Brand: strategy, identity, experience.
It’s about this time of year that graphic designers hang their heads and weep at the plethora of visual abuse that is littered on the footpaths, roadsides and somewhat creepily, springing from the bushes in the form of councillor-hopeful ‘vote for me’ advertising.
It’s not that we have anything in particular against anyone – we admire your commitment to our community – it’s more just the sheer volume and visual noise it gives our creative brains first thing in the morning and last thing at night. No-one needs to be assaulted with a fluoro, yelling sign whilst attempting to muster their first sip of morning coffee, nor do we want to sit idly in traffic thinking of that nice, cool after-work beverage whilst staring at the nose hair of a beaming super-enthused, thumbs-up candidate.
And don’t get us started on the slogans, from the instructive and basic: “Pick Me” to the vague, “West is Best” to the mouthful: “effectiveness, efficiency” – how about “effective, efficient…?”
At Devcich we like to apply a few basic rules of engagement when designing, so we thought we would relay a few tips and tricks for any hopefuls out there.
- Less is more, if we’ve seen one sign, we’ve seen them all to the point whereby the other day we missed an actual “CAUTION” sign as it was lost among the wannabe-politicians. Death by political advertising. Shudder.
- Contrast- if your colour is bright your text is dark, if your colour is dark, your text is light. It allows the human eye to assess the information more successfully.
- TOO MANY CAPITALS CAN BE A LITTLE SHOUTY AND OBNOXIOUS.
- Thinking outside the box is great, but if that means placing little cutouts of yourself, peering over a fence or hanging off a tree, it can be a little disturbing for all of us out dog-walking at twilight (read: running and screaming…)
- Random capital Letter Usage does Not make you Seem More Important, just Lacking in an Editor.
Our only other beef is the evaporation of council by-laws for guerrilla marketing at such times, surely it is somewhat distracting for drivers at intersections who should be concentrating on the road code?
On the other side of the argument however you have a wonderful, insightful female councillor in Auckland who paid to be professionally photographed in a perfectly, pleasing pose, only to have her billboards stolen, by the seemingly desperate-for-wall-art sector of the population. To coin a phrase – how bizarre.
We were thinking of creating some special stickers that would essentially “pink sticker” bad design, we could pop our contact details on them, then the offenders could call us, we’re always happy to help at Devcich&Co!!
Stay fresh out there folks.