From YCN
Create a piece of communication, or campaign, that decodes the year of Very style. The Calendar year is made up of a series of seasonal style events that our target customer wants to understand in her terms: new season colours for her home, holiday essentials, new winter trends, the perfect Valentine’s are just a few of the seasonal ‘events’ for which Very wants to offer the perfect/relevant advice and style tips. Your creative challenge is to devise a campaign or concept that decodes key style events through the year, in a visually distinct and engaging way.
We want to inform and surprise our lovely customers with something amazing once a month. It can be tiny or epic but needs to be packed with tips and advice and have bags of our personality. Lots of competitors have ways of offering style tips (for fashion and home) so your solution needs to be distinct and a truly ownable way of decoding style for the very customer.
We don’t expect you to be an expert in next season’s trends but your concept should visually demonstrate a way of delivering seasonally relevant stories, with the relevant advice... just don’t get bogged down in trying to demonstrate the detail ! We also don’t expect you to illustrate the entire year, just pick a key story from one of the months to bring your idea to life, but consider the overarching concepts of flexibility and longevity.
Your concept can take any format you can dream of, just bear in mind that we are a multi channel brand (online, mobile, and social are key) so ideally you’ll be able to demonstrate that the idea is executable across multiple channels.
Creative Considerations
Feel free to form a team of creative genius’ who can tackle this project from different angles: product/illustration/design/photography/music/new media.
For print: don’t exceed six colours (unless you can justify it of course!)
Brand guidelines: please see our brand bible for the rules of engagement, but feel free to evolve, like all fashion brands do... as long as you don’t reinvent the wheel!
Tone of Voice
If you haven’t realised already we have a distinct TOV (you can find the rules for our TOV in our brand bible). It’s as important as our images and graphics in bringing the brand to life and should be a factor in your concepts.
Mandatories
- Logo, with URL
- Our tagline: “Whatever you do, do it in style”
One thing that I haven't really done yet, but am interested in is fashion graphics, and this gives me a good chance to work on something that relates to both style and graphic design. I also think it will be a challenge (but a good challenge) creating the right tone of voice for their customer, but it is something I feel I could do well so long as I research it fully.
The greetings card industry is a very competitive market. We are constantly looking for ways to stand out from the crowd, whether this be through an exciting card format, interesting use of finishes (emboss, foil, glitter, varnish, gems, googly eyes, printed card attachments, bespoke attachments, buttons etc), or simply stunning designs that stand out from the competition.
Target Audience
16-34 year olds.
Considerations
Think about the sending situation. Why would you be sending them a card? What is the occasion? Birthday card to a friend or to a family relation? Something to say good luck, get well? Congratulations? You’re getting married? Simply ‘I love you’ or ‘I miss you’?
Who is the recipient? At what stage in their lives are they? Single, married, with children, off to college/university, passing their driving test, losing someone close to them?
Remember who you are targeting. Who is going to be actually buying the card for the recipient? Although you need to design a card that targets the recipient, it’s the person who is buying the card we need to impress and convince.
Also please note: Women buy far more cards than men.
Is the card design-led or copy-led (could be a quote, just a ‘hello’ or a longer message)?
Mandatories
You must design at least 4 cards. These will include:
- Front page designs.
- Designs for the inside of the cards (this may or may not include an insert).
- A range name and logo to be printed on the back page.
- Remember to think about the envelope colour or design.
- Suggested card sizes – 159mm x 159mm, 121mm x 184mm, 137mm x 159mm, 110mm x 210mm but don’t let that restrict you.
- Add 3mm bleed to all artwork supplied.
I have a bit of an obsession with greetings cards, especially the ones in Paperchase. There are some great card designs out there and it is something that I have only tried to do once or twice, but not really persevered with despite it being of interest to me. I don't believe it would be one of the biggest briefs but it is a brief I am sure I would enjoy entering, and it would exercise my skills in this area, which is always useful.
Investing in girls’ education is the right, fair and smart thing to do and will help end poverty for generations to come. But we can’t do this alone. We need support from all around the globe to keep the pressure on world leaders to ensure that they use their influence to make this a reality.
Your brief is to deliver a creative resource that will inspire and motivate our target audience to support Plan’s ‘Because I am a Girl’ campaign.
The creative can take any form (for example print or online advertising, a video infographic, an experiential movement), but it must leave audiences with an understanding of:
- The challenges that girls living in poverty face and their incredible potential
- The power of educating girls – the solution
- The urge to take action and get involved by joining Plan’s ‘Because I am a Girl’ campaign
Women, men, boys and girls are all part of Plan’s ‘Because I am a Girl’ campaign. We are only ever going to challenge discrimination and build a better future if men and boys are part of this work to ensure improved policies, education, choices and opportunities are for all.
Target Audience
Plan UK’s primary audience is females aged 25-34 years old (the demographic classification of ABC1).
Meet Natasha…
Natasha is 28, works in marketing and lives with her boyfriend in London. She works long hours and has a hectic social life. She has an iPhone and loves it because it helps her to stay in touch on the go. She exercises regularly and tries to eat healthily. She is politically aware and tends to think of herself as being slightly left wing.
