YOU MUST FIRST READ EACH OF THESE:

• Branding Basics
  • Brand Awareness Guide
• Compelling Story
• Defining Your Target Audience
• Experience Design
• Google Analytics
• Marketing Campaign
• Make a Boring Product Sexy
• Metaphor
• Metaphor Campaign Rubric
• Adobe XD prototyping tools for interactive design 

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Assignment TOC:

Assignment Overview

BASIC PROCESS—What Basic Steps To Take

DETAILED PROCESS—Detailed Process

Student Presentation Examples 

Example Mission Statement:

Identifying Characteristics

Examples Slogans

Examples Professional Campaigns

Final Presentations

Due Date & Rubric

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Assignment: Applied Metaphor Campaign Overview

• Your task is to incorporate metaphor as a means of visually unifying a design/marketing campaign or artistic series. Your campaign/series needs to include a unified group of at least three separate deliverables. Be careful to define your visual campaign/series theme broadly enough to allow for variations between each work, yet specific enough to be understood as a grouping of related information. The key here is the use of visual metaphor to unite the group. It has the power to do this in two main ways;
• 1) to be eye catching/unique and
• 2) be unifying across all applications/deliverables.

The subject of your campaign/series needs to be in the form one of the following;

• Advertising
• Informational
• Promotional
• Documentary
• Investigative
• Artistic Expression

Your final work could be for a company/firm or an individual, a “cause” or an event. You can also choose to do the campaign/series for a new single “line” of products within a company or for the entire company itself (GRAPHIC DESIGNERS). Or by contrast and comparison, shed new thought on the original subject (STUDIO ARTISTS).

The key here is that all applications or individuals works are cleverly united by the use of visual metaphor and integrated as a part of a common purpose. In other words, each application/deliverable has a very specific purpose or role to play in the overall campaign/series. Initially, there should be a cohesive well-thought-out strategy as to what the purpose of each piece is, how it is made, in what order (sequence) they are revealed and how they would be released to, or seen by, the public. Each part of the campaign/series then addresses key selling points or “new ideas” for the audience.

In the image above, Warhol’s images of Marilyn Monroe vastly increase in their impact and meaning because of the repetition, choices of color and contrast of techniques. Made in 1962 shortly after Monroe’s tragic death, the colored grouping placed next to the black and white grouping became a powerful visual metaphor representing the contrast between her public and private lives.

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The term lifestyle choices can denote the interests, opinions, behaviors, and behavioral orientations of an individual, group, or culture. It is a choice a person makes about how they prefer to live and behave, according to their attitudes, tastes, and values. Lifestyle choices are largely driven by aspiration. In other words, choices we make about how we want to live, not necessarily how we are currently living. It is many times the single most motivating factor influencing individual decisions about personal desire, purchasing, attendance or participation.

This ad is particularly effective in reaching an audience where toughness and durability are the primary characteristics they are looking for.in purchasing a car. The literal interpretation of this image would be that when you buy this car you would find a rino living under the hood! This is obviously not the intention, so instead we “read” the image in a non-literal way—as visual metaphor— which allows for the audience to instead transfer the characteristics of the animal only (not the rino itself) to the characteristics of the car.

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BASIC PROCESS—What Steps To Take

Using the Advertisement at the top of this page we can use the chart above to break down the basic process used to create it.

• The Topic Area—How to advertise a Mitsubishi
• Target Audience or Demographic—Life style choices such as preferring outdoor adventure, and self-reliance are main descriptors
• Product Characteristic—The product is tough and durable
• Illustration/Image—Mitsubishi auto body fitting on to the body of a Rhino (this is the visual metaphor) presented in a photo-realistic style (not cartoon, not stylized, etc.)

