Aims and Considerations sheet

Existing Products:

How many existing artefacts do you feel you will need to look at? I feel like I would have to look at between 3 and 4 different artefacts. This will allow me to compare them to see what similarities and differences they have. By comparing more products, I will be able to look at all the techniques necessary that will help me to create my own. Techniques such as colours, font and text are all important as they help to create the look of the campaign. If I were to compare less than 3, it wouldn’t give me a good idea on how similar campaigns work, as they could all be different. Looking at more artefacts is always better because you can also look into the smaller details that they all include which might help me to create a good look for my production.

What kinds of artefacts are you expecting to look at? I am going to be looking at environmental artefacts, as that is what has been stated in the brief. This means looking into businesses such as WWF, Greenpeace etc, to see what they are trying to achieve. These other campaigns focus on the environment, so it would be ideal to also look at these to see how they are similar.

What elements will you look at to help you with your research? I will need to look at a range of techniques, which will help me with my research. These techniques include colours, fonts, photography, text, layout etc. They are important because colours need to connote to the problem, like you tend to see the colour green being used as it connotes nature. Photography is very important, depends on your campaign, you may not need to use photography. For campaigns such as animal welfare, pictures tend to be used to show the effects, which will have an impact on you.

Considerations:

Why might you need to be sensitive when carrying out research on social action issues? You need to be careful when carrying out research as what you ask, could be upsetting to certain people, whether it’s because of a past experience, or because they think you are being rude etc. If you happen to come across as rude, you would need to apologise and try to explain what you are trying to achieve although this might be difficult.

Could you face any problems when trying to research social action issues? If so, is there a way to overcome these? There are many problems you can face when researching such as money. You might need to do some primary research such as setting up focus groups and this might need money to set it up. If you were trying to save the environment, then printing off questionnaires wouldn’t be the best idea as you might get criticised for this, so you would need to find another way of getting some answers. If you don’t have experience with these issues, then this could be a problem as people will wonder what you are trying to achieve which might not get you very far.

Where would you expect your finished pieces to be displayed and distributed? I would hope that my pieces would be made into posters so they could be displayed in places like shop windows as they would be seen by a lot of people which might get them to research into us. I would also like to see my ideas being turned into flyers which could be handed out to people in the street or outside shops as they might put it in their bags to read later. This is a good technique because it gets people interested in the campaign. I also hope that the campaign would appear online such as small adverts and pop ups on related websites and articles and as the majority of the population uses the internet, they are likely to see them. Billboards are also a good marketing technique because they are very large, so hundreds would see your campaign, maybe thousands of people who travel past it. Television adverts would also be good too because you would produce something that would make people feel upset about the environment, which is something that they tend to do. Cost is a large factor because with the leaflets, people, who mean that you would be wasting paper that isn’t good for the environment, which goes against your campaign, could easily throw them away. With television, it is very expensive to produce an advert, so you would have to make sure that you have money to fall back on if it doesn’t go to plan.

What funding issues might an organisation like Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) face? As the SAS don’t accept certain sponsorship deals, it can be an issue trying to find enough money to help fund their campaign. They have a lot of ways in which you can help by donating through different websites and this money goes towards funding the different projects they are determined to achieve. They also ask you to organise a fundraising event, this is good as you can do loads of things in order to do this. Some issues they might have is that there are a lot of charities out there which are doing the same things and that are more well known, so these are the charities that the public are more likely to donate too, which is why the SAS need to get their name known out there more.