prototype is very much focused on the type and the slogans, I felt I had set myself a lot of restrictions when it came to my design because when campaigning for minimalism you can not create a poster full of clutter and it has to be very simple and striped back to represent the message that I am trying to spread. So for this prototype I wanted to make it as simple as possible using the same colours as the other prototypes for the relaxed neutral feel. I also choose to use the minimalism logo that I designed, then just had the slogans in the centre in Helvetica. I tried various other fonts like Garamond, Bodoni however the serif didn’t seem to fit and seemed to formal on the poster. Helvetica seem to flow the nicest and the contrast to the small logo being in chaparral have the slogan more impact. The strongest for me is ‘Less is More’ because of the playful element with the type and I think it sums up the campaign in three simple words. These would be posters/ flyers. So the posters could be A3 and be put up around town centres and the flyers would be A5 card. The back would have a small introduction on Minimalism and then beginners steps.