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DETAILED PROCESS—How to do Each Step

WHAT IS VISUAL METAPHOR?—an image used to clarify an otherwise abstract idea

• • A metaphor is a direct comparison between two or more seemingly unrelated subjects describing one subject as being alike to another subject in some way. Metaphors are useful for illustrating (understanding) ideas, simplifying complex subjects and making people think. There is no reason to use metaphor to try to explain objects such as a brick or a feather, for example. However, it might be very helpful to make use of metaphor as a way of understanding more complex feelings, characteristics or ideas. For example: Life is a yo-yo. It’s a series of ups and downs.
  • Metaphors visually enhance the subject at hand. Metaphors make you think, inviting you to analyze how two subjects relate.
  • Extended metaphor, thematic/campaign
  • Creating successful metaphors takes a lot of time and thought—but they can have big payoffs. Metaphors will add to the stickiness of your site and create buzz. They also visually stimulate your audience’s appetite for creative thinking.  The first step to creating a successful metaphor is to understand the types of metaphors. Next, think about what makes a metaphor work. Finally, focus on presenting your metaphorical concept in a visual manner.
  • Ask, “What is cliché and what is common knowledge, or a well-known image, that can be tweaked to add more meaning?” Build upon what is already known or assumed by your audience. What is familiar but made new by changing the context or alteration slightly so that the original intent is still recognizable but given freshness and new insight into some topic or idea.
  • A metaphor is one thing perceived as representing another or a figure of speech that makes an implied comparison. The idea is to use a powerful image or dramatic statement to suggest your company’s service or product. The metaphor can represent a characteristic of your brand or your product’s benefit or even a problem that your service can remedy.
  • The most successful metaphors “work” because they resonate with a target audience or specific demographic. Therefor, knowledge of key characteristics of the intended audience is critical to the success of any message but particularly with a visual message based on metaphor.

• •  

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Student Presentation Examples:

        GRAPHIC DESIGN

• Theo Nishamura
• Ivan Rocha
• Mark Rodriguez
• Mackenzie Wieland
• Jasmine Torres
• Marc Tom
• Shay Jones
• Emilie Jenkins Applied Metaphor Campaign Presentation

  STUDIO ART

• Ivan Rocha​
  Sound Metaphor

• Glynnis Koike
  
• Addie Romelfanger

once-upon-a-pearl-ar-1Download

• Paola Baltazar Salcedo
  Without a Sound 2022
  

  

  Paola Baltazar Salcedo

  

  Paola Baltazar Salcedo

  

  Paola Baltazar Salcedo
• Leila Valencia
• 

  Immigration Altarpiece: A Gossamer Cycle of Immigration

  
  

  Leila Valencia’s triptych is an example of a studio or fine art solution to this assignment. The issue she was addressing was that of Immigration. The panels in her triptych depict both the negative and positive feelings associated with this issue. Stylistically it takes inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. The research components of the assignments were exactly the same for her as a studio art major. The main difference was that she knew ahead of time that she would be doing a series (triptych) of paintings. She also did a video recording explaining her approach to this painting, use of symbols and the main message that the paintings are based on.

