coco de mer elegantly defined

coco de mer; an erotic yet sophisticated euphemism of pleasure. this was a self assigned brief to overhaul the coco de mer brand, whilst keeping its unique and characterful charm. following an enthusiastic approach from my copyrighter amy gunn, we progressed to ascertain its tone of voice and visual art direction.

this is designed around a double page spread, split in half; one side defining the object on the latter. this was a great opportunity to break my personal mould of parallel thinking, and bounce of a very creative partner. an overall success has been achieved I believe, although some of our work requires slight amendments. please stay tuned for further creative work from team clunn.

an erotic encounter with publisher mills and boon

we were given a four hour task this week to design a media campaign based on three separate formats, for which my partner and I created poster, billboard and poster designs. the client was mills and boon; an erotic and fanatical fictional novel series of affordable ‘throw away’ books. they are made up of eight separate categories, with repetitive story lines that subtly change from issue to issue, which has become the very reason why its regular readers often find great enjoyment in predicting the climax of the novel. its reader base is predominantly female; divulging in saucy fantasies and far fetched dreams.

this is our favourite design from our three media mills and boon advertising campaign; a large format poster. as with all of our media, we placed an innocent 40’s photograph alongside contrasting and erotic copy, to show the extreme imagination of the mills and boon reader, and to bring permission to women to be so wild. we chose this point in time as this is when women were the slaves of men, what we wanted to achieve was an act of feminism, women empowerment somewhat, where the men come to be the slaves of women; in dreams at least. I feel these design came out wonderfully, and they certainly to derive from the tone of voice in which mills and boon treasure. I genuinely feel this campaign will only add to its 50 years of successful publishing under this well penetrated genre; please forgive the pun.

a resounding success amid a confident pitch

today was meant to be a day of reckoning; a day of uncertainty and nerves. what emerged was quite the opposite, delivering a confident pitch to josé filipe torres of bloom consulting based in madrid, spain. admittedly the group dynamics, as mentioned in the costa alentejana summary post below, was still present, we pulled together surprisingly well and “nailed it” apparently. from my perspective, the presentation wasn’t as precious as mentioned by the audience in its wake, but I guess that’s because this was an amalgamation of four months work, where revolutionary ideas come to be the norm over further development.

so, what was the outcome I hear you ask. well, we’re into the final, and now our pitch will be transferred to the live brief itself in madrid, spain. from a person that loses his confidence occasionally around his peers, this was a well needed reassurance and the very boost I required. in the final with our group was a team closely associated with me presenting their sculpture-like ideas called ‘tech’, a statue made up of electronic peripherals to show the suffocation of the silicon chip, post-modern, western society. I sincerely look forward to executing this final step in this live brief, and I will keep you updated with how it goes.

this water we would love to slaughter

finally, this water ‘the brand’ comes to a temporary end, and we can now wash our hands of all responsibility. this was a rollercoaster of a project, from lack of company communications to last minute preparation.  up to this point our work had been extensive but under prepared, and that didn’t change for this last section of the project either. within the group communication was low, morale was rock bottom and we had deadlines coming from all directions.

however, we produced a stunning presentation and gave one of the best client pitches that day. we had all come together and amalgamated as one to tackle the barrier that this water had relentlessly put up. overall, contrary to what I’ve said, I regret nothing, we could have done no more. I can personally be happy with my input within this project, and I applaud the efforts of those that managed to find ‘the spark’ prior to our presentation.

summarising the costa alentejana project

so, our four month project has reached it’s climax; the end. a collection of positive and negative experiences, productive work and personal triumphs. this project saw me develop my confidence and skills in presenting to a client, and enhance my presentation design skills learning from several mistakes made on pre-pitch day. our group has fallen out, then apart and instantly back together, and has taught me many personal lessons on how to deal in such situations within high pressured groups. I have widened my perspectives in group work and learnt to spread the workload instead of being the self motivated soul in which I am.

personally I have contributed my services as a spin doctor, editor, designer, technician and a general end producer. specifically, within the final project, I designed the costa alentejana logo and map, website, postcards and assisted with the digital, motion and print advertisements as art director.  in conclusion to the project, I wouldn’t say I have enjoyed the process, but I am proud of our end product and the progress I have made both in attitudes and personal skills throughout this project. I would like to thank the efforts of amy, rockyie and rebecca; my fellow group members, for all their hard work and enthusiasm over the duration of the past four months. we can be sure we tried our best given the group dynamics.

advertising costa alentejana

bloom consulting have given university for the creative arts students from my course, advertising and brand communication, the opportunity to handle a live brief. the portuguese tourism board is looking to increase tourism to the region of costa alentejana during the winter period, a time in which portugeuese residents begin to resist visiting the region on tourism principle.

