Streets of Leeds Brief Overview

A student on DFGA came to me about creating some vector artwork for the title sequence of his documentary about the homeless. The short film documents the lives of several homeless people and the struggles they have gone through. It also looks at a positive outcome of how we can help to get them off the streets and provide work for them. Tom came with a few rough sketches of what he was wanting and a basic outline to what the title sequence needed to show. 

He basically wanted to animate a logo to show the progression of Leeds and how it has changed. The first section he wanted needed to  display the Yorkshire country side with the pagan farmers working the fields. This then transitions to the rise of Leeds and the Big City,  incorporating the homeless within this slide. Then the final section shows the homeless tending to the allotments which relates to a program which has been set up to help the homeless get back on their feet.

Streets of Leeds Brief

Streets of Leeds documentary treatment

 

‘Streets of Leeds’ is an observational documentary following several members of the homeless community in and around Leeds/Hyde Park area. The aim of the documentary is to grant the audience a glimpse into the day-to-day life of the homeless community. Exploring their history and roots, examining their downward spirals towards living on the streets. Giving a platform for expression to a voiceless community. ‘Streets of Leeds’ follows organizations and movements around the homeless situation that offers new alternatives in feeding and utilizing the community.

Logo Synopsis / Brief

For the title sequence of the film I need assets for an animated logo that will personify the topic and connotations addressed in the film. I will need 3 frames of the logo that will animate into a cityscape of Leeds. The first frame must incorporate pagan farmers who are farming rolling hills of Yorkshire. Farmers are farming the land so I will need assets of farmers ploughing the land. The people movement only needs to be simple 2 frames.
 The next frame must depict a 20^th century city setting where the fields have now disappeared and have been replaced by a silhouette of iconic Leeds buildings. People on the streets drinking have replaced the farmers with the same 2 frame animation style.
 
The final frame of the logo must incorporate the two previous frames. The cityscape must expand, with flowerbeds and blooming flowers/vegetables in the foreground, where the crops once existed. The drinkers have now moved on and replaced with people tending the blooming allotments.   

Creative Advertising - Final Products

 Acetate Window Display 1

 

 Acetate Window Display 2

 Pull out Tab Flyer

Blurry Flyer

Unfinished Book

 Light Box Sign

 Business Cards

 Yellow Wooden Sign

Secret Monitor

Deliverable's

Risk Assesments

In order to find out what the deal was with advertising around college and having installations we spent around 2 days being sent from person to person. We eventually got passed on to estates and health and safety who we explained our project too. It turned out we had to fill out countless risk assessment forms in order to have our adverts up around college. This was not something we initially expected and was a bit of a pain. But we learned that Britain's health and safety laws are pretty ridiculous. However it was a life lesson and we know better for next time. After filling out the forms we had the go ahead to carry out our business. 

From here we had to go rent out a podium and also get a secure frame made to hold the light box and find a suitable place to put it up where no one can get in the way or get injured. We found a few spots around college and then made a decision. We then had to draw a plan of where we were going to put the installations with a method statement about our intentions.

Creative Advertising - Tab Flyer

Outside Yellow Sleeve

We decided to create A6 flyers as they are small and can be easily picked up and taken away. I tried a few different versions to see which worked best. The idea was to have a sleeve with sections cut out so that the text is unreadable until the inside flyer is slotted out. I stuck with the yellow and blue colour scheme to keep it all consistent. I found that the yellow and white version did not have enough impact and made the writing quite hard to read. I used the NYC imagery to reference the film 

Inside Yellow Sleeve

The inside flyer contained the details on the time and place where the movie screening will be played. We wanted to keep information to a minimum in order to give it that ambiguity.

Yellow Mock Up 1

 

The first design I produced did not work very well. The inside piece only needed to be pulled out 1cm to line up with the gaps which was not much of a transition and made the product a bit pointless.

In order to make the whole concept more obvious I had to re design the components so that there was more of a transition when pulling out the insert.

Yellow Mock Up 2

The second version worked much better as the insert needed to be pulled out much further than before, this was much more effective and here you can see the insert being pulled out to reveal the desire text.

Blue Outside Sleeve

We decided that the yellow version was not bold enough and didnt sit with the rest of the products so I decided to use the NYC imagery for the whole design, this had a much stronger visual impact and kept intune with the rest of the campaign. I incorporated both the yellow and blue aspects to keep the consistency. I added a few changes to make the flyer more useable like the finger section indicating where to pull the flyer out from.

Blue Inside Sleeve

The inside sleeve contains details of the movie screening and more visual references to the movies setting. Hopefully because this flyer is different to the standard ones you see lying around it will entice people to pick one up and hopefully come to the showing.

Blue Mock Ups