This is a project that I'm working on for a friend. It's kind of a This American Life meets the local farmer's market meets environmentalism meets Sesame Street… or something.
The premise is that there is a series of short films targeted toward elementary/middle school aged kids teaching them how they can help be more eco-minded. The "lessons" aren't too didactic or preachy, just things like: "you should try riding you bike next time you go out." The hope is that by showing kids these fun and simple things that they can do to help make the world a greener place that they will get excited about it, talk to their family about it, and then make it a family habit.
So, you can see that the primary audience is younger kids. The secondary audience is those kids' families—especially their parents.
One of the struggles I've had in approaching this is that the name—The Conservation Conversation—is really kind of tricky, both to say and to read. The play on words (reversing the S and the V) is fun in concept, but everything I've done to draw attention to it just makes it harder to read. In the end, I proposed just doing a simple type treatment in Gotham Rounded and rely more on secondary graphics and visual language to help brand the thing.
The only real direction I received as far as visuals go is that they wanted it clean and modern, but not too trendy. Simple to use, simple to read. Engaging, lively, etc.
The last piece that I'm attaching is a mock up of the website—which they really quite liked—but I completely forgot about my primary target audience (KIDS), so I told them I'd come back with another take to try and make it more youthful.
Any thoughts or critiques?
(r1)
(r2)
(web mock, r1)
I think the progress is nice. I think the simple text is a good way to go — the legibility problem is inherent in the name so making is clean and typographic is a nice move.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I was thinkig to highlight the difference in the 2 words was in the O's. I could see it still remaining pretty simple, but have one 'O' be a loop or something to hint at conservation and the 'O' in conversation being a speech bubble. Just an idea.
I like the site too! I think changing the images would help to appeal more to kids. I don't think you're too far off — just don't do anything with crayons please!
Very cool cole. I like how many different options you have.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite is the png where the logo is just "the conservation conversation" in green and blue with no background. The words are so long they get really hard to read in all caps with very much going on behind them. I can't (or don't) read them at all when they are cut into four lines. I think Gotham Rounded makes it look kid friendly. I really like the icons in speech bubbles. To me they say "let's talk about bikes (or whatever)" which is perfect. And I think that onion is adorable. Good job.
thanks for the comments, friends.
ReplyDeletekeenan, I'm going to give your "O" idea a shot. I like that a lot. that might make it a bit more playful and fun, too.
and the images are just FPO. they'll be swapped out with actual stills from the shorts. So I don't have too much control over those.