Evaluation

Do your finished pieces of work fit with their intended purpose?• I feel that my work fits entirely with the intended purpose, to inform those who are more lucky that not everyone who is

effected by poverty is necessarily unemployed, in fact statistics show that poverty primarily effects the employed in the UK. From the start I knew that this was the issue I wanted to address, so throughout the production stage of the project, at all times I made sure to make sure that my work mirrored these intentions and did not stray away and end up focusing on a completely different topic.

• Every fact, figure, quote or sentence I’ve written has been directly linked to my original intentions, which has allowed me to ensure that my work is a reflection of the intended purpose, and despite making changes to the layout and visual themes and ideas, I’ve managed to keep a clear idea of what I wanted to achieve throughout the process of creating the campaign.

• Some of the purposes in specific (such as bringing about local change) are hard to analyze the success of due to the nature of the project being one which didn’t actually involve distributing and marketing our campaigns as we would have had it been a real life social campaign, so I’ve had to keep an open mind when trying to measure how much the pieces fitted their intended purpose.

• According to my survey, the amount of people who could clearly understand the intentions of my campaign is 100%, meaning that everyone got the picture in terms of what the campaign was setting out to achieve. The statistic below is evidence of this, and this reinforces in my own mind the fact that my work fits in exactly where I wanted it to. Whether or not it will tick every single purpose box is another matter, for example, it might not actually bring about a massive amount of change (which Is something I will go on to discuss in more depth later on in the evaluation), but it certainly has achieved my realistic intentions in terms of how it has gone about presenting itself and the way in which it presents information on the UK poverty crisis.

Is the campaign appropriate for your target audience?

• When creating my product, the target audience has been something I’ve kept in mind at all times. Due to the nature of my campaign it was easy to distinguish a clear target audience, and I knew that middle class people in general were less informed than they should have been on the topic of UK poverty, meaning that they were clearly the group of people I needed to focus my work on changing the views of.

• The simple brown colour scheme I used was intended on being gender neutral so to cater for my target audience (which was a 50/50 split of males and females), the idea behind this being that the more people I got on board with the campaign the better, and gender neutral colours are always a good way of achieving a mixed audience. The brown colours also aided as a way of looking simplistic yet sophisticated, and along with the neat and smart looking layout, I was able to aesthetically cater for the middle class (who generally are associated with liking more neat and simplistic aesthetics). In hindsight, whether or not this had a great impact on my target audience I’m unsure of, but in my opinion the work is definitely appropriate for it’s audience in terms of aesthetic.

Other people agreeing that the campaign is likely to have an influence on the privileged middle class (my target audience).

Does your work communicate a message clearly?

• The work that I’ve done really communicates a clear message in my opinion. This was down to a multitude of things. Primarily my ability to tie in multiple techniques in order to communicate and send a message across to more than one type of. What I mean by this is that I specifically adopted a diverse range of communication techniques such as visual ones and more verbal ones in order to cater for all types of learners, thus meaning I can communicate the message of my campaign to a higher percentile.

• To add to this point, my usage of multiple media outlets in order to present my information has meant that I have been able to appeal to a wider audience. Take for example the fact that I have included both a website, and a brochure. Both communicate the message of my campaign in very similar ways, yet their audiences might be different from one another (meaning that more people are likely to be able to have access to the campaign and it’s message).

• In terms of how this message is actually put across to the audience, I feel that language used is short and to the point, and focuses primarily on the topic at hand rather than straying off. The language which I used and other communication techniques are something I will go on to talk about on the ‘techniques’ slide and possibly the ‘content’ slide.

• Although I didn’t have a survey question directly asking about the message communicated in my work, I feel that the survey question presented in the previous slide also ties in with this in with this slide of the evaluation, in that if everyone thought the intentions of the work were made clear, then it’s likely they also feel that the message was communicated clearly. To summarize, this and the previous slide really go hand in hand with one another in a lot of ways.

Short and snappy, with a clear meaning and intention.

Compare and contrast your original intentions with the outcomes you arrived at

• The original intentions which I came up with were ones not too different from the final outcome, however, along the production process a few things did change. Primarily, I wanted to make a campaign which literally just raised awareness towards poverty in the UK, without any more defined purpose. This was something which changed, when I realized that having a certain and specific message with a campaign can help you to create better and more meaningful work, so rather than just stating some facts about poverty in general, I decided my campaign should be aimed at targeting the issue of working families effected by poverty, and the misconceptions and prejudice towards those effected by poverty in the UK.

