Evaluation

My assignment brief was to research a cause and create an Awareness Day campaign for it. I chose Alternate Media sources for my cause. I enjoyed this project because I approached it differently than previous projects, I maintained a degree of detachment from it so that I chose designs/colours based on feedback and not personal preference. I also enjoyed the entirely digital side of this project, compiling all the information onto a blog is probably the best way for me to present my journal. Cant think of anything I disliked within the project. 

If I could do this project again I think I would try to merge the megaphone logo and broadcasting mast logo as I think would be possible and could have produced a really interesting result, also I may have spent a bit longer on generating name as I think something a bit shorter and snappier could have been generated although I think that Alternative Media Advocacy is perfectly functional and does its job. Also I think it would have been much smarter to produce a time plan at the beginning breaking down each task and then fitting them into the 6 weeks accordingly.

If I could change one thing about this project it would be that we wouldn't have had to design a logo for an awareness day but rather re-branding a current well-established company such as Microsoft, Apple, Coke, NatWest, etc.  I think this could have been good because there already big companies with really clear objectives and well developed history of previous designs which could be revamped or simply an minor influence in the new logo.

What I learnt most from this project is keeping a certain amount of detachment from the logo because it can really slow down a process if your trying to make something you artisticly like over something that is functional and fits a practical purpose. I think that If I had gone down an artistic route I would have picked the megaphone logo because its a bit more creative and visually exciting but I don't think it best communicated media, communication and worldwide as opposed to the broadcasting mast that I used. This approach also made making the business cards, leaflet, poster, etc. much easier as I didn't spend loads of time trying to create a masterpiece but rather something that does its job well.

Logo Applications

Business Card:

I decided to produce a Business Card because there key to a business, especially new ones as they make it easy to give people contact information for your business. I kept the logo black as it has more emphasise.

Letterhead:

I chose to create a letterhead because I wanted the brand to be strong and recognisable even when sending letters.

Poster:

I created a poster because it’s a traditional way to advertise any service/product/event, I made mine A3 size and only included vital information for the awareness day in clear format.

Leaflet:

I created leaflets so that they could be put in and around University's and College's where students and free to pick one up and investigate the links inside, the leaflets are key to the street campaign as they include information on Mainstream/Alternative/Citizen media and also 10 links for each one.

T-Shirt:

I did t-shirt designs as there a great way to spread awareness and people wearing them are walking advertisements.

Website Mock-up:

I created a website mock-up to demonstrate a basic version of what the website could look like. The website will be very simple as it will just be used to display the links and information on Mainstream/Alternative/Citizen media. The website is as crucial to internet campaign as the leaflet for the street campaign as it display the main information for the campaign.

Facebook Page:

I created a Facebook page for Alternative Media Advocacy (AMA) because social media is a great and free platform for teenagers/students to find out about events and also discuss them. Facebook also makes it easy to spread the awareness of an event as anyone who sees it can share it.

Frame Ad (Web Banner):

I created a Frame Ad because there a traditional way to display adverts on the internet and can be found on a majority of websites.

Mobile Advert:
I created a Mobile Ad because teenagers/students use internet and apps on their phones which is where these mobile adverts feature.

Logo Application Devolopment

Business Card:
For the front of the business card I chose No.1 because I felt It was clean and clear, just simply displaying a single logo in a large format. For the back of the card I chose No.5 because I think it best uses the space on the card whilst also giving enough space for the logo and business info to breathe.

Letterhead:
For the inside of the letterhead I chose No.5 because it frames the logo as well as the page. Also keeping the business info on top of the black bar saves space.

Poster:
For the poster I chose No.3 on the left hand side, I chose this one because I think it uses the minimal amount of information best as well as working best for and idea I have for the background.

Campaign Strategy

Alternative Media Advocacy is awareness campaign promoting alternative media over mainstream media. I decided to choose this as my subject as its very relevant as mainstream media is publicly accepted as being bias or presenting information in a certain light whereas alternative media simply provides as much information as possible from first hand sources whilst retaining its transparency. Alternative media also covers more controversial stories that wouldn’t typically be on mainstream media.

Alternative Media Advocacy aims to provide links to Alternative media, Mainstream media and Citizen Journalism websites so that people can see the differences in stories and what stories are reported on. Alternative Media Advocacy is aimed at anyone interested in the news but is mainly aimed at internet users as most of the Alternative media is found online.

