~ Product range distribution - evaluation ~

This brief has been the most free in terms of idea generation and possible routes of exploration of this year. It allowed me to appreciate the large range of issues that affect our daily lives and the importance of helping these causes and fighting for change in a visually impacting way. 

I chose gender identity, transgender issues and gender fluidity as the focus of my campaign. This appealed to me as I feel minorities are not well represented in modern day popular culture. During my research I was shocked to find there was only one fully fledged visual campaign surrounding the issue and the sources of information on the topic were badly communicated and confusing. This posed a huge and obvious issue for me to then solve in the form of a physical, visual and digital format. 

This brief enlightened me on the benefits and differences between both secondary and primary research particularly when looking into something I initially knew little about. The primary research gave me personal advice straight from the target audience that directly informed my choice of target audience, aesthetic, approach, distribution etc. Secondary on the other hand in this case showed me what was missing and what new things I could offer in terms of a solution to the issues.

A really important element within this brief was the consideration of distribution and making sure it was relevant and appropriate to the context, audience and concept. I felt an initial starting point was web design due to it being largely accessible to all and the lack of online content discussing the matter already out there. In contrast to this I felt the campaign needed to be more directly distributed and targeted at young teenagers in places of education and general popular hang out places. The logical step was to produce a series of print based media outcomes to offer this direct contact. I produced a publication that wasn't just plain information; it combined the teaching of a social & moral lesson with interactive elements. I produced stickers as a part of that making the book more of an educational game for the readers. This needed consideration into production and informed much of the books design. 

The fact the campaign is representative of offering help to people means it needed to be mostly provided free of charge. This affected the considerations into production. I effectively chose stock, format and binding methods based upon this factor. My second solution to the funding side of things was to produce conceptual merchandise. I produced t-shirts using the brand identity and illustrations used for the campaign. The first benefit of this being that the t-shirts sold could raise money to provide the posters, stickers and books free of charge to educational establishments. The secondary benefit being that seeing people walking around in t-shirts that boldly discuss the issues and are honest about gender raises more conversation about the topic; in tern normalising it in the public eye. The overall aim of the campaign was to produce an online safe place and community for trans youth and create a generation of people who are understanding of it.

I think my approach and decisions throughout the brief were all well informed by the research into the campaign. I successfully created a body of work that could easily expand into something that iconically faces the issue head on and helps teens suffering with the lack of education and visual resources.