• Another thing which contrasts from some of my original ideas is the whole visual style. Originally I aimed to create something which inspired British pride and glory in an attempt to unite the people of our country against poverty. Unfortunately, as was later pointed out during some peer feedback, some of the designs and ideas based around this had come out looking more like nationalist campaigns than anything else. For this reason, I decided to revamp the whole visual style into a calm and gentle brown palette.

Some of the original logo designs

How effective are the techniques you have used• I’ve used a multitude of different techniques throughout the creation of my campaign, in order to create the

most effective campaign I possibly could. These techniques vary widely from visual language, language and phrasing choices, as well as using facts and figures etc.

• To start with, as mentioned when discussing if my work has conveyed a clear message, language usage has played a key role in allowing me to achieve the campaign’s goals. Specifically, my use of rhetorical questions has allowed me to be both persuasive and to the point. The phrase ‘bet you didn’t know that, did you?’, whilst being rhetorical, is also fairly informal, which allows my audience to feel more like they’re being talked to by a human being and not a piece of text. Similarly to this, I’ve used the language technique of command phrases such as ‘it is time to wake up.’ in order to create the idea in my audiences head that this issue is very real.

• Another key technique which I hold responsible for helping to bring my campaign to life, is the facts and figures I’ve used in order to present information, for example ‘over 50% of people effected by poverty in the UK are employed’. Using facts and figures Is a technique that shows your audience that the campaign has reasoning behind it and helps you to gain their trust through statistical evidence. This was particularly important to me due to the nature of my campaign being one which relies on evidence in order to convey it’s message.

• By creating multiple drafts, as mentioned in the survey response below, It’s allowed me to see what works better in terms of colors, layouts etc. This is a valuable technique when attempting to find the perfect version of each piece of work. An example of where this was really useful was of course the logos as mentioned before, but also the posters, of which I designed lots of very slightly different drafts to choose from.

• All in all, I feel that the techniques have been more than effective, and my survey participants agree with this. Despite not diversifying my techniques and using particularly different approaches in each piece, I feel that the way I’ve chosen to tackle the issues has been well executed.

These examples of other poverty posters demonstrate some similarities between my poster and two others, as well as some obvious differences. In terms of language techniques, both the posters are pretty similar to mine. The poster on the top uses a rhetorical question ‘what will kill her first?’, and this is something used on both my poster AND merchandise. Similarly, the poster at the bottom right of the page uses statistical evidence in order to reinforce it’s cause. This is very similar to what I’ve done on both of my posters in order to push the audience in the direction of trusting the campaign and being fully aware of the extent of the problem. When compared to the poster in the top right, my poster is also pretty similar in terms of how it has been presented, the graphic of the child looks like something that has been thrown together using a few basic tools in Photoshop, much like my UK pennies graphic.

Is the content effective?• I’ve chosen to utilize a multitude of different campaigns which I can present my work across in

order to maximize effectiveness. This has ranged from posters, a brochure, a website and merchandise. The reason that I chose to use so many different platforms was that it allowed me to spread a more viral message which could be seen everywhere, whether it be on a street corner poster, or an iPhone website. Not only this, but by utilizing these different platforms, it’s opened me up to the opportunity of expanding my scope for creativity on a larger scale and in different forms. By this, I mean that I can showcase my creativity more by creating different things rather than just one poster for example. This in turn, has allowed me to create more effective content which is more likely to contribute to an effective campaign. Take for example the merchandise, which allowed me to showcase graphic design skills (the clock design), and the brochure, which is completely different to the merch, and allowed me to show off my writing skills in a productive way.

• I had fairly mixed responses in terms of which members of my survey audience favored which areas of the campaign in terms of their effectiveness. The website and the merchandise received the most votes, followed by the brochure, posters and then the logo. The fact that the results were fairly mixed tells me that all of the content must have been fairly effective to receive votes all round. On the flip side, this could mean that none of my work was particularly effective, but I don’t think this is the case, due to all of my audience rating the standard of my content as either being ‘highly professional’ or ‘professional’. Usually I’d presume that being professional goes hand in hand with being effective at achieving something.