MARKETING ANALYSIS—a close look at the variables affecting the target market

• Determine feasibility and costs—what is achievable and appropriate for your company with this campaign? Generally speaking the smaller the company is the smaller their budget for advertising and promotion. Also smaller companies generally require more concrete/realistic approaches because they will not be able to afford a wide distribution of speciality marketing materials and their message must be understandable at first sight.
• Know the company’s product line or service market niché.
  • For this assignment the market niché is your choice. You might go out and interview a company (similar to what we did in GDII). This step of course will make your experience even more real but you also have the choice of simply making up the company or using a real company but not actually talking to them.
  • identify who is the company competition
    • identify similar product lines—the direct competition
    • identify alternative product line choices—the indirect competition
• Identify a specific audience for your campaign. This is your target audience (demographic) using at least 4 “defining” characteristics. Ask yourself, who is your campaign specifically trying to reach, or currently not reaching? Then, pick characteristics which will influence what you do or not do design-wise to effectively reach them. These are characteristics which will help you make decisions about color, type, composition, applications, wording, image treatment, style, etc. Examples of some of these defining characteristics are:
  • lifestyle choices (you must use this characteristic)
  • age range (ex. 30-50 years old)
  • gender
  • education (ex. college degree)
  • geographical region (ex. northern Cali)
  • urban/rural
  • Utilize Google Analytics to discover know your audience demographic better.
  • Your goal is to “know” this target group as you would your group of best friends. If you were to give the members of the target audience a birthday gift you would know what choices would be exactly perfect for them, much like you would when giving a gift to your best friend. Feel it
• Watch this Trailer:
• You are creating a campaign that is custom tailored to emphasize specific quality of a specific product/service or line of products/services. Campaigns such as these are typically planned to run for a limited period of time (seasonal, to announce/promote a new version, a grand opening, a new release, etc.)
• What story are you trying to tell for your client? Know what specific quality or characteristic of your product or service you are emphasizing.
• Know your product/service, target audience and client.
• Take your main clues for the campaign from the mission statement of the company. The company may have both a vision statement as well as a mission statement. If so, look at both of them for words that describe the aspirations, goals or qualities that the company is trying to achieve with whatever they make. Those words are what you will be trying to illustrate or describe metaphorically. This is necessary because the words themselves are abstract. They are statement of philosophy, they are not actual objects or things themselves. Again, the mission statement is your primary source, but it is not the only source. Look at customer reviews, Yelp, ratings, interviews, articles in papers or magazines, reports on Utube and other social media to get a more complete view.

Example Mission Statement:

At Sony,
our mission is to be a company that inspires and fulfills your curiosity.

Our unlimited passion for technology, content and services,

and relentless pursuit of innovation,
drives us to deliver

ground-breaking new excitement and entertainment
in ways that only Sony can.

Creating unique new cultures and experiences.

Everything we do, is to move you emotionally.

Be Moved.

Identifying Characteristics

IDENTIFY 4 MAJOR CHARACTERISTICS OR SELLING POINTS ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT/SERVICE or LINE OF PRODUCTS/SERVICES

These are the points that your client wants to emphasize and believe make her/his products unique, stand out from competition and appeal the most to the target audience. Examples of these might be:

• Honesty
• Durability
• Safety
• Cost Effective
• Efficient
• Environmentally Friendly
• Organic
• Weight/portability
• Flexibility/adaptability
• Coolness, Trendy
• Ease of Use
• Customer satisfaction
• Aspirations, Desires, “What I want to be when I grow up.”

PICK ONE OF THE SELLING POINTS AND PUT IT INTO A SIMILE TYPE OF SENTENCE/PHRASE

• Examples of these are:
  • My product is as Honest as ___________________.
  • My product is as Durable as ___________________.
  • My product is as Efficient as ___________________.
  • My product is as Environmentally Friendly as ___________________.
• Pick a specific selling point and create your own simile sentence. Fill in the blank with what comes to mind as a well-know representation. Many times your first thoughts are cliché answers. (strong as an ox, quick as a rabbit). Try to push beyond the cliché for something meaningful but unique by either tweaking the cliché or continuing to explore alternative solutions. Do not settle for cliché.
• If that representation is something that your target audience can be expected to know or understand then you have found a possible metaphor.
  • Then, you must have a well-thought out Theme to drive the campaign. Develop your theme with two main criteria in mind:
    1. How will the concepts inherent in this theme help to sell products? How do these characteristics translate to the entire line of deliverables through this thematic “atmosphere”?
    2. How does your theme help create a “lifestyle” image that would be typically aspired to or sought by the target audience
  • Second, you must develop a Concept Statement: (develop a meaningful one). Your concept statement is a phrase/sentence which distills the overriding theme into a few words. Condense the description of your project down to a single Concept Statement—in one sentence, describe your project.
  • Create a Mood Board using Pinterest or Designspiration
  • You will need to give this concept form by developing a slogan or catch phrase/tagline as well as a unifying visual look to “Drive” or brand the campaign, making it both visually and verbally memorable. Create a unique connection between word and picture—tagline (slogan) and image. This is perhaps the most important single aspect of the entire campaign. Successful concepts are built on a strong foundation of understanding client, product and audience paired with a unique clever and creative new approach to “getting the word out”. Your tagline or slogan will help make the connection between the product/company/issue and the metaphor image. A slogan is an advertising tagline or phrase that advertisers create to verbally expresses the importance and core idea of their product or service. By and large, it’s a theme of a campaign that usually has a genuine role in people’s lives. It has the ability to gain people’s time and attention by putting consumers at the heart of the solution. This slogan might be one or two words, a phrase or a complete sentence. The key is how the words interact with the image. Even though both the image and the slogan refer to the same metaphor, they do  not “say” the same thing. Instead each should compliment the other to create an effective Gestalt.The combination of the two is where/how the unique symbolic message is delivered.
• Slogans should:
  • Be Memorable
  • Define a key Benefit
  • Differentiate the Brand
  • Solidify the Brand
  • Give Brand some “Zing”
  • Have Emotional Impact

