B R A N D I N G " I N V I S I B I L I T Y " : E N C I P H E R
For this project we were tasked with branding a singular word by coming up with a service or product that owed attributes to the word given. After being assigned 'invisibility', I began to think about the connotations and associations of the word. We were also given a target audience to keep in mind whilst creating our idea, mine being 'extravogant 65+'.
When looking for inspiration on the theme of confession, I tried to cast the net as widely as possible. The public confession booth below began an idea for a service that is easily accessable and open to anyone, not just specifically the target audience I was given. I was also keen to make it less about the religious confession and more about relinquishing a secret in a fun, accessable and unintimidating way.
I wanted there to be a distinct visual language to the images that represented the secrets - by this I mean that if someone's secret was just a blob and someone else's was an ornate illustration it wouldn't be very coherant, and wouldn't make for a good business. For this reason I took the theme of playing with light and chose to create a few examples of what the secrets could look like: kaleidoscopic patterns.
I decided that one of the best ways to communicate with my target audience, bearing in mind their age, is as analogue as possible. There would be no point in creating a flashy website that they would struggle to engage with, and the brand would suffer. Considering this, I decided to create a set of flyers to be sent directly to their houses, or handed out in town centres.
I also think that advertisers often patronise older people, thinking that there's no point in wasting good design on a demographic that won't necessarily understand the thought behind it. I disagree. People above the age of 65 have just as much imagination, especially those that consider themselves "extravagant", and for this reason I have kept the tone of voice lively and colourful, whilst the text is to the point, easy to read and pun-ish.
Although at first a poster campaign seemed like an easy option, I decided that it really is one of the most appropriate ways of communicating with pensioners. I came up with some example secrets that are relevant to their age range, as forgetting your granddaughter's birthday is must more likely to be a mortifying secret for a 70 year old than "I kept the tags on that dress I wore last night and took it back".
When the patterns are this size they actually look quite 60's, which is perfect for this age range as it would hopefully remind them of the time when advertising was most influential in their lives.
After a really helpful and informative tutorial/presentation, I decided to inject a bit more life into my project. The idea itself is very interractive, but I wasn't carrying any of this over to the execution of the idea. So, now the posters call for a passer-by to do something in order to get the information - when the audience follows the instruction "tear here", a secret appears from underneath. This perfectly mimicks what the actual company does in an exciting, yet still accessable and analogue, way.
I think that an extravagant 65+ year old would be intrigued by this campaign rather than intimidated by it - the main reason that I've steered clear of digital media.
