Probe
Prescribe
Brief Elmwood
Progress
Present
Concept Book Collaborators:
Joel Burden
Concept Development
The concept for the dog hotel took many sessions to come to a finalised direction. The initial direction was to be a dog hotel to the extreme, and build a mythology about the beginnings of the dog hotel. After realising that most dog kennels attempted to be a dog ‘hotel/resort’ we decided we would go against the grain, and produce a budget no nonsense dog kennel for the time & money pushed city dweller.
I was playing with a piece of imagery that would act as a dog and a kennel. I thought that these would be able to transfer to the edges of pieces of print and produce a consistent visual style, however this was merely a thought and came before the concept of the brand. I decided not to run with it until I had a brand concept and ‘story’ in place.
Staaay Staaay, is a name that is appropriate to a dog kennel. We felt that it was straight to the point and could be spelt in a way that was specific to dog owner culture. Spelling the word slightly different also means that it immediately has it’s own identity. I started developing a concept around a budget hotel by writing a narrative of the user. I then listed services and, which allowed me to write a list od products that would need branding.
Staaay I started to work on concepts with a varying degree of success. Some where geared toward’s copy aimed at the dog and some were geared towards the human. There is a world of language related specifically to dogs and it was finding a way to incorporate this into a clear and hard hitting brand. Including too much terminology soon starts to confuse the brand and the brand’s name within all the world play. I soon realised that there needed to be a boundary and a separation between the different types of copy I used in advertisement and within branding.
The Dog’s I came up with a concept that was multi-faceted and seemed to be the closest thing to final concept that we had. Time was an issue so we had to finalise something with enought time to visualise it. I felt what I had come up with was sufficient enough to be memorable. The concept is based on The Dog’s Bollocks, which is an expression that means something is good. Furthermore, when our audience refer’s to their dog’s belonging’s they will refer to ‘the dog’s ...’. I thought that this was representative of our audience.
The concept and tagline can be used in a range of circumstances. I think in order to tighten the concept I need to develop some guidelines that will make the concept clear. However, this will be done when a visual style is also developed.