Examples Slogans

• Got Milk?—California Milk Processors
• Think Different—Apple
• Because You’re Worth It—L’Oréal
• Just Do It—Nike

DETERMINE WHAT AND HOW MANY DESIGN APPLICATIONS OR DELIVERABLES YOU WILL MAKE AS A PART OF THE OVERALL CAMPAIGN.

• Carefully plan out the specific design applications/deliverables and how they relate to one another in delivering a more complete message or information to the target audience.

EXAMPLES OF DESIGN APPLICATIONS or DELIVERABLES

• App
• Poster
• Print ad
• Media spot
• Print Collateral (flyers, brochures, direct mail, etc.)
• Packaging
• Media
• Outdoor advertising
• Wearables
• Website
• Social Media
• Publications
• etc.)

All of the assignment deliverables need to be united by the use of the same metaphor with one exception. If you choose to include a company visual identity logo, that visual identity DOES NOT use the campaign metaphor. A logo is a more general visual symbol for the entire company, person or client. Your campaign, on the other hand, is more specific, It is custom and as a result, it is targeted towards a smaller very specific segment of the overall company target audience. Because of this basic difference between campaign and visual identity, the two cannot share the same metaphor. The company visual identity could be based on metaphor, but it cannot be the same metaphor as the campaign.

• A minimum of three applications/deliverables (kind and number of) should be decided upon according to several variables. (Again, a company visual identity could be one of your assignment deliverables but that identity cannot be based on the same metaphor as the overall campaign.)
  • Target audience (what applications/deliverables are most effective for your chosen audience)
  • What specific characteristic or selling point are you trying to emphasize?
  • What is the “Story” you are trying to tell? (compelling aspect, sequence, relationship between deliverables, etc.)
  • Overall timeline (when, where, how often, sequence, etc.)
• Determining the sequence and nature of the deliverables is essential in order to have a successful campaign. Tell A Compelling Story. Not only what you choose to make, but how each relates to the other parts of the campaign is what creates the magic.
• Following your theme, you must illustrate your application choices in a style that will be appealing to your target audience. This is where your defining characteristics will influence what you do. Design decisions that can be influenced by target audience characteristics are:
  • Color choices
  • Image treatments (graphic, photographic, illustration, computer, etc.)
  • Symbol choices
  • Visual References (people, places, things, situation, etc.)
  • Style
  • Wording
  • Typography

Examples Professional Campaigns

15 Memorable Ad Campaigns that made history

GTB Asset Management, Make a Move Now Campaign—A metaphor of Shoes

A through the line campaign for GTB Asset management, ltd using ‘the shoe’ as a visual metaphor to elicit in the consumers mind a need to invest today.

 

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Turkish Airlines—Pangea

Using the ancient mega continent of Pangea where everything was physically closer to one another as a metaphor for the ability of Turkish Airlines to bring people closer to one another. Why did they pick Morgan Freeman as the spokesperson here?