What impact do you think your advertising campaign will have on the public?

• I hope that my campaign achieves what it sets out to achieve, and manages to have at least some form of impact on the general public. The target audience for the campaign is those who are not in any way effected by poverty, which has meant that making this group of people understand about the issue was crucial in order to create some sort of impact. My well rounded set of persuasive and shock value techniques (as mentioned previously) should hopefully mean that this was a realistic aim. Facts and figures used help to back up the points I make throughout my work, meaning that my audience will be able to trust the campaign and feel that it is a real issue. This hopefully will contribute to the effectiveness of the campaign in changing the way that the middle class amongst the UK view poverty and the issues surrounding it.

• In terms of how it will actually effect the nation’s war against poverty I can’t tell, and it’s obviously not going to be a dramatic nationwide change, but what I can say, is that by changing the way people perceive this problem we have, I’ve achieved a valuable goal. If my survey is anything to go by, I can conclude that the campaign will definately change the way people think, in particular the middle class and the youth.

What are the technical and aestheic qualities of your work?

• For me, there’s lots to talk about in terms of both the technical and aesthetic qualities of my work. Some of which have been previously addressed in other parts of the evaluation, so whilst I might still mention them, I’ll focus one evaluating the qualities which I haven’t already gone over. For me, I feel that the consistency in aesthetic style through all of the pieces of my work really helps to merge the campaign together into something that works synergistically and looks professional. This was something that was achieved through multiple different aesthetic considerations, for example the color schemes, which remains a brown palette through each piece of work. Not only this, but the fonts used, and just general visual themes (for example the UK cutout) really add to this well rounded aesthetic in my opinion.

• Attention to detail when creating each piece of work is another technical quality which I feel brings the campaign to life. An example of where I’ve really paid close attention is the phone website. The fact that I actually made a mobile version of the website with an interface which has been adapted for a phone screen really adds a sense of quality to my work, and makes it feel like it has been far from rushed in terms of technical aspects. Another example of where I have used attention to detail in order to make work feel more filled out and full of life is the brochures, and the fact that I actually did include stories in them rather than just filling them with ‘blah blah blah’ repeatedly. Originally, I did intend on just filling the brochure with random words, but after deciding that I wanted to make a more dynamic and realistic campaign, I invested some time into this technical aspect.

• In general, I haven’t used many photographs for my work, except on the website and brochure. The reason for this being the fact that photos often feel are invasive looking and submerge the general aesthetic with bold colors. For this reason, I instead chose to create a background graphic which worked well with the rest of the design, rather than just implementing randomly sourced images in to my pieces of work. This graphic was a flag of the UK made up of a penny coin texture in order to represent lack of money. It was fairly simple to make using Photoshop, yet stood out to me as an innovative and original graphic that worked well.

• I feel that my work is neat and well presented throughout. In particular the website (which was voted highly in my survey), but each work brings its own bit of quality to the table, whether it be an inviting layout or a particularly good use of images, and I’m happy with how it’s turned out.

Technical similarities in website layout between my website and that of ‘PSE’, who was my original client. Although originally I planned on implementing my campaign directly onto their website, I came later to the conclusion that it would be beneficial for the campaign to have a dedicated website which targeted the niche area of working poverty. It also allowed me to showcase my own creative skills and not have to simply work off what another person had designed. Having said this, I did look to the PSE website for inspiration when creating mine, as I admired it’s simplicity and contemporary aesthetic.

The poster on the left, and the PSE logo, are two pieces of design from different poverty related campaigns. As you can see, they both are aesthetically similar to my work. Starting with the PSE logo, it is very bold and simplistic in style in the same way that my logo is, adopting the simple text. In terms of color, both of these examples are similar palettes to my work, adopting the brown scheme, the this seems to be a fairly popular choice throughout poverty campaign work. The poster on the left implements a piece of graphic very similar to the graphic I created, with the same basic principals of the outline of a country. This makes me feel good about my design, as it can be directly compared to that of a real campaign that is ran by professionals. The font of my website’s design is also very similar to that of the poster on the left, bold, white, san serif and to the point. I hadn’t seen this poster prior to the production of my campaign, so it is purely down to luck that my campaign manages to aesthetically replicate another, and I want to make it clear that the choices I made were my own creative decisions.

• Thank you