Design on the mind

We are proud to have worked with the Environment Agency on this project; not only is it an environmental issue that is close to our hearts, but it is a Bristol issue that we have helped to tackle. The whole process was a pleasure; devising the concepts for the billboard advertising, the photography, the graphic design and the overall communication challenge.

The Client

The Environment Agency is the leading public body for protecting and improving the environment in England and Wales. It’s their job to make sure that air, land and water are looked after by everyone in today’s society, so that tomorrow’s generations inherit a cleaner, healthier world.
They strive to achieve this goal in many different ways; Influencing and working with Government, industry and local authorities to make the environment a priority. Taking action against those who don’t take their environmental responsibilities seriously is another.

The Challenge

One of the issues faced by the Environment Agency is the illegal dumping of toxic and other waste, also known as fly tipping. Aside from individuals who will quite happily dump a shopping trolley in a river, there are ‘organised’ fly tippers, that is, people or illegal carriers who dump large quantities of waste in order to avoid the charges associated with disposing of it responsibly.

The Environment Agency needed an advertising campaign that would not only raise awareness of the environmental and social issues associated with fly tipping. But also make businesses and communities aware of the fines that are incurred for the illegal dumping of waste.

The advertising campaign needed to be designed to appear on billboards and bus backs in the south Bristol area for a period of 6 months during 2007.

The Solution

The designers at Deckchair quickly came up with a few concepts for the campaign. One of the ideas was to show the reality of the fly tipping situation in South Bristol. A lot of the illegal carriers dump dangerous rubbish, chemicals and white goods in the back lanes of residential areas where young children play and could easily be harmed.
Using a young model (Florence, my daughter) and a renowned fly tipping location Deckchair’s creative team produced a hard hitting image with incredible impact to fulfill the brief.

The billboard:

The bus back:

The Result

The campaign has recently been honored at the National Environment Agency Communications Awards 2007 through Clare Rogers (project manager) with an award for ‘best visual interpretation of our brand’, and was short listed from over 100 entries. We are absolutely thrilled with this great result for our client. This of course is aside from the huge success of the billboard campaign itself.

Press Coverage

We achieved good local press coverage for the campaign with articles in The Bristol Evening Post and The Western Daily Press. Also, national press coverage with articles in the Chamber Link Magazine and Design Week.

Bristol Evening Post, Clare Rogers of the Environment Agency and Florence pose in front of one of the billboards in South Bristol.

Western Daily Press use the poster for their article.

Testimonial

Clare Rogers, Campaign Manager, Environment Agency said:
“Faced with the challenge of communicating a message to a hard-to-reach audience, we needed considerable creative input and some fresh ideas, stepping right away from our traditional corporate style. Deckchair gave us a range of great concepts to test on our audience, then delivered the complete package, based on our market research.
It’s rare to find a company so responsive to what you are trying to achieve. The results are stunning and our design has won a communications award for ‘best visual interpretation of our brand’.”

Leaflets

To back up the billboard campaign, the Environment Agency asked Deckchair to produce a duty of care leaflet to be distributed throughout Bristol, Bath, North East Somerset and South Gloucestershire Council boroughs. The leaflet is designed to make people check the waste carrier’s licence of any waste removal services that they employ. Using a model we recreated the typical scene of a ‘man with a van’ collecting unwanted items from a household. The message comes across loud and clear in this neat and informative leaflet:

Promotional

Deckchair also produced a fun and eye catching fridge magnet as a promotional item to be handed out at events to help to drive the message home:

Final Report

Clare Rogers at the Environment Agency asked Deckchair to produce a 40 page final report for internal use to compile the strategies and information for the BREW (Business Resource and Efficiency Waste programme) ‘Cleaning up Bristol’ Campaign. The report has been beautifully put together in a perfect bound book printed on recycled paper.

Do you need creative design for a campaign? Give us a call 0117 9299150 or pop by and meet the team.

Toni 

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Tattooing has been used throughout history for many different purposes and has strong roots in many cultures. Recently there has been a surge in the popularity of tattooing in Europe and the USA, mainly as a form of self expression. These modern tattoos take their artistic influences from many places. I find the Japanese style of tattooing to be particularly beautiful. We are talking serious art here folks, fantastic isn’t it?

Please excuse my heavy use of pictures in this blog but I know you are finding it just as fascinating as I am!

A big Thank you to James who works for Total Tattoo magazine for allowing me to use his pictures of the London Tattoo convention 2007.  

The recent growth in tattoo culture has inevitably led to advertisers jumping on the band wagon, particularly where the brand is designed to appeal to a young audience. Levis are always on the ball:

Converse use a similar style of advertising, but here you can see that the model has actually been ‘branded’ with the Converse logo. The advertisement suggests the consumer’s  loyalty to the Converse brand by him ‘wearing’ it permanantly.

It is not just the ’street wear’ brands that are doing this either, have a look at the Chanel eyewear advert below:

However, talking of brand loyalty I thought I would include this picture that I find absolutely hilarious, especially in the light of Google’s recent behaviour with the Blogger platform. See Randa’s blog: Google is getting to big for it’s britches. I suppose if you are going to tattoo your favourite brand on to your body you had better hope that you are always going to like it!!! (I think the font is a bit wrong too?)

I absolutely love this advert for Fransesco Biasia purses and handbags. Obviously it is not a real tattoo but they are still cashing in on the idea.

These Brazilian adverts for sandals are certainly eye catching:

Gisele, the model, is not really a heavily tattooed girl but they have certainly made it look very realistic.

I would just like to include one more advertising picture for Playstation that is great fun although a little dark. Even though it isn’t really about the tattoo; the image still emulates the sub culture:

Thanks to Ads of the world for providing all the advertising pictures.

Can you think of any other examples of advertisers cashing in on trends? How do you feel about the increased popularity of tattooing? Are you a heavily tattooed person who is annoyed by the trend ruining your individuality?

Toni

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