Final Video

Here is the final video hope you enjoy it.

Making a visual narrative

As time has marched on I have drifted from my original narrative for the video I had had the intention to present the membership card as if they were playing cards. I can see that key element is the hands so I have moved the elements around so that the narrative say it is easy to give a gift membership to someone and once it is created you are passing on more that a gift membership.

Intro screen

 

Web Page

Moving stairs

Passing hands

Final poster

Added Intro

    Title sequence

The way I have approached the video work is to generate modular elements this has allowed me to up date bits as I go along. I can produce different elements and then drop them into the time line allowing me to see a rough edit and seeing if my new idea has work. As an example I felt that after the crit it needed a title image.  Using the motif of the card I have introduced them at the begining of the video.

New title sequence

 It became obvious to me that have the cards at the beginning introduces them to early in the work. So I have created a new title screen. I also thought about the National trust symbol as a falling leaf and have introduced this element into the video.

Crit

Today we presented our work for the rest of the group to see. I had some positive feed back. Not everybody was keen on the music I had used my initial idea was to have an avant-guard jazz music however I have found none suitable. The lack of diversity was also highlighted. I shall endeavor to widen the types of hands used for the project. some felt that the pace was a bit labored in places and the poster introduced at the end need to have better differentiation between the text and the background images.

Images

When I first start to develop my idea for The National Trust campaign I knew it would rely heavily on images. For one of the first mock ups I searched for images using Google and found an image of a Tudor window.

Stained glass window overlooking gardens of Montacute House

  The image was royalty free however I need more than just this image. I also need the images to be from National Trust property. After further research I discovered that not only was  Montacute House was owned by the National Trust other images I found where from the National trusts own image library. I sent an email to them explaining I was doing a project for the National Trust via D&AD and could I have access to their images. I got a replay say if I registered I would be given acces to thier images and would not be chareged for the ones they had commisioned. They have thousands and thousands of images. Using a combination of their normal website I could search for a property and then afterward search for the images of that property on the image site.

Montacute House copyright National Trust

Fonts and Logos

Included as part of the branding package we where given, there was a link to The National trusts branding website. After registering I discovered that as a student I could not gain access to the National Trust fonts so I had to find a work round. After a little research I found that 'optima' was a pretty good approximation for their font. However I wanted to use their font where ever possible. I screen grabbed the examples the had in their branding guidelines. I cleaned and sharpen the images in Photoshop afterwards I opened them in Illustrator and converted them to vector file.

National trust font

At this point I worked out that if I used 'Optima' as a template at 82 points, allowing me to write out the new text I wanted and copy and paste the new letters over the top on another layer in illustrator. This works quite well but is very time consuming I wanted to find a quicker way of working. I looked a various free software and later tried a website called http://www.myscriptfont.com/ the site allowed me to drop letters into a template and then it would generate the font I wanted. I spent a good part of the day trying to get it to work and down load a few example of the font it had created for me. In the end I gave up on this and returned to my original way of working.

Unused created font

Ideas Dropped

One of my first concepts was to have a poster where the hands pass the membership card from one hand to another.

Mock up

Using images I found on the net I have made a few mock ups at a later stage I will photograph some hands to us in this project.

2nd Mock up

I thought about adding an image behind the text. This idea was short lived after seeing an advert made for the National Trust for a co-promotion with a bank.

Branding Guide Lines

Key points from Branding

They say in their branding guide lines, 'The National Trust style is designed to inspire people, by putting the supporter first, helping us to be welcoming inviting, talking in a warm and authentic way, and celebrating places.' 

  The oak leaf symbol, which we’ve used since the 1930s, they dropped the ‘The’, to make them less formal. The oak leaf and logotype together form their logo. It can be any of their colours. The oak leaf and logotype must both be in the same colour. Wherever possible, the layout of covers and posters is based on the idea of a picture in a frame. The frame is where we invite people in. 

The frame is the area surrounding the picture, and includes the logotype, a frame-line and text. They have a palette of 21 colours, inspired by the rich colours found in the Trust, from forests to fabrics. All are fresh and inviting. 

 They have our own typeface, designed to be warm and easy to read: modern and yet timeless too. It’s inspired by a 1748 inscription, originally in the grotto at Stourhead. They have four types of fonts in the National trust family, Display, Bold Regular and Italic. They use photographs as a key tool to inspire supporters to do more with us. They should therefore draw people in: they should be evocative, atmospheric and intriguing. Photographs should be relaxed and natural, and never artificial or contrived. Illustrations should be powerfully expressive, capturing the illustrator’s experience of a National Trust place.