DEFINE

Our Proposal

Workshop and Talks

In order to write our proposal, we needed to understand why it is so important for a brand to have its manifesto or ethos. In my interpretation it works as an invisible compass, giving direction and showing the right path to the companies to their decision making. It was a great help to be able to listen to the talk of Bond & Coyne and get some insight into their Versa branding project. We referred back to it later in the process when we were working on the final version of our brand proposal.

After the branding talk, we had a workshop with Ben Friend (creative director) who shared with us his brand designing process (brief-research-work-execution), which resonates well to the stages of the 4 Diamond Designing model that already had been introduced to us in Level 4. Ben highlighted how vital it is to grab the essence of a company in order to create a successful branding around it. His story of the flying fish and how it became their company’s visual identity has demonstrated well what is the task we had been given by this brief.

During the workshop we were required to come up with ideas how to finish the sentence: “Our Museum is ...” These half sentences were the first input in forming our proposal.

Figure 29.: Miro board with our first inputs to the proposal. Figure 30.: A slide of Ben Friend’s presentation.

Finalizing the proposal

To take it to the next level, we wrote 2-3 different versions per person, then we discussed it on a Zoom meeting. We did amendments on them and combined some of it together to come up with 6 strong and different approaches. We shared the result with the client and based on her feedback we managed to narrow it down to the final version.

When I was working on my ideas, I was inspired by the branding proposal of Primal Roots. The design company, who did their branding, came up with a manifesto which is successfully capturing the naturistic spirit of this gym and challenging the conventions of the traditional gyms. In a way this is the job we had been asked to do for Poole Museum too. We had to capture the spirit of history, art and culture and also to find the tone of voice which communicates effectively the changed functionality of the museum in a contemporary manner. I think we were on the right path when we showed it to Ben on a tutorial. He suggested to make it simpler to help

our next design stage, however, as a team, we hadn’t taken that advice on board. Having seen our peer’s final responses it became clear that our proposal was too complex a starting point.

Figure 31.: Primal Roots manifesto (Lantern, London) has been a great inspiration. Figure 32: The 6 sentence we presented to the client. The second and third ones are based on my inputs.

“Our Museum Project is the heartbeat of Poole. We want everyone to hear it and feel it just as we experience the atmosphere of the coast. We are here to strengthen your voice and make you feel belonged to. Our proposition aims to install a new culture of community and conversation around Poole past and present. A gallery of diversity, bringing people together. Tune into the heartbeat of Poole!”

Figure 33.: Details of my notebook. Idea generation for the proposal.