Social Action and Community Media Production Evaluation.

Logo

Are your finished pieces fit for their intended purpose?I believe that my finished logo fits its purpose well. I have designed the logo so that it fits the audience I have decided in my intentions.The colours are bright and eye catching and fit what a young audience would like.A popular past time of an audience of around 7-12 is drawing, and I have found that in the existing products aimed at the same audience the products often could be copied or drawn easily by children. I have tried to replicate this in my work and with this logo the lettering is bold and the type of letters that young children would try and copy in their drawings. It is very simple and this allows it to be easily recognised, the oval shape is reminiscent of a surfboard and the two oars are objects associated with the sea and so it all links in nicely.

Do they communicate your message clearly?I think that my logo is easily recognisable, eye catching and aesthetically pleasing and so does all it can as a logo. It contains the acronym “SAS” that allows people to know who the logo is for and the surfboard shape and oars makes it clearer that the logo is for an organisation that is concerned with the ocean.Because the logo is so simple it is very easy to remember what it looks like and so can be quickly recognised. This will allow an audience to see that a publication is from the SAS as soon as it’s seen.Existing logos for children’s products that I researched were all simple and contained the name or an acronym of the name in it. I think I have replicated this well in my logo.

Are they appropriate for your target audience?My target audience is young children from around 6-12 years of age. The idea is to open up the SAS message to the next generation of surfers to keep the message going in years to come and to educate our youth of the issues the SAS deal with. I did some research looking at logos aimed at children of this age range and they follow the same sort of designs. They are all simple,

colorful, eye catching and don’t contain too much text or different graphical elements that would make them look too busy.Many logos had a character in them, this could then be used to relate and talk to the child throughout publications and products of an organisation. Finding this out I made a logo that was an octopus with its tentacles holding the SAS letters. This fit with many of the logos I had seen in my research but I decided that it would be better for my work to create a separate logo as well as using a character in my work.The logo I then created and the one I have chosen for my final is very simple, uses colours that children would like and I believe suits my target audience perfectly. I purposefully made it so that a child could easily redraw it and with the idea I’d had of including a small space for children to draw on the membership form this made sense, as children may want to draw it there.

Compare and contrast your original intentions with the outcomes you arrived at.I think that my outcomes have arrived pretty close to my original intentions. I set out to redirect the SAS to target younger children, as I think we need to educate them on issues with the environmental pollution so that they can make a difference when they’re adults.I did set out initially to make a character logo and when I had finished it I decided that a better way to go would be to use the character in my other work but create a separate logo. I think this was a good decision, as this logo looks better in all sizes whereas the character only really works when it’s large.

How effective are the techniques and the content you have used?I think that the techniques I have used were very successful. The type of logo I have created needed to look simple and so I haven’t used very complicated techniques, just Rota-scoping and inserting shapes to get the look I wanted.I used the custom ellipse tool to draw my oval background shape and brought up an image of a surfboard from Google images to mimic the shape of the board with the oval. With my first version of this logo I Rota-scoped in a fin at the bottom of the board as some boards have this on them, but I decided this complicated the design and was unnecessary so I deleted it.I searched around on the website Dafont.com to find a suitable font to use for my letters. The font I chose was big and bold and the sort of thing I used to I see younger relatives drawing words using. It is easy

to read and allowed me to fill part of it with colour to make it stand out even more. I separated each letter onto different layers and arranged them in a vertical line along the oval. Rotating each one of the letters slightly added an extra bit of interest to the design.I found an image of an oar on the Internet and used the outline of it to get the basic shape of my oars. From here I added colour, duplicated the layer and used them to form a cross in the centre of my logo.

What are the technical and aesthetic qualities of your work?My logo wasn’t the most technical thing I have ever made but it didn’t need to be, I wanted it to look simple and so I used simple techniques to achieve this look. I think that I achieved the look I wanted to and the aesthetic qualities are good, the finished logo is colorful and eye catching and I believe it works well.The oars in the logo are crossed and this makes the logo look slightly like a coat of arms. This looks good and suits the target audience as medieval times such as knights and princesses are a popular theme for young children and so anything that reminds them of this will work.