 
The aim of my branding is to create something clean, simple and that clearly displays the information in a straight forward format. The campaign needs to appeal to a younger audience but not exclusively, also needs to appear light and friendly so that people are enticed to look further.

Audience:

The Audience or target market for my awareness campaign is mainly internet users and students. As most of the Alternative Media is accessible online and students today will be influencing and creating the future. I believe these are the best 2 best markets to aim for. I aim to provide them with links to Alternative/Mainstream/Citizen Media so that they can decide for themselves which are best and most useful.

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 http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/internet/3463874/old-people-dont-use-internet/

Campaign:

For my street campaign I aim to produce a poster, leaflet, business card, letterhead. And for my internet campaign I aim to produce a frame advert, social media page on Facebook, mobile advertising and a website mock-up. I aim to produce a poster, leaflet, business card, letterhead to put inside colleges and university's to initially get students interested and then the internet campaign will consist of the same information just more direct as they can use the website to get to Alternative media sites.

Information:

The information I'm trying to get across in this campaign is to explain why Mainstream media isn't as credible as they may believe and that if they spent some time looking on the internet they can find some unbiased coverage, with more time spent on the facts than making the story suit a certain side. I am to do this by promoting some Alternative Media sites, I don't think I really need to emphasize the mainstream media's bias as I think that's generally excepted but Ive never seen anything really promoting other forms of gathering information on world events.

Online Advertising Research

"Display advertising

Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often usecookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.

As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed picture of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising. This aggregation of data is called behavioural targeting. Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual and semantic advertising to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear. Retargeting, behavioural targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.

Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting. A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region). The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations. For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers. Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrow a user's location further.

Web banner advertising

Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page. Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.

Frame ad (traditional banner)

Frame ads were the first form of web banners. The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads. Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardised pixel dimensions for ad units.

Pop-ups/pop-unders

A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window. A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.

Floating ad

A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content. Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a preset time period.

Expanding ad

An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad. Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space.

Trick banners

A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks. Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch. Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.

Interstitial ads

An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load. Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.

Text ads

A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks. Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to advertiser's websites. Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing. Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query. Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results. Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms. Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimisation a moving target for advertisers. Many vendors offer SEO services.

Sponsored search

Sponsored search (also called sponsored links or search ads) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords. In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints. Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids. Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy, and site quality.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites. Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.

Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers. Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, “advergaming,” or application sponsorship). Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardise mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general online advertising.

Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons. There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively. The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.

Email Advertising

Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message. Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt-out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in).

Online classified advertising

Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services. Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings. Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings.

Adware

Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer. The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders. Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing (sometimes called lead generation) occurs when advertisers organise third parties to generate potential customers for them. Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion."

Information sourced from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising

Logo Development

 These are 2 logo designs I chose to take forward and develop further.

After choosing 2 logo’s to further develop, I started developing the megaphone logo first, I experimented around with soft or sharp edges, different weights and merging letters. For the broadcasting logo there was a little less development to do, I tried different weights and whether the letters should all one shape or stand alone. Once I finished developing both logo’s I had to decide which one to use in the campaign, feedback suggested I use the broadcasting logo so I chose that one.

I started to experiment with spacing and composition with the three letters on illustrator, I decided to use the top left one as I think it reads best and creates the strongest shapes. I felt the other 2 either had too much space between letters or created an awkward legibility.

I decided to use this as my final logo. I will leave it black for business application such as business cards and letterhead, and use colour on the more creative applications such as posters and leaflets.

I tried it a different sizes to see if it is still legible at smaller sizes, the "AMA" is still readable but the mast loses a bit of visibility.

I experimented with basic colours, I think the red and blue work best, I will use these colours for the creative applications such as poster, t-shirt, leaflets. Will use the blue for background and red for logo.

After picking the red I played around with different shades, top middle and bottom right I think work best.

Digital Logo Thumbnails

After producing all of these I went back through them and picked my preferred 4:

I took all my initial sketches and used Photoshop to make digital variants, this helped me to see what logos wouldn’t work digitally and also allowed to combine elements of different sketches.  The top left logo is in the shape of a megaphone and the top right logo looks like a mast. The bottom 2 logotypes I think could be really strong with some development. After completing digital thumbnails I decided to go with the name Alternative Media Advocacy.