EXAM PROJECT - movement Exit Festival 2013
Date: 29th May 2013 Product: Ezine By: Mante Saidya Schneider
INTRODUCTION Two years ago i discovered Exit Festival in Serbia. A festival that got my attention because of the place, an old fortress and because of the founding reasons for its existence. Twelve years ago Serbia got political freedom, from celebrating this the festival got its origin. Small stages grew out to the fortress on the other side of the Danube river where Exit got international coverage. For me as a Western girl festivals are a part of my living, there are a few things that would surprise me on a visit. All aspects in Holland are covered, and especially user experience. For the state of Serbia it is sometimes hard to compete with these western festivals in overall experience due to a lack of knowledge and money. This is one of the aspects that make the festival even more outstanding. With fortress as its natural sound barrier and old cosy feel, you can feel the hart of the people and the land. The team works incredibly hard and each year is big question mark if the festival can be activated. Therefore my friend and i got in contact with the Exit organization and discussed possibilities for us to work there. We made a project proposal and it got accepted. With our main goal to see how communication could improve to western countries for more ticket sales. We got our own team of volunteers who took 2500 surveys and with these results we wanted to give communication advice for the upcoming years. And so we did, Harro my friend stayed for five months in Serbia and i stayed for two months. Resulting in a lot of hard work, a lot of fun, a lot of feedback and an experience i will never forget! Unfortunately Exit got a different management team who put their efforts into new people for the diverse jobs and so we won’t be helping out this year on the communication department. But the love for exit remains and i that is the main reason for me to take Exit as my main topic for the exam. With the results from our research i’m going to give a problem statement and give one solution proposal.
A gap analysis gives a good picture of an organizations identity. For Exit this is of importance since we want to know how they communicate and what comes across in their communication. There are many ways of doing research in this section but because the emphazise is with the visitors a research of their opinions are the most important. The book i’ve used is ‘Mind the gap’ written by a Dutch author J. van der Grinten. The research is far bigger than what is shown in this report. This is a summary of a lot of paperwork.
RESULTS
The following results are from on research which is the gap analysis. A gap analysis defines what an organizations says and wants it to be against what the employees and the visitors think its core practice and message is. Several surveys are made after having spoken to the directors of the organization, those answers are compared with those of employees and visitors. From these results a gap can be defined and worked on. Desired identity: The desired identity is what the organization is pursues. We get this partly out of the vision and mission of Exit festival. The desired identity is also based on information from the company directors and managers. An informal interview with Nikola and Bojan (company managers) gave insights on what matters at the end of the day in terms of future prospects.
Mission:
Exit is a promoter with a mission to connect artist to their fans. Their spin is that they do so from a social perspective by using their influence and popularity to raise important questions and issues in society. “the festival tries to stick to its initial mission of providing relevant entertainment to Serbian youth while also bringing pertinent social topics to the forefront. We use the power of Exit to help the society to grow and get stronger.” They are a non profit and non governmental organization that only focuses on profit in terms of sustainability.
Vision:
In five years they want to be an important event which many youngsters from Europe follow and that they are able to communicate these changes in global society as well as in the local ones, all of this without having to compromise the beginnings and roots of Exit Festival. This also meaning to be financially independent, gaining popularity that will give more munitions and more space to communicate even stronger and greater values about social issues.
Desired image:
“We want people to perceive Exit as a festival that brings people together and does that in a sustainable way. We want them to see that we give stable ground to make society stronger and that we are a starting point in this.” The most important associations would have to be music, fort, history, sustainable.