Posters

Are your finished pieces fit for their intended purpose?I think that my posters are fit for purpose. It is eye-catching, suits the target audience and promotes SAS well.My campaign idea came from a play in the shared acronym SAS with that of the infamous division of the British army and after seeing an existing SAS photo where they had dressed someone up as Lord Kitchener and recreated the famous “your country needs you” poster but replaced the tagline with “Your coastline needs you”.I thought that this army idea would work well for young children using words such as “mission” and using a tone as if I was setting an important task for the kids. I think this would spark excitement and make people want to get involved.

Do they communicate your message clearly?Yes I think that my posters communicate the message very well. They all contain the SAS logo clearly and all but one has the title of the campaign “Beach Assault” on them, this means that they promote the organisation and the campaign well and will attract more people to the cause.

Poster 4 has the website in the poster twice, I did this as a mistake and decided to delete the bottom text displaying the website information. Upon looking at the poster however I decided that because the text is worded differently and are quite far apart on the poster it does not look bad but instead communicates the message twice as clear and makes the website twice as easy to see, therefore making a viewer more likely to visit.

Are they appropriate for your target audience?At the top left it has a fact about the litter in our country that will draw the attention of the audience. Short facts like this are always interesting and it is presented in a way that sounds like a mission statement in order to excite children viewing the poster and make them think it is important but also that it will be fun to get involved with the campaign.The red dashed line leading to the cross on the beach will remind the audience of pirates and treasure. These are more things popular with my target age range and so will interest them.The graphics are quite simple in the way that they were created but there are very colorful and there is still quite a lot going on, this makes the poster interesting and engaging for viewers.The words “Beach Assault” are big and eye catching and I put the camouflage overlay on the letters to link it back to the campaign and to make it more interesting. I think this works well especially next to the army octopus character who is dressed in an army helmet and has camouflage paint on his face.

Compare and contrast your original intentions with the outcomes you arrived at.I think that my poster is quite similar to my original intention. It promotes the SAS and the campaign I have created in the way I wanted it to with a military theme running through such as the camouflage and language such as “assault” and “Fight” all in the semantic field of the military.One of my initial ideas that I very quickly dropped was to design a poster inspired by the WWII “Keep Calm and Carry On” posters using the silhouette of an octopus with its tentacles arranged in such a way as to look like the crown at the top.I spent little time on this idea as the sheer amount of recreations of this poster lead me to believe that this poster wouldn’t have been well received by my audience and just looks cheap, putting the rest of the campaign at risk of been seen as such.

I do think that this idea could have looked good with the minimalistic design I was going for if I’d have had spent more time on it, but after realising the reputation posters inspired by this Keep Calm poster have for being rubbish cheap imitations I decided to steer clear.Other than this change however I did have in mind a littered beach with the character somewhere on the page with the relevant information, an interesting title and quite minimal text. Considering this I don’t think my outcome is much different to my intention.

How effective are the techniques and the content you have used?I think that the techniques I have used in my posters are very effective. I wanted the posters to be simple, but not boring and I think I have achieved this by including quite a lot but using simple means to create the content.A lot of the language I have used in the posters is from the semantic field of military and this works perfectly because the campaign I have created is called “beach assault” and this reminds you of D-Day and army missions etc. This language presenting the posters as a call to arms for young SAS members will ensure they realise the importance of the issue we’re tackling and will also excite them and make them want to get to the beach and help clean it.The font fits the theme and with the camouflage overlay on the title of the campaign it looks doubly as interesting.The army octopus character works well as being able to see the character across all the different publications is something that children often enjoy and they will look for on each new release they see. Having the character hold pieces of litter works well and makes it look as though the character is helping.

What are the technical and aesthetic qualities of your work?I think the technical and aesthetical qualities of my work are good. Either by cutting shapes or rotascoping I created the background and the items on the beach. This means that the graphics are largely just blocks of colour together and not too complicated, but this simple look was what I was going for and I think it is effective.For the bottom layer of the beach I drew a large yellow rectangle across the screen, and then using the polygonal lasso tool I cut it to the shape I wanted it to be. I then used the same tool to draw the shape of the two areas of shading on the beach, created a new layer via copy and then changed the colour of this layer to create the shaded look you can see on the poster.