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Sanofi Flu Vaccine—Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Playing off the phrase “a wolf in sheets clothing” to metaphorically express the hidden dangers of flu and how it may sneak up on you. Are unintended feelings also communicated with this campaign video commercial?

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Final Presentations:  

•  Organization—
  • Document your entire process. This should include thumbnail sketches, rough comps, possible slogan options, etc. in a manner that you can show as a part of your final presentation.
    • For in-person presentations you should always organize your work by the use of a Process Booklet
    • For on-line presentations using Skype, FaceTime, Zoom, Web Ex, etc. you will need some other form of documentation of process development (ex.: chart, Pinterest or Designspiration, Website, Interactive PDF, Keynote, Powerpoint, Padlet, diagram, outline, progress backward map, etc.) that you can share with your client/audience.
  • In either case, all campaign presentations should always cover the development of the following:
    • A brief introduction that clarifies your understanding of the company, the product line, and the target audience
    • Ad Concept (in this specific assignment one driven by metaphor)
    • A minimum of 3 design applications/deliverables
      • (you might have more than 3)
    • Tagline or slogan
    • For this assignment your presentation needs to also include the following:
      • Thumbnails
      • Research
      • Development sketches
      • Written stages—tagline/slogans, headlines
      • Color applications/reasons
      • Typography specs/choices
  • Apply Basic Branding and Visual Identity Principles to all.

Formal Presentation Requirements

• Example Presentation
  • Emilie Jenkins — Applied Metaphor Campaign Presentation—download
• Partial Crit
  • Gavin Henderson—Yours Keeper
  • Emilie Jenkins—1st Phorm

You will also do two peer reviews of your classmates presentation. These will be assigned to you randomly through Canvas. 

You will have 10 minutes for your presentation + 5 minutes for Q & A.

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Due Date & Rubric:

DUE Wednesday OCTOBER 25, 2023

1. Use the requirements listed above in the Organization section to tell you what you must cover in your presentation. In other words, I expect (and your client would as well) to see you address each of those requirements specifically.
2. You will be doing a Peer Review of one of your classmates presentations that will be assigned to you randomly through Canvas. Use the Rubric found on the Canvas assignment page to assist you with this.
3. You should also make use of the Rubric which is located on the Canvas assignment page to help you organize and as a checklist that you have included everything in your presentation.
4. The presentation stage is where you sell the campaign to your client. You need to “pitch” it. In this case, I am your client. Therefore, I am the one you must convince to go with your campaign idea. I am the one you must convince that your campaign is worth spending my money on. (think Shark Tank)
5. Define the design problem clearly and concisely in your introduction
6. Outline what the key elements or selling points are and therefore will be emphasized in your campaign.
7. Incorporate layout and typography into your presentation as forms of visual organization, style and creativity in making the “sell”.
8. Dress business casual for normal in person presentations. For online presentations this requirement is less critical but still important to consider.
9. Incorporate Public Speaking guidelines
10. Be sure to Practice!
    (record your practice presentations using Zoom to help you improve)

• Presentation Rubric
  • Presentation
    • Eye contact
    • Confidence/Presence
    • Knowledge of topic
    • Sequence/order of presentation, logical conclusion
    • Dress appropriate (For Fall 2020 this requirement is unnecessary.)
  • Campaign Design
    • Clear Statement of underlying metaphor Concept
    • Clear and engaging Tagline
    • Clear application of metaphor concept to campaign deliverables
  • “Connect the Dots”
    • Clear Introduction
    • Sequence
    • Clear understanding of target audience/demographic
    • Logical applications of design to deliverables
    • Assurance that you understand your client’s needs/problem
    • Logical application of metaphor as a tool of communication
    • Clear summary
  • Use of metaphor
    • Convincing persuasive tool of communication
    • Understandable use of metaphor
    • Logical and consistent application throughout campaign
    • Balance between image and words
  • Creativity and Craftsmanship
    • Uniqueness
    • Attention to detail
    • Creative and consistent use of metaphor