Core competences:
• The story behind Exit, in other words the starting point/roots where the festival comes from. • It’s venue, in terms of the unique location, which allows many stages to be placed close to each other without any sound interference. Besides that the amazing Dance Arena that cant be found anywhere else in the world. • Program selection • It’s affordability
Weaknesses:
• Location Serbia • Bad infrastructure to reach the venue which in most cases makes the trip more costly • Small festivals in Croatia which are much easier to reach • Bad infrastructure for accommodation • Not much else to do in the country besides Exit • Campsite separated from the festival
Here are the core values exit wants to communicate to: For clients: Bringing people together Fortress Fun Music Non-profit
For stakeholders Reliable Professional Sustainable Growth Promoters
For employees: Professional Challenging Sustainable Fun Togetherness
For the community Make society stronger Roots Promotional Sustainable
Overall anchor points:
Promoters via music - society strengthener - Sustainability - Non profit organization - Challenging - Optimism - Starting point / roots Actual identity
In our research to identify the true identity of Exit Festival we interviewed 19 employees which bring us the following results. When we asked them which 5 words first came to mind when they think about Exit the following word cloud appeared: To determine which values the employees associate with the company we asked them to choose 5 points from a list of 30. The following was the result: Most chosen: Unique Energetic Experience Optimism Connecting
Not chosen at all: Informal Focussed Loyal Sustainable Secur
For the Employees Exit means:
But it also means that for the employees the Exit anchor points are not the main focus points in overall perception. Emotional features come forward more stronger which are in the end also very important.
Physical identity
The physical identity is devided in five categories. All of these make contact with the public of Exit through communication expressions. It is important to determine this identity seen that the previous identities are not tangible. However, this identity comes forth from the true – and desired identity. This chapter describes how we see, hear, smell and feel Exit. The following contact points have a large part in how we determine the image of Exit Festival Product: The whole festival Information: Can be found on the (mobile) website. On the festival there is a program booklet. Advertisement through: Website, television, promotion video’s social media (Facebook, Twitter, banners, mobile web, printed media (posters, flyers, stickers, advertisements) organisations such as univercities and music schools. Symbolism: The logo is made out of non serif bold letters. It could also be a stamp. Furthermore layout of the visual communication is plain and promotional photography. The Exit logo is red with capital letters saying Exit. For me this doesn’t have anything to do with the festival other than it being a name carrier. Although the name comes out clearly and the meaning of ‘red’ being ‘take action’ it could’ve been thought through more. The name exit comes from the core, the exit of the repression. ‘The state of Exit’ was the original name but shortened to get more attention. Surroundings: there are a couple of festivals in the surrounding areas such as Sziget. But there is no festival in the area that offers the same. difficulties with transport could be a problem for visitors and therefore they could choose another festival.. The selling point of the festival happens online, in stores, on the streets and at the festival. The pre-actions happen at the Exit office in Belgrade and Novi Sad, furthermore there are selling companies throughout Europe that provide sales for Western countries. Behavior: The organization is possible to reach in several ways and will provide answers to any question you have. The people who work for exit love the place and the atmosphere is good. Several employees work for free. There is a lot of interaction with diverse target groups through social media and other channels. You can find many platforms online that promote Exit.
Image The image is defined by what the audience think, in this case the Exit visitors. Since we’re looking at how to improve communication with Western countries the emphasize is on their answers but to get a general idea Serbian answers are also shown. There were 1347 interviewees from Western Europe. The most important is to see if they associate the same things as the organization wants them to associate. This target group, the one we will focus on for the product looks as following: it is both male and female between the ages of 18 to 35 from Western Europe (UK, Belgium, Holland, France, Germany) and can be divided into two segments. 1. They come to EXIT primarily for entertainment and society. The main motto is - “my friends are going - and I’m going.” 40% of them are returning to the EXIT (most of all segments), nearly half of them definitely / probably will come again next year. Early ticket purchase are governed by the rising prices, the vast majority comes to the camp. As the benefits of EXIT they state adventure/travel and fortress. EXIT is associated with entertainment, fortress, and adventure / experience. They come through recommendations, and the program has a minimum impact on this segment. Most bother them “hassle”(camp!), and then a sense of uncertainty and predictability. On re-visiting will affect a better travel-package (without the “hassle”). 2. Adventurers, eager for entertainment. Among them are 82% newcomers. At EXIT they were going to experience adventure and new experience, and among them are those who travel this area and also came back at the EXIT.