For the bottom layer of the sea I did the same thing as with the beach and for the two layers on top I copied the original, changed the colour and moved them to the right to make it look as though the waves were coming in.For the different coloured sections on the sea I used the same technique as with the shading on the beach drawing lots of different shapes and changing their colour to give more texture and the appearance of movement and light on the surface of the water.I rotascoped different items of litter that I could put on the beach and scattered these across it, purposefully choosing two litter items the SAS say they see most commonly on their beach cleans; plastic bottles and sweet wrappers.To create the dashed line I used the paintbrush tool and for the “X” I used a textured paintbrush and drew it again. I did this on a white layer on another page I opened and used the magic wand tool to select the white so that I could delete it and have the ability to move and warp the line and the “X” slightly if I wanted. Then I dragged the layer into the poster document and put it in place.I made use of the different paintbrushes again to give the background a subtle polluted appearance. I used different shades of green with a low opacity with one brush to give the sea a dirty tinge and used a cartoony hash paintbrush with a brown colour on the beach. I think this works well as it adds another detail to my work.For the sky I used a gradient overlay on the background layer from light blue to a darker blue and adjusted it until I was happy with the colours.I chose a font from the website Dafont.com and think that it works with this theme and the look of my poster perfectly without any manipulation or editing. For my main title however I decided to make it more of an interesting and exciting feature. To do this I imported a camouflage pattern layer into my document, rasterized the text layer and then using the magic wand tool I selected the text layer. After this I switched selection to the camouflage layer that I had positioned under the text, pressed Cmd+Shift+I in order to inverse the selection before pressing the delete key. This made it so that the entire camouflage layer deleted apart from the letter shapes. I then positioned the camouflage layer and the original layer together slightly out of line with the black text below so it looked as though there was a shadow underneath the camouflage text. I think that this works very well and makes the title look much more interesting and eye catching than if it was just black lettering.

Merchandise

Are your finished pieces fit for their intended purpose?Merchandise are goods that are bought and sold in business, going by this definition I believe that any product could be fit for propose. For my products however I wanted them to be promotional merchandise, being something that people could buy and use while being reminded of the SAS as they do so and I think I have achieved this. Each piece of merchandise be it the beach towels or the t-shirts are related to the charity in some way and all feature the SAS logo somewhere on them.

Do they communicate your message clearly?As I mentioned above each product displays clearly and boldly the SAS logo, this means that people using the products or people who see the products will see the name and may then decide to check the charity out. The message I was trying to relate is that the SAS is an important charity that deals with real problems, but that they are also cool and that people who support them do cool things like surf. I think by the products I have made and the way they look I have communicated this message well.

Are they appropriate for your target audience?My target audience was young people that are interested in the SAS and the issues they deal with and/or who are interested in surfing. I think that with this particular charity supporters will be interested in both but if not an interest in one may lead to an interest in the other.I believe that my products suit this audience well. My designs are child friendly, but not too childish and I think that this is something that will appeal to the youth currently as children love to look older or to seem that they like things that older people like.I feel that the use of the character throughout the design’s is good as to have this continuity of the character will make the audience familiar with it, as young children often become with fictional characters, and this fondness will help promote the SAS further.All of the products make sense and relate to the charity. Because the SAS is concerned with beaches and surfing I looked at related products and tried to come up with things I could design. T-shirts are a very universal option, but they are something that you would wear at the beach.

