Practicality
Project Proposal - Branding - Marketing Materials
Practicality is an event centered around practical effects. This exposition should highlight the best commercialized and produced cases of practical effects in the entertainment industry. This event should capture an audience of all ages and be a mixture of showcase, demonstration, and education. This event should be fun and interesting for both film buffs who know all the tricks and newcomers just looking for a fun weekend.
Expo Goals
Educate the public about what practical effects are and how they can be used
Encourage current entertainment professionals to return to a reliance or usage or practical effects over CGI
Celebrate a culture of specialized skills and handmade creations
Designer Goals
Attract attention to the exposition to encourage a large audience to attend
Create collateral to address the need for tickets, passes, and merchandising
Design a system to engage guests to pursue this event and the educational workshops within it
Research
My research was focused around understanding what practical effects are and which should be included in the exposition. I wanted to choose effects that could be recognized in films, be easily appreciated by all audiences, and be easy to teach or demonstrate at the convention.
The chosen effects were pyrotechnics, squibs, prosthetics, costumes, set design, miniature models, stunts, and puppeteering. From these points, a list of movies and shows containing these effects were created. These examples should be common, recognizable, and ideally iconic. Characters or pieces from the sets of these media will be what is used in the marketing materials.
Design
Logo
For this proposal, it was important to create a logo mark that emphasizes craftsmanship. Initial designs were drawn up and sketched by hand.
From this production, a wordmark was chosen and produced to become the final logo. Having the expo’s name and brand image married into one mark would make it easier for the public to begin to recognize the event.
Badges
To encourage circulation around the event and future participation, badges were designed to be collected around the event. Each badge is designed around a different practical effect. Once a guest completes a workshop, they will collect the badge that corresponds with that activity. It will be heavily advertised that these badges are limited edition and collector’s items to create a sense of rarity. This will push guests to continue to participate at the event.
Poster
This poster is the main marketing material for the campaign. Sketches were created to generate ideas of what style of poster should be used. Some ideas included an illustration of what the expo would look like, an infographic, and a meta representation of the event as a scale model.
The illustrated poster was chosen for the final campaign. This would be the best way to highlight the recognizable movies and shows to our target audience. This would also be a way to inform the viewer about what to expect from this showcase without overloading them with type.
Passes
The event would have different levels of attendance. These passes address this need. Iconic characters from select media were featured on these passes to encourage a sense of appreciation for each pass level. These characters were also ones that were featured on the poster to spread brand identity to these passes.
Merch Proposal
Not wanting to waste the idea of an infographic, a T-shirt graphic was designed to propose the idea of an infographic being featured as merchandise. The top half of the graphic would feature a scene from a movie while the bottom half points out all the effects used in the still. For the user, this merch would be a fun collector’s piece that reminds them of their time at the expo. When the expo ends, it would also be an opportunity for others to learn about practical effects.
Conclusion
During my research, I was able to grow my own personal appreciation and excitement for practical effects. This allowed me to develop a commitment and passion towards what I designed as I align myself with the values of the event.
Through my design process, I developed a greater sense of what it takes to communicate all of the elements of practical effects. It was important to me to wear the shoes of the audience and place an emphasis on what is most important for them to understand and want to attend such an event.
The challenge for me was distilling down the ideas that went into this project. There are still numerous practical effects that were not featured. I had to trust my research and the opinion of my peers on what the audience would most benefit from seeing. If this event were to be repeated, I would take it as an opportunity to cycle through effects that were not showcased yet.