this is the logo I have created to encapsulate everything our creative team want to convey – the colours of the native potuguese flag, the sophisticated and simple font and basic colours to allow flawless application to various media. overall this project has been successful so far, and I’ll post back to the blog as soon as we have a result from our efforts.

the impact of the world wide web on traditional media

some would say traditional media was effectively brought upon our humble earth in 1447 by the invention of the almighty printing press, by a little idol of mine by the name of johann gutenberg. mass media on an analogue form had been born and the western world embraced it more than any other, with just over 45% of its population regularly partaking in the readership of newspapers in 1810, little before world war I. alongside the wake of the industrial revolution, the world had now hooked onto the airwaves to take advantage of a precious commodity named the radio. invented in 1895 by guglielmo marconi, this was the first time individuals and families alike could tune into real-time mass media and keep one step ahead of the tabloids. traditional media made a large leap in 1926 when the first television was successfully demonstrated by john logie baird. this now put the visual and audio media together to create a moving image with stereo sound. this essentially brought about the widespread broadcasting of real-time mass media and with every house on average in the uk having a television set it appears to have been the most successful traditional media to date.

the world wide web was a concept developed by the us army using internet protocol as a form of identifying a web address anywhere in the world, providing it’s listed on the dns database governed by the it standards commission ieee. in 1989 it was the british scientist sir tim berners-lee and his fellow belgian scientist robert cailliau whom submitted their proposal for the wide availability of the world wide web, and it was from this we saw the birth of the information superhighway that we have come accustomed to today. the internet has seen some of the world’s largest organisations grow such as amazon, ebay, facebook and youtube, all of which are completely reliant on its invention to power its basic business model. the advantages of the internet were seen by businesses alike in the late 90’s, with relatively low start-up fees and cheaper running costs it was widely realised that this was the new form of high street store, now commonly known as e-commerce. communication was revolutionised with the birth of true graphical user interface instant messaging in the mid 90’s with icq, allowing real-time textual messaging using p2p protocol on proprietary code streams. as webcams became more sophisticated and widespread in the millennium with facial recognition and faster usb 2.0 speeds, video conferencing began to make its way throughout the communication industry offering yet another interactive way in which clients can communicate, a typical feature of web 2.0.

so, has the world wide web interrupted the steady flow of traditional media? well, in my opinion, it’s clearly a judgement of what generation one belongs to, and to what extent this service impacts the life of someone. on a personal level I have grown up and matured with the internet, my father is a top level it support technician and my chosen industry centres on this service. however, for those whom have either no access to the world wide web or are at an age to which such technologies appear too much of a hurdle or burden, it is an impossible task to experience this service and therefore traditional media for them would be very much the norm for them. in contrast, those of a younger age such as myself are vast supporters of information sharing over the world wide web, actively participating in such activities of social networking sites such as facebook. in regards to the middle-aged generation, I believe the world wide web only plays a part if a certain agenda is stated such as booking a holiday or holding a skype conference, and if that person has a career that requires basic it skills.

why do I mention such demographics in this essay, well, it is my true belief that traditional media is only threatened by those whom actively use the world wide web to an average-high level, and generally a median of middle-aged adults and the younger generation. this, of course, has proven to have a large effect on the media business, but what the statistics show is that loyal customers do not suddenly switch to an alternative form of collecting such media. through personal experience I have seen people who are very loyal to various forms of traditional media, but what i find interesting is the dabbling between keeping with their analogue or dab radio and using the world wide web to watch eastenders on the bbc iplayer. these people are invariably middle aged adults whom have been caught in the middle of the technological age circa 1970’s, and this would seem to be a very fragile audience to persuasion from the mass media as they merge into the world wide web. in regards to the younger generations, statistically 90% of them use the internet to reference all existing forms of traditional media via its alternative digital form, pointing towards a sudden and clear shift to what could be a future wipe out from traditional media.

it has been proven that traditional media is on the decline, with newspapers declaring bankruptcy upon a sudden drop in advertising and revenue, and past radio listeners moving to visual alternatives. newspapers are not only seen as traditional media, but as old news, and in an age in which news is reported by the minute I can sympathetically understand. in addition, television has had its revenue hit hard too, with advertising at rock bottom as viewers move online broadcasters have been forced to look to new ways to find extra income. phone-in shows have been vastly adopted throughout a large host of channels to capture the interactivity of the new breed of socialites by charging a fee for the privilege. some channels have begun to adopt gambling during their empty late slots to gain extra revenue, pushing the boundaries to what is deemed to be moral.