Beach towels also are also things that you would take to the beach to lay on or to dry yourself off with after surfing or being in the sea. I thought that beach towels were particularly good promotional merchandise as people usually lay their towels on the beach and they may sunbathe for a while but for a lot of the time they will be up in the sea or doing other things. This means that there is basically a large billboard in the sand displaying the charity’s name for everyone on the beach to see. I think this is very good free advertisement and promotion.Surfboard vinyls were some other products I had seen and thought were good and would work for my target audience. Children love stickers and customising things and the SAS has a large surfer support population and so many of my audience may own surfboards. Surfboards are rather expensive and so I thought that vinyls would be better suited for the target audience as children wouldn’t have that kind of money to spend and their parents may not be able to spend that kind of money on a new board but stickers would be much easier to manage.I also looked at the surfboard market and just as in any other sport there are clear manufacturing brands that are very popular within the community. For surfing companies like Channel Island Surfboards, Misfit Shapes and Viking Surfboards are popular and so these are the sorts of brands that are trusted and surfers are likely to go to for their surfboards. It is less likely that the audience for a charity would use that charities own surfboard, as the quality may be questionable, because of this I decided to go with the stickers because I believed they would be better received.

Compare and contrast your original intentions with the outcomes you arrived at.I think that my original intentions are relatively similar to the outcomes I have arrived at. I wanted to make a number of promotional merchandise products that would suit the audience and relate to surfing and/or the SAS in some way. Other than that my idea of what I wanted to create was quite vague and I left it until I researched a little more just before production to make my mind up.The main thing that changed was the surfboard’s. Initially it was my decision to make a surfboard but as I have mentioned in the above section after thinking about my audience and looking at the current surfboard market I decided to instead make surfboard vinyls. I took into consideration the age of my audience, prices and how well I thought we would do against established surfboard brands and

decided that going for smaller, more affordable customisation vinyls was a better idea and suited the target audience better.Other than this change I think that the products I have created are the same as the ones I envisioned I would make and so I have arrived relatively close to my initial intentions.

How effective are the techniques and content you have used?I think the techniques I have used have been very effective. I think that my logos are strong and so didn’t need much manipulation to look good on my different products and as promotional and so all I really had to do was choose their position on the various items and that was it. Throughout this project my work has been relatively simple but I think the style I have maintained suits the audience and works effectively, all be it not the most technical work I have ever created.For one set of the t-shirt designs I re-drew the tentacles and arranged them on the t-shirt so it looked as though they were reaching up. Re-drawing the tentacles and then warping them so that they looked the way I wanted to was probably the one of the most technical things I did for the merchandise and I think the designs with the tentacles are some of the strongest t-shirts.Another quite technical process I went through to add a nice bit of detail on my towels was creating an overlay to get the bobbly texture of the towel onto my image. I think little details like this really make a difference in making my images look interesting and realistic.

What are the technical and aesthetic qualities of your work?I think that my set of merchandise is aesthetically pleasing and the technical qualities of it are strong. The text over the camouflage towels is effective but I had to debate whether to keep them as they are or to add an outer glow or something of that nature to make them stand out a bit more. I eventually decided that I quite like them being slightly more difficult to see, as they are camouflage and on a camouflage background and so I think it works. They are still legible and easily spotted, but I think this slight obscurity is a fun aesthetical aspect to the design.On the towels I have created an overlay to make the towels look textured and more realistic. To do this I found an image of a towel online and inserted it into my Photoshop document. I then deleted the white background of the image using the magic wand tool and created a new layer with either the blue or camouflage background that was the same size as the towel layer. Next I positioned the towel