Almost half of them bought a ticket in July. They visit all the stages at Exit, the program is not a “trigger” for coming. At least they like the “hassle” and the prices of services and assistance. While stating that it would affect their re-entry better music names it should bear in mind that this decision depends more on the case (travel plan), and that this is not true to the audience. Cities of origin: London (38%), Manchester (12%), Bristol (8%), Dublin (7%) and Nottingham (4%). Which five features are most named in association with Exit festival? FREE ASSOCIATION Foreign: Music, people, fortress, fun, village, good Serbia & Region: Music, fun, fortress, friends, good HELPED ASSOCIATION Foreign: Music, Party, Energetic, Fortress, Connecting people / nice summers Serbia & Region: Party, Music, Fortress, Night Life / Dance arena, Plus/minus 75% of foreign and regional visitors didn’t know about the original story behind Exit. Meaning that the vision and mission are not well communicated towards public stakeholders. Which eight emotions are most associated with Exit? Foreign: fun, dancing, meeting new people, enjoying, being together with my friends, adventure, quality. Region: Fun, being together with friends, meeting new people, dancing, adventure, quality, hot, satisfaction. From these results we can conclude that anchor points ‘promoters’ and ‘bringing people together’ are well communicated. Emotional features are recognized more than physical features and therefore important to take into a communication strategy.
Gap Analysis With the knowledge of the desired identity, the actual identity, the physical identity and the image we can make the gap analysis.
Gap: 1 The difference in the chosen Actual Anchor Points (AAP) and the actual identity.
What exit wants to communicate is overall mostly the same as what employees perceive Exit to be. To work at Exit means to be part of a team that is fun, challenges you and will give you work in a sustainable environment.
Gap 2: The differences in the AAP and the physical identity.
There are more gaps that can be found when physical identity is compared with AAP. All the AAP except for music and promoters are not found in the communication and the physical aspects.
Gap 3: The differences in stakeholder AAP and the image.
We can conclude that the core message isn’t corresponded well enough. Also the public’s answer comes across with physical aspects. There is definitely ground to make improvements.
Conclusion & problem statement
We can conclude there is a large gap between what the organization wants people to think and how people think. This leads to a general question ‘how can me let the public stakeholders get to know the organizations AAP?’. To specify this question to this assignment the problem statement goes as following: The foreign visitors don’t have a good idea of what Exit stands for, therefore i need to find a solution which will inform foreign visitors about the history of Exit.
Product & Argumentation of design choices Since my last product for Exit was an mobile app, it seemed for me to be quite a undertaking to challenge myself to make an interactive magazine in addition to the app where only small texts are read on. This is something i have never done and it will be quite test for me. The target group is foreign, some offline reading and seeing would fit their needs whilst traveling to Exit. Movement is seen in the story, the movement of going forward, striving for a better future. This is illustrated in a hand drawn timeline. The characters in the timeline are seen through the magazine and will be highlighted with the story sticking to it. In this process i discovered that a lot of the design technical stuff i wanted to do wasn’t possible, this made me change quite a few designs and maybe give some loss to the actual movement in the e-zine. Nevertheless the solutions are worth seeing too.
The logo is the name of the festival ‘EXIT’ but put into a new design and still keeping the bold feel of the current one. The state of Exit was one that portrayed breaking loos from the Milosevic regime. Slowly opening the ‘gates’ for and to other countries. The letters are built up out of bars which portray stiff rules and imprisoned. Towards the end of the letters the become filled and the bars are gone. In the last letter ‘T’ there is an arrow taken pointing towards the open space. Like you would see in an exit sign above a door. This refers to the original slogan of Exit ‘Exit out of ten years of madness’.
These bars have become a main theme in my design. They keep you remembering the history and in contrast with all the colorful depictions will keep the viewer aware of this fact. Emphasization on both prisoned and freedom are very important in this design and is done in several ways. Color: The colors go from black, shades of grey to a variety of colors. The dark colors stand for the strict regime that Serbia had before the festival, the more colors join, the bigger the festival gets. Illustrations: The depiction of a lot of pages is chosen in relation to streetart. A movement against the monarchy, an objection to daily habits. Illustrations also have more details than for instance symbols. Photography: Photography is made either by me or by Exit organization.
