The past few weeks I have been really busy working on the competition brief I chose LBi.
'Use typography across any medium to explore the possibilities of the meaning behind the LBi name.'
I chose this brief because it was typography based and this is an area that I enjoy working with and something that always attracts my attention. I did quickly find that this brief was not as 'easy' as I had first thought and it has been quite a challenging brief! After discussing the brief Kathryn and I decided to tackle it together and work as a partnership, having always worked on my own this was something that gave a different take to the brief and two heads are better than one! Beginning by brainstorming we quickly came up with a number of different ideas and angles at which we could approach the brief. Picking main things out from the brief, we knew they wanted something different, it could be in any medium and required insight and inspired design and we had to use the acronym LBi.
LBi are a marketing and technology agency but they weren't asking for us to tell people that, anyone can easily look on their website and find out what they do, the brief was more about communicating who they are as an agency, their personality. We had to make creatives and clients want to work with them and be a part of 'LBi.' My initial thought for most briefs is to create something print based as this is what I enjoy doing, but for this brief this was not the case! I feel this brief has challenged me to work outside my comfort zone and do something different to what everyone else would do (which I hope is what we have done!) It was about thinking outside the box and not going for the simple option.
The aim was to rebrand LBi in the loosest sense possible - they didn't want us to re-design their logo or anything like that, we had to communicate what they stand for as a brand, they are a fun,eccentric and diverse group of creatives who say they 'fuse strategy with creativity' and are"slightly mad."
Our main aim was to show LBi as the fun agency that they are, and be entertaining and engaging.
The possibilites for the LBi acronym are endless so we chose to create pieces which we could then apply a range of acronyms to rather than working with one - this also shows that they are a diverse agency.
Narrowing down our ideas quite quickly we settled with three main ideas to start experimenting with: 1. being obsessively LBi - seeing words beginning with L B and i every where you go (which this brief did make me do!) - 2. bringing an interactive element in to the design with a 'game' that could intrigue people and involve them and 3. creating an installation piece that could be taken into different environments/situations to show their fun side and that they aren't afraid to have fun with what they do.
Numerous experiments later and a few stop frame animations (something new that this brief introduced to me) we narrowed down our ideas again to the two which we felt were the strongest and had the most potential.
Developing the ideas more our cocepts were based on;
1. Developing the idea of interaction and digital channels with an LBi game, inspiring their target audience to think 'what else could it stand for.' With players picking an L B and i card which when flipped over reveals numerous different acronyms - some fun/random and some more about the meaning of the agency.
This idea has also been developed as an ident/sting for the agency which would be a quick pop up of three cards being turned over to reveal a different acronym each time, creating intrigue. We used stop frame to demonstrate this however realized the quality of stop frame is not that high but it worked to show our idea. I have tried to upload one of the idents but blogger won't let me!
2. Take LBi into the environment as an installation piece - arousing interest in a fun and engaging way. Using a different acronym to explain what each situation is - something different from their competitors which captures their personality and creates conversation.
We have handed both ideas in as we feel they both show different elements of the brand.
Below are some of the experiments and final images:
cards for interactive game:
L is for...
B is for...
i is for...
Requiring interaction from the audience - what could the i stand for? it is left up to the viewers imagination and interpretation. The client is the i, the individual that is needed to make up LBi? Using different typefaces to represent them being diverse.
(the colours should be as bright as the card below but blogger keeps chaning them!)
Card idea development - using one of our initial experiments of being obsessively LBi - the letter L made up from word beginning with L relating to LBi.
Installation experiments:
Whilst out taking the photographs, we did find that it was the 'out-takes' that were the most interesting, such as people looking at the letters in place - people being intrigued - and also the group of Boxer dogs that came over to have a look!!
I have really enjoyed working on this breif and although it was very challenging at the beginning I think it was a good challenge because it did make me work in a different way and out of my comfort zone. Both Kathryn and myself have produced work very different to anything we have produced before and we also had a bit of fun doing it! We have had no input or feedback yet on the work we have produced, it has been a very self directed project so I am hoping for some feedback at my upcoming pdp.