layer on top of the coloured background and played around with the overlay settings until I found one that gave me the effect you can see on the towels now. I think linear burn was the one I decided to go with in the end as it gave the desired effect. To finish I merged the layers to that they didn’t separate and then the towel was ready to have graphic put on them. This technical process gives the towels another interesting aspect to them and makes them look slightly more realistic which I think is good.The decision to use the same blue as the bodies of the octopus and the surfboard in the SAS logo for the background of the towels was a good one I think. Too many colours on the towels would’ve made the design look to busy and not very professional and so the use of limited colours was one that has benefited the aesthetics of my designs.I think that the vinyl stickers for the surfboards are a very good concept and one that would do well in the real world. Aesthetically they are good and you can see on my images the way the different vinyls could be arranged on a surfboard.To create the surfboard shape I got an image of a board from the internet and inserted it into my Photoshop document. I then used the ellipse tool to draw a similar shape, dragged this shape over the top of the surfboard, turned the opacity down and then used the surfboard as a template to warp my ellipse to the right shape. Once I had almost achieved the shape I wanted I used the lasso tool to draw over parts of the ellipse that I wanted to delete. This allowed me to get more angular shapes for example the point at the top of the board and the flat bottom. I could then delete the surfboard photograph.To add the line down the centre of the board I used the lasso tool once again to draw the shape I wanted and then created a new layer via copy and then changed the colour of this new layer. Finally I merged the layers so that they wouldn’t move apart. Creating my own surfboard shape was good as it made all the work my own and gave me a canvas in which to show off the vinyl stickers on.The t-shirts all have strong designs and as with the towels the camouflage text on top of the camouflage background was a intentional decision as I believe it works well for this.I like the white t-shirt with the camouflage box and army octopus on it. The octopus has a small white border around it to separate itself from the camouflage background. To achieve this I selected the octopus layer and then using the magic wand tool clicked just outside the octopus. What this did was select everything apart from the octopus, so I then inverted the selection meaning that only the shape

of the octopus was selected. I then switched selection to the camouflage layer that was positioned under the octopus with it in the centre of it and pressed delete. This deletes a perfect cutout of the octopus into the camouflage layer, all I had to do finally was reduce the size of the octopus layer slightly and move it into the centre of the cutout. This technique was effective and allowed me to have some differentiation between the octopus character and the background as in this case I thought that they needed to be separated.The tentacle t-shirts are one of my favourite designs. They are simple and use a very recognisable part of an octopus to remind the audience of the character and link the design back to the charity. I like the fluid way in which the tentacle reach upward and I think that the design is very aesthetically pleasing.This design may be more popular with boys as I think the position of the tentacles reaching upward in this way is reminiscent of the Kraken and so it gives the design a cool, mythical monster feel to it that I believe would be popular.

Membership Forms

Are your finished pieces fit for their intended purpose?I researched many different membership forms before designing my own and they all included the same things. These were a brief outline of what the charity does, why these things are important, why you should become a member and what privileges this would entail, how to join often with a form to fill out on the back and contact information or the charity website address. My form includes all these things presented in a clear and child friendly manner and so I think it is perfectly fit for purpose.As well as have all the relevant information the form is also their to entice people to join and to do this it has to be aesthetically pleasing and to a professional standard and I believe my work is. It is colourful and exciting and has the character throughout to draw the attention of the child.

Do they communicate the message clearly?The two membership forms I created both have a clear heading that says “join us” on the front along with the name of the charity making it clear what we want the reader to do.On the inside pages of the forms is the relevant information I mentioned above such as member privileges and what the SAS do.

This information is all well written in a clear, simple, child friendly way in order to communicate the message well.On the back of the forms where the new member must fill in their details the boxes are all clearly laid out with lines for the writing to follow etc. The SAS address is clearly shown so a parent/guardian can send off their child’s form and there is the relevant contact information displayed also.

Are they appropriate for your target audience?When creating this form I had to remember that it was aimed at children and so had to ensure that when I mentioned something like doing a beach clean I also mentioned that this should only be done with a parent or teacher. On the form part of the product I also added a box that said, “Get an adult to help you fill out this part” as a child may need help writing this or if they are able to do it independently should not be giving out information such as their address or email without the permission of a parent/guardian.The written parts on the inner pages of the forms are not too long and I have tried to make them bullet points or in small paragraphs in order to not put off a child from reading it. I think that all the different colours and the inclusion of the character on the inner pages breaks the text up and makes it look more interesting than just a page of written information. I have also not used any large or complicated words so that a young audience could understand everything written down.

Compare and contrast your original intentions with the outcomes you arrived at.At first I always envisioned an A5 booklet as my membership form. As I designed I decided to start work on a leaflet style also and in the end I think this is the one I prefer. This is one way that my outcome changed from my original idea.I set out to include all the information I had seen included in the existing membership forms I had researched and to present this information in a clear and child friendly manner. I think that my finished work does reflect this intention and I have achieved my goals.