Natasha loves glossy magazines and she reads the Guardian or Observer at weekends. During the week she tends to rely on the Metro and the Evening Standard. She visits online news portals, like the BBC or Sky News, as well as entertainment, travel, music, food and health websites. Facebook and Twitter are used for keeping in touch with friends. She also enjoys shopping online.
Natasha regularly donates to charities, especially those involving social and human rights issues, and also those associated with children. She also donates to cancer charities and BBC Children in Need. Whilst she doesn’t view herself as a ‘campaigner’, she always signs petitions if she feels they relate to worthy causes.
Brand Essence
Brands sum up what they do in a simple philosophy. ‘We do what you would do’ is ours.
Our essence is based on our belief that people want to do good. We want to ask the question: ‘what would you do?’ - inviting people to stop and think what they would do to combat child poverty in the developing world.
We want to provoke people into recognising that they can make a difference. That any contribution, big or small, is valued. And then show how Plan makes that happen.
Brand Values
We have five values to guide you in everything you do:
- We’re passionate about achieving positive change with, and for, children.
- We show the value of everything we do.
- We believe everyone has a contribution to make.
- We trust in the power of people to find their own solutions.
- We’re dedicated to keeping it simple.
Don’t Forget
Make sure girls are at the heart of your communications. It’s often too easy to write about what we do rather than the end benefits.
Don’t portray girls as passive victims of poverty. Always focus on improvement, the future and how Plan is helping girls to help themselves.
Mandatories
Must include the Plan logo and ‘Because I am a Girl’ in the creative. Further information is available in the project pack.
I think this Plan UK brief is would be a great one to take part in, promoting and supporting a girl's education is an important thing to do, and being a brief for a charity, it also makes it incredibly challenging, encouraging a potential donator/supporter to choose this charity over the hundreds of thousands that are out there. I think there is a lot of scope and potential within this brief as they have left it quite open, which allows for more creative ideas.
From Penguin
The brief
The Big Sleep is a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happens to possess elements of mystery and crime. The story is well known both in celluloid and print so it is essential to come at it from a fresh angle. Try to design a new cover for a new generation of readers, avoiding the obvious clichés. Originality is key.
Audience: all readers both familiar and unfamiliar with the text, male and female.
Message: there are many layers and themes within the book. Read it and discover what the book means to you.
Your cover design needs to include all the cover copy as supplied and be designed to the specified design template (B format, 198mm high x 129mm wide, spine 16mm wide).
What the judges are looking for:
We are looking for a striking cover design that is well executed, has an imaginative concept and clearly places the book for its market. While all elements of the jacket need to work together as a cohesive whole, remember that the front cover must be effective on its own and be eye-catching within a crowded bookshop setting. It also needs to be able to work on screen for digital retailers such as Amazon.
The winning design will need to:
- have an imaginative concept and original interpretation of the brief
- be competently executed with strong use of typography
- appeal to a contemporary readership
- show a good understanding of the marketplace
- have a point of difference from the many other book covers it is competing against
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Spend a season on the river bank and take a walk on the wild side...
Spring is in the air and Mole has found a wonderful new world. There's boating with Ratty, a feast with Badger and high jinx on the open road with that reckless ruffian, Mr Toad of Toad Hall. The four become the firmest of friends, but after Toad's latest escapade, can they join together and beat the wretched weasels?
First published in 1908, and inhabited by anthropomorphic creatures with quintessential English charm, The Wind in the Willows possesses a wonderful fascination for children of all ages.
Students are invited to design a whole new cover look for The Wind in the Willows, in order to reinvent this classic for a new generation of readers, encouraging children (and adults) to revisit it time and time again, and ensuring that it remains an integral part of childhood.
Your cover design needs to include all the cover copy as supplied and be designed to the specified design template (cut-down B format, 178mm high x 129mm wide, spine 20.6mm wide).
What the judges are looking for:
We are looking for a striking cover design that is well executed, has an imaginative concept and clearly places the book for its market of both children (to pick up and buy for themselves) and adults (to buy for children). While all elements of the jacket need to work together as a cohesive whole, remember that the front cover needs to be able to work on its own and be eye-catching within a crowded bookshop setting. It also needs to be able to work on screen for digital retailers such as Amazon.
The winning design will need to:
- have an imaginative concept and original interpretation of the brief
- be competently executed with strong use of typography
- appeal to the broadest possible audience for the book
- show a good understanding of the marketplace
- have a point of difference from the many other book covers it is competing against
- be able to sit on the shelves of a supermarket or ebook store as easily as it sits on those of more traditional bookshops such as Waterstones
Both Penguin design awards really appeal to me as I find book cover design to be a really interesting area of Graphic Design. I explored this a little at the beginning of this year and found it to be really challenging but enjoyable. I enjoy creating branding and identity, and to me book covers are a chance to create a unique identity for a book, and an engaging cover is one of the main ways to attract a customer. Both of the books are ones that I have personally not read (I feel guilty about not having read the Wind in the Willows, how uneducated am I!) but this just provides another challenge and a chance to research.
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