as traditional media appears to be on its last decade or two, we have seen the world wide web develop into the information highway. the vast majority of us travel on it every day to gain an enhanced experience and prompt service that delivers free and updated information on an ad-hoc basis, giving us control over what we want and when we want it. interactivity is the new buzz word in the world wide web, and something that promises to be the key element to the upcoming web 3.0. great anticipation follows the unveiling of web 3.0 in late 2010, which promises to incorporate new javascript and html 5 coding scripts that will go towards enhancing the web experience for those that choose to opt for new media as opposed to traditional media.

in conclusion, traditional media is being hit hard, and despite some reports I found in my research of those whom claim there is no change, I feel both my statistics and knowledge are enough to counter these claims. the fact is, traditional media cannot go any further without a revolution in how it communicates to its consumers, because they will always opt for the unique rawness of having something that is exclusive, something that has been made for you, whether that be a television set or newspaper; it’s not one web page that is universal to billions of citizens around this earth. I personally feel a great loss, being in the generation who have kick started the blitz of traditional media, as i know nothing in the world wide web can replace the dedication, quality and investment that goes into making this personalised traditional media for my consumption. however, the world wide web hosts an age that pushes the boundaries every year, in a world where the technology is still growing and always delivers. it’s given me access to information I wouldn’t have been able to previously, and allows me to interact with this information in a dynamic and creative way. online advertising is strong in this industry, and so long as its integrity and custom is always adhered to, then the world wide web has nothing to fear. traditional media is web 1.0 quality; there simply is no way in which it can catch up as web 3.0 makes its debut in the months to come.

final self branding video

the shoot in terms of weather was near perfect; a beautiful, sunny summers day as I’d planned. we had some cloud that delayed our shooting, and shadows played their part in making the shots too artificial. in terms of our time management it was heavily compromised by availbility of equipment and the processes involved in obtaining it, setting us back over 3 hours. in relation to keeping to my storyboard, this simply didn’t happen. we tried new ideas out using my core ideas and I feel we did a good job. however, our equipment failed us as my hdd camera couldn’t handle the slight bumps in the terrain we’d chosen, so all moving images had to be handheld.

in further detail, the main issue with the shoot was the vibrations that traveled up through both the tripod and dolly into the camera. as it is a hdd camera it’s main weakness is movement as the storage is not solid state so slight movements on the writing arm can corrupt the data being saved – in our case it just froze the camera until it was hard reset. also, the equipment we received was damaged, so the dolly for example was sincerely compromised as a result making movement tough.

final video preperations

it’s forecasted for a new wave of beautiful summer sunshine throughout this week, with my shooting day being one of the hottest. it’s essential that the sun is maintained as consistency may be compromised if colour balances change. I must ensure the crew and myself are well protected from the sun if we are to be filming for the proposed 5 hours.

the risks seem to be reasonably low as I require no artificial lighting, direct power source or cabling. I plan to use a dolly to manoeuvre my tripod to gain a softer and smoother image, but with three feet spread out this could pose as a great tripping hazard, especially on the hills I propose to film. to prevent any injury I will be enforcing on my crew and I a policy of using shoes that support the ankles sufficiently, sun block to prevent long term sun damage and a good supply of bottled water to prevent dehydration throughout the day. I’ve ensured that my film locations are near to facilities such as toilets and food establishments.

self branded tshirt

the inspiration for my tshirt design came from both my beliefs and attitudes. I used the exclamation mark to symbolise how I feel the need to bring people to attention to challenge their thoughts and opinions in the hope that both themselves and I can share views. to create the full stop at the bottom of the exclamation mark I used the ying yang symbol to show my connections to both buddhism and meditation, for which I perform daily to help me through my insomnia.

also, as it has two sides I used the symbol to represent my split personality, for which the coloured silver is what most people see in me. I chose a black tshirt to base my design on as it’s a colour I wear often and is very individual to me and my photography style.

preliminary self branding video

I have always had the desire to learn more in the creative arts industry, and motion image is my weakest point so I decided to learn and improve upon my video editing skills. I used dark photography to capture my personality at the time, and it’s the style I love to work with primarilly. I always wanted to use smooth tracking in a video, and this was a great oppertunity to do so and I feel it worked well, especially in scene 3. I used the title ‘nathan and me’ because these two words represent my two sides – how people see me, as nathan, and how I see myself, as me.

 

 

I really enjoyed creating this video, and learnt so much in terms of technique and production effects. I really was impressed by the camera angles I chose to use apart from one, they were very fluid and emphasised uncompromised movement. the colours were both rich and dark, which I really appreciated. in contary to my positive remarks on the darkness of the movie, this caused a large amount of interference which had the appearance of a dissolve effect. in addition there was a large portion of the movie very tough to see due to the shadows emphasised by the farkness of the movie. I thought some of the camera movements, although fluid at points, looked robotic and edgy at times. finally I feel it’s quite a depressing movie, I could’ve at least smiled at points!