How effective are the techniques and content you have used?I think that the techniques I have used in my membership forms are effective and that the content I have used only adds to the effect of my work.

All of the techniques I used allowed me to get the look I wanted easily and so I feel they were very effective. For example, on the centre page of the leaflet membership form with the text in the red box I wanted the text to wrap around the character to give it a more fluid look to it. To do this I just used the pen tool to draw a custom shaped text box and entered the text into this text box. This quick and simple technique looks very effective I think and I am pleased with the way the text follows the shape of the octopus.With the text about the beach assault campaign I wanted to make sure the text could be easily read over the camouflage background but I didn’t want to completely cover the pattern. To do this I chose a colour from the camouflage and drew a rectangle of that colour under the text, I then changed the opacity of this rectangle so that the camouflage background came through slightly but the text was now easily read. Having quite a good knowledge of Photoshop allows me to know all these simple techniques in order to produce effective work.I used the character again in the membership forms. I think that in a set of publications or products from a company, especially ones aimed at children, it is often a good idea to have content that pops up in each one. This is because the audience will become familiar with these things and will enjoy seeing them. The character gives another interesting aspect to the aesthetics of the forms by breaking up text but also on the back of the form where the details are recorded the character gives an instruction to “get an adult to help”. Familiar characters giving instruction is something often seen in children’s publications as the child is more likely to obey them this way and so I thought the character was an important piece of content to include.I have included all the relevant information to allow the child to understand what the SAS is and what they do in a way that will be effective and will engage them. This is important in order to spark an interest for the SAS’s cause and to gain more members.For the form part of the publication I decided not to include a section for credit card details because I thought that parents may not want to pay for a child to be a member for a charity. Because of this free membership for young children would be a good way to gain a following and once the child reaches a certain age they will have to start paying but the interest they have gained in the charity already will hopefully motivate their parents to pay for them.To make the form engaging for the child I added a section for the child to draw in. At the top of this section I wrote a description of what to do suggesting the child “describe what they love about the

seaside”. This would allow the child to have some fun and feel as though they are involved in this form section that may otherwise just be their parent taking a pen and filling all the information for them but will also be a good opportunity for the SAS to gain some qualitative data. They could even use some of the drawings in future posters or publications to show what children would be losing if pollution continues into the future.

What are the technical and aesthetic qualities of your work?I think that my finished membership form is aesthetically pleasing as well as including all the information it needs to presented in a clear way. The most technical part of this work was the form part of the publication. Here I had to ensure I could fit everything in with room for the new member to fill in their details and also somehow include something to make this part exciting for the child. I had an existing membership form I had borrowed from my classroom when I did this to ensure I did not miss any information I would need and went through this form like a list. To do this section I drew text boxes using guidelines on my document to ensure I got the spacing right, then wrote the information needed and finally used the underline and pressed the space key to achieve the line for the member to write on. This took some time to get it looking right but I think that I have achieved a neat and tidy looking form that would be simple for a new member to fill out with some help from an adult.The form is bright and colourful and in some of the more text heavy sections such as in the centre pages I have done a good job of breaking the text up to make it look like there’s not much there. This makes the page look more interesting and approachable and will make a child want to read the information.The section about the beach assault campaign has good aesthetic qualities and I think it is one of the best parts of the form. The colours all work very well together and the little details like where the title at the top slightly goes outside of the box makes the whole thing look interesting and exciting.The outer glow on all the text boxes makes them pop out of the page and gives the form a more textured, 3D effect that I think works well.Another effective quality of my work is the text wrapping. I think this works really well where the text is following the shape of the character rather than just of a conventional rectangle shape. All of these small details add together to make make these inner pages look

more interesting and allow me to convey the relevant information in a child friendly way.

What impact do you think your advertising campaign will have on the public?I think that my advertising campaign would have a positive effect on the public and on the membership numbers of the SAS. They already market some of their publications and merchandise at a younger audience but I think having a whole campaign and re-model of part of their charity’s identity to solely aim at children would be very impactful. I believe it would raise awareness and gain members that will be able to make a difference in years to come.