Storytelling To keep the core message and goal intact i first started out with lots of mind mapping and color schemes that for me depicted freedom. After this i started to work on the text that would tell the history through the years of the Exit. From doing this i got a good overview of the turn of events and started to visualize this in skectches. The flow of the river, the fortress, the regime and the massive annual togetherness party were key in doing this. I took these elements and placed them in ‘map’. I didn’t want the visuals to be overruled by text, so instead of making a history mind map with text i used icons from the history mind map on a seperate page. Once you click on the icons you can read the history by years. The choice to make a history mindmap/timeline is because i this way the general feel would come across and the implementation of grafitti style work would be shown. A very detailed picture with lots to look at and discover. The picture is larger then the ipad frame and this way you can move throughout the ‘years’. It starts of dark and gloomy and slowly comes into a color spectrum that represents the international mass coming to Serbia. For the illustrations i used a lot of drawings i have done in my younger years. I used to draw a lot and in time made a lot of the to png’s that i could re-use in collages. Some of the other drawings are from internet. The other techniques i used i learnt either from lynda.com, apple help and tutors in the tutor cafe.
Fonts
I’ve chosen Amatic for the headings, its a handwritten type which gives a personal feel, it also resembles the street (art). For intro texts and headings i’ve chosen Mission Script which is a cursive script, its a good way of emphazing small texts and together with amatic it gives a nice modern ‘hipster’ feel. As for me it personal-
izes the project a little bit more to my taste. For the body text i’ve chosen Bariol. it’s a sans serif font. Appears friendly and open., it’s very readable in long pieces of text. All three fonts are very different, this is an deliberate design choice because Exit wants to represent many cultures in one festival, so i wish to do the same in the font and in the line of illustrations.
Icons
Argumentation of chosen icons: Bird uncaged: You see bars and a flying bird, the connotation that is made is the bird is flying free from behind the bars. This symbolizes freedom, being brave and break free from daily habits. The strongest bars are not made from iron but of our own fears. These symbols therefore depict the Exit organization going against the regime and breaking through it.
Infinite Love: The depiction is a loop with the word love inside of it. This loops doesn’t have an end and
therefore implies infinity/forever, this connotation varies for individual readers but because the word ‘love’ is insert in the loop one can see infinite love. In the story of Exit great passion is involved to make Serbia and the surrounding regions a better place.
Guitar: You see a depiction of a guitar outline, you understand its a guitar due to the shape. The specific
shape is an electric guitar, an electric guitar is often used in popular music and has a speaker to be heard. The electric guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is capable of multitude of sounds and styles. In the development of rock and roll it has been a major component. In relation to Exit as a festival it covers the many styles of music that Exit along the way gathers on its grounds. From only being a popular festival in former Yugoslavia to internationally recognized as a great festival.
Fort: The icon of a fort is one that is a rectangle with on top the gliffs of a fort. In the middle you see two
doors which are half open. It stands for a large fortified building, unable to move and a solid protection for the people in it and behind the building. Its imposing, strong and a stately mansion. The state of Exit in this case. It also stands for the second location of the Exit festival, namely the Petrovaradian fortress.
Dollar sign: The dollar sign has a exclamation mark in the midst of it. The dollar’ connotation leads to
money; having it, needing it, price tags. Its a symbol that is primarily used to indicate the various peso and dollar units on currency around the world. It has originated for Ps (pesos) and evolved into the dollar sign now as we know it. In relation to the exclamation mark which indicates strong feelings or high volume (shouting), the connotation is that there is money trouble.
Star Badge: The outline of five points and five smaller points saw us a star. Stars have many meanings such as: An ace, winner, champion, lead actor/actress, stars in the sky, wishing upon a star/making dreams come true. After reading the story behind the star you will know that it is about winning the European Best Festival. In this case star stands for winning.
