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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The short answer to this question is NO, they certainly shouldn’t! For a web or graphic designer there are always going to be deadlines. They are a part of any brief; a client always has a timescale in mind. The question is whether the client’s idea of a realistic timescale matches the designers and their workload. No good designer will take on a job where the quality of the design would be compromised just to meet an unrealistic deadline. It is just not worth his/her reputation.

Project Management

A good designer will, however, be able to meet a tight deadline with effective management of the project.  To manage a design project a designer needs to be aware of the following:

1. How long it will take to do each particular part of the design and how that will fit in with the internal scheduling of all the design projects that are current.

2. How long will any outsourced parts of the design take? For example a print job will be heavily reliant on the printer’s schedule so this will need to be checked and factored in.

3. How much of the project will rely on the client? – for example if the client is required to supply copy for the website design, they will need to be made aware of when it is needed and the consequence of that deadline being missed.

4. If the design project is for a larger company that will require multiple sign offs for approval it is probably worth allowing a little more time for this in the schedule.

5. For very large projects where there are many parts or stages to the design it is always worth allowing extra time for the inevitable changes or additions. These will often happen as the project moves forward however meticulously it has been planned out.

Timeline

A very effective way to ensure that the project is managed properly is for the designer to agree a timeline with the client before work begins; this can be done as part of the contract. The timeline should include:

1. Production deadlines

2. Approval deadlines

3. Deadlines for the supply of content including copy and images from the client.

4. Testing deadlines

5. Launch/delivery dates.

Be sure that the client is aware of the importance of the timeline and how each milestone deadline that is not met will affect the overall project.

Communication

If the project management and the timeline are executed properly there will be little reason for a project to run over time. It is very important, however, that the communication between the designer and the client is good. It means that any hiccups or delays can be resolved straight away; everyone is in the loop.

Respect the deadline

If the timescale is very tight and the designer has any doubts that the deadline would not be met then he should not attempt to take the job on. Sometimes in this situation the client has an unrealistic idea of how long a project will take and if they have not left themselves enough time to complete it then the designer would be wise to steer well clear and keep his reputation intact.

It is always possible to ask if a deadline can be moved before a project starts. But the designer will loose the respect of the client if he suddenly asks for an extension halfway through the project. Deadlines must be respected at all costs and should never jeopardise the quality of the design work or the reputation of the client.

Toni

Related articles:

Are we there yet? Meet your design deadline

The Tao of deadlines

Deadlines kill inspiration

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I know that I am not by any means the first to raise this issue, nor will I be the last. But I do think that it is always a worthy topic for discussion. There are many areas of design where a greener solution could be chosen. The first and most obvious one for me is packaging design.

I was listening to the radio a few weeks ago and they were discussing the reason why a cucumber needs to be shrink wrapped in plastic.

The supermarket spokesperson gave these reasons:
a) We need to get the bar code on there for the cashier to scan.
b) It will stay fresh for 12 days in the fridge.

My response to this was who on earth wants to keep a cucumber for 12 days, it defeats the whole idea of eating FRESH food!! And if the supermarkets are insistent that the bar code needs to be on the vegetable then perhaps a sticker as shown below would be a better alternative?

I also felt the need to include this image of a single aubergine packed in plastic. What a ridiculous waste of resources, energy, land fill space etc. It is on a par with plastic trays displaying a couple of avocados or apples which are then wrapped again in plastic. Grrrrrrr!

Since the obvious solution of banning plastic packaging for food doesn’t look likely to happen anytime soon, why is biodegradable plastic not used more often? Well it’s down to the increased cost to produce it I guess, they wouldn’t want to eat into those gazillion pound profit margins.

Here is an example of a packaging manufacturer who use bio-plastics that are 100% biodegradable, with a low carbon footprint and are made from annually renewable plants:

London Bio Packaging Full marks to you!

I would also like to link to Noisy decent graphic’s blog on the subject who were the main influence for my blog. They have gone into much more detail, also raising the question of the involvement of the designers in the whole process of food packaging. A great read.

Graphic design for print is another area that can be looked at. The print industry is the 5th largest manufacturing industry in the UK and has the 6th worst pollution record. It is a resource intensive industry that is mostly unsustainable. Print companies and Design agencies should at least be offering their clients print services that use recycled paper or paper from sustainable forests as a green alternative.

Anyway, this is a huge topic and I don’t want to rant on about it too much but I would be most interested to hear any of your opinions on this subject.

Toni

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Every now and then I come across the work of a talented artist, designer or photographer, and it’s always a great inspiration. James Starr was exhibiting at Room 212 in Bristol a few weeks ago and I have to say he is one of the more impressive artists I have seen there.

James is a painter, printer and illustrator. His images are created using a mixture of original screen printed material, photography, freehand illustration and collage. He has traveled as an expedition artist for BSES Expeditions to the USA, South Africa, Iceland and Arctic Norway.

I spent quite a bit of time chatting to James and he took the trouble to pop by our house to drop some work off to me and my partner. (James, it is at the framers; can’t wait to get it back! :)). It was a great pleasure to meet a talented local artist and genuinely nice person.

Stop by James’s website sometime and have a look: James Starr

Toni

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Yesterday, I had an experience that I thought I would share with you all. Our colour copier in the office had ground to a halt. I urgently needed some A4 proofs printed, so I dashed round the corner to a print shop close by.

I explained my predicament and that I was from Deckchair round the corner. The solemn faced man gave me the price for the job and said that he could have them done by the end of the day. He was a bit on the pricey side but I was pushed for time and was assured of a quality job.

I returned to his shop later on and was handed my pile of proofs. My jaw dropped, they were AWFUL; covered in white lines and scratches and completely unusable.

“What are all these white lines?” I ask

“Oh” he said, obviously hoping that I wouldn’t notice them, “It’s the imaging drum; we are waiting for a new one, I can redo them for you in a few days”. He hadn’t listened to me when I said the job was URGENT!

“So, you knew it was faulty when I came in earlier?” I asked Incredulously

He shrugged in an annoying noncommittal way.

“Well”, I said “I can’t possibly pay for these, they are unusable”.

Looking annoyed he grabbed the pile of prints and tore them up, then tossed them into the bin behind him.
I was quite speechless (rare for me I know). Without any sort of apology or explanation he returned to his rancid little back office. I left.

Thinking about this afterwards I wondered how long he would be able to stay in business, he had made every mistake in the book:

• He took the print job on knowing the quality would be poor, which is outrageous.
• He insulted me by trying to sell me the substandard work; hoping I wouldn’t notice.
• Then by not apologizing for the error or accepting any responsibility for it, he made himself even more unlikable.
• He offered a solution that was no good to me.
• He missed a business relationship opportunity with a graphic design company a few hundred yards away.

Who in their right mind would return to his shop?

Thanks folks I feel much better having shared that with you.
Got any print horror stories that you would like to share?
Want to have a rant about a rubbish customer service experience?

Toni

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