Singapore Exchange: Developing Idea/ Concept

Todays Tasks:

• Identify an audience:
• 12-25 years old 
• 12-18 Snapchat
• 18-25 Instagram  

• Create a mood-board of visual research 
• Gather key information and research on topic 
• Develop your idea/concept 
• Visualising Ideas/ storyboard  

In order to develop our ideas from the creative workshop we consulted the action plan we made at the end of the session. This allowed us to address the sections above easily as we had touched on topics such as target audience within the creative workshop, as Instagram would attract young adults ages 18-25 whilst snapchat would attract a younger generation of kids aged 12-18. Having an action plan to build on gave us a good basis to conduct research to build our animations and filters. From this I  created mood boards of existing adverts (see figure 1-2) in order to see how other adverts have approached the topic of shark finning and pollution. During this research Fleur and I found the use of funny or provoking slogans interesting as these adverts where more interesting and impactful as these where the adverts we remembered. This lead to the discussion of some slogans with Fluer creating the slogans 'does it taste good' and 'dose it feel good' which play on the effect of the issues on the animals and humans. Once these slogans had been identified and basic low-poly representation of the animations had been created it was possible to started experimenting with layout and design for the Instagram and snapchat posts/filters. Whilst developing mood-boards and ideas for the social media posts we decided to have facts about each issue as part of the Instagram posts resulting in research into some statistics being conducted. Furthermore whilst conducting research into these topics organisations where identified, The Shark Trust and Sea Turtle Conservancy which could back and promote the animations and filters. These posts would pop-up as suggested or sponsored content within peoples news feed.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Shark Finning Research:
Stats:

• 73 million sharks are used in shark fin soup each year
• More than 70 shark species are at risk of extinction.
•  50% of the UK’s sharks are listed as threatened 
• Around 100 million sharks killed each year 
• Sharks play a large role/manage the eco-system of the ocean as they can eat diseased fish 
• Sharks are responsible for around 80% of the oxygen we breath due to their impact on the fish and algae.

Turtle Research:

• 100 million marine animals are killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean
• 80% of this plastic in the ocean comes from land
• 100 million tons of plastic in oceans around the world
• trapped gas caused by harmful decomposition of marine debris inside a turtle’s body can cause the turtle to float, which leads to starvation or makes them an easy target for predators.

Once the research had been conducted I experimented with different typography (see figure 3) mainly GT Cinetype and Circle std as both of these typefaces have bold characteristics making the noticeable at various sizes but also complement the animations. Upon discussion both Fleur and I thought GT Cinetype was most successful due to the bold nature of the type when compared with Circular std which has a softer impression due to the curved terminals. Throughout my initial experimentations layout (see figures 4-5) was experimented with in order to see if having large type would be too overpowering compared to smaller more discrete type, as see in existing adverts identified during research. However during these experiments the main issue I found was trying to work in the Shark Trust logo, leading to the tracing of the shark from within the logo to see if this could be used more effectively on its own (see figure 6). This allowed the placement of smaller text to be implemented more easily within the restricted space of an Instagram post. This place (See figure 6-7) is more successful as before there was too much text, distracting the audience from the provoking statement as it looked like it was apart of the logo, whereas removing the text from the logo allows for a balance to be created. Consequently once this layout had been decided, the example stills from the storyboards (animation) could be implemented (see figure 7) to allow for colour experimentations. The colours of the type have been taken from colour swatches (see figure 8) from photos of the ocean effected by pollution conducted during research. The use of the lighter blue within the design allows the statement to become more visible during the end of the animation once the shark has been killed in order to create a grater impression on the audience (see figure 9-10). In relation the animation based on the effect of pollution on turtles a slightly darker blue was chosen in order to allow the statement to be visible as the lighter shade got lost within the animation (see figure 11) .

Mock Up (figures 10-11):
Once the basic layout and colours had been identified I could start to develop the mockups of the Instagram post which involved creating the common icons seen within Instagram such as the heart, and question mark. The use of these common icons allows more context to be given to the posts which are displayed on a classic iPhone. Due to the simple nature of Instagram once the layout had been designed based on the square the mock up was easy to develop as the designs where already the correct size.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

Figure 8

Figure 9

Figure 10

Figure 11