Serbia and regions: The image here looks like a blob and if you’re not from the Serbian area you will not
know what it is. However it is the outline of former Yugoslavia and there is no distinction made between the region as they are now. Exit wants to unite the regions and therefore they have been put together. Hand cuffs: Two thick circles linked by an in between piece depict handcuffs. The connotation is locked, stuck, put in jail, no movement, being imprisoned.
Cat: Because of the shape of the ears and eyes you can see its a animal from the cat family. This word for any
feline or, specifically, the small domesticated species became a term of contempt for a woman and slang for a prostitute (brothels have been called cathouses), and vicious or sniping comments or behavior, probably from an association with the behavior of agitated cats, are still referred to as catty. In Western tradition, black cats have been associated with witchcraft. This is due to black being associated with supposed perils of the night, and the cat is associated with transformation just as the veil of night shifts our perception of reality.
Rolling Stones tongue: in combination with the English flag. The tongue is linked to the Rolling Stones a great band back in the 80s who lived the famous rock and roll lifestyle. Touring, meeting people, making music, bringing people together, alcohol and drugs it was truely and invasion. In this case you the English invasion in Exit.
Argumentation of functionality choses In order to fulfil the needs of the spectator, I’ve done some research on usability and functionality of iPad magazines. Reason for this is that I would like it to be a user-friendly magazine. Apple has provided a list of guidelines on required characteristics of an app. (An e-zine can also be treated as an app). Not all the guide lines were usable for me. 1. Orientation: The application should encourage the user to use both positions. It is important that the app offers the user a great experience in all orientation possibilities. 2. Interactivity: The most successful iPad applications offer innovative ways to interact with the content. Besides that, it is important for the developers to resist the temptation to overload the app with unnecessary elements that add nothing to the basic experience. 3. Information hierarchy: It should not be the intention to fill up the screen with too much information. Yet, the user should not constantly be looking for more. The screen should contain the most important information. All extras can be presented in a pop-up, for example. 4. Image Transitions: If some information changes on a certain page, only the section in question should change, not the entire page. Furthermore, ‘quiet’ pictures offer more visual stability, and helps to remember where they are. 5. Connectivity: The user must have the option to share visual information. 6. High quality visuals: The high resolution screen of the iPad is capable of rich graphics. The better the quality of the visuals, the more users will be attracted to the application. 7. Stop option: Same as with the iPhone, all iPad applications should close when pressing the Home button. Rules for myself whilst making the magazine. ext - The text is bigger and gets more spacing when switching to ‘landscape’, the widest orientation mode. - By making good use of paragraphs and images, long pieces of text can be prevented. interaction - The user must have the option to search within the text of the magazine. - The user must be able to call up the menu bars, even by tapping the screen. - The user must be able to mark and save articles, so that they can easily revert to them later. - The cover of the magazine should contain links that lead to the articles. - The user should be able to share the texts through social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, and it should also be possible to store them on the iPad itself. - There should be a possibility for an extra table of contents, which can be found at the bottom menu bar. - When starting the application a pop-up should appear showing simple explanations on how to navigate through the application. - The user should be able to scroll through the text vertically. Navigating to the following article should be made possible by scrolling horizontally. Photos - The user must be able to zoom pictures with with touch, ‘pinch to zoom’. - The user should be able to close enlarged photographs by means of a button, for example a cross. - Twice-tap the picture means that the picture will be enlarged.
CONCLUSION ‘find a solution which will inform foreign visitors about the history of Exit.’ This was the problem statement in the beginning, the solution lies in an ezine which visitors can read before or during their trip to Exit. The process of making the e-zine has been stressful since i didn’t know anything about these things and had to start from scratch. Either way i have learned alot about using adobe programs but wish i had more time to fully be able to dive into these programs through tutorials and practise. I was surprised that a lot of the things i wanted to implement into the ezine weren’t possible or nobody knew how. This somewhat delayed my process but also challenged me to find solutions in the design. The test group that has read through the magazine have been intrigued by the story and say that the Exit organization should use it! After delivering this product to school i will continue the design process to make it better and more functional in the way i want it to work. Hope you too will enjoy looking through the magazine and will want to go to EXIT!
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APPENDICES Design phases