How To Survive Freshers Flu?

Brief:

Identifying a Problem

Location:

- Finding Leeds College of Art

-Finding your way around Leeds College of Art

-Find your way around Leeds

Money/Budget:

-Buying food for yourself

-Budgetting during Freshers Week

-Getting an N.U.S Card

Social Factors:

-Meeting new people

-Trying not to hate new people

-Making friends

-Knowing where to go out

Working:

-Juggling work and your degree

-Deadlines

-Creative block

-Work load

Health:

-Eating properly

-Drinking too much alcohol

-Smoking too much

This list was then narrowed down into our group's "top 10" challenges that a student at Leeds College of Art, studying Graphic Design could face, and then into just 3.

The list was handed to a group on the next table, meaning we received a question from another table. This question was what we were given to work with in conjunction to the brief:

How To Survive Freshers Flu?

Initial Ideas

We worked closely with the brief, using the questions on it as starting points:

(highlighted in green are ideas we decided to take further)

The highlighted areas show the routes we decided to go down.

What to produce?

The answer to our problem would obviously be to cure "Freshers Flu", or prevent it. We chose to produce a Survival Kit, in order to help people get better. I researched into Survival Kits and packaging, in order to find some inspiration. This can be found here.

Tone of Voice: Obviously Freshers Flu is not a real disease, just a nickname made up for being ill from partying way too much during Freshers week. We want to treat it as if Freshers Flu was a serious epidemic, that needed to be stopped. We decided to use a strong, formal tone in order to create irony with a comic effect.

Who needs to know?

Students is the obvious answer, as they are the supposing sufferers.

We also discussed other audiences:

- Doctors. If this problem is apparently "out of hand", then doctors would need to know how to treat it.

-University Tutors. Does Freshers Flu create a direct correlation to student's work? How can Tutors help their students with attendance, as well as paying attention?

- Parents. Most university students have moved away from home for the first time, what can concerned parents do to keep a watchful eye on their offspring?

-General Public. eg. Cab Drivers, Leeds locals etc... Do university students frustrate them, and can this disease spread further into the general public?

What do they need to know?

Treating this as an actual problem, it is clear that our audience need to know every detail about this growing problem:

-Symptoms. Students need to know how it can be identified and so they can take action as soon as possible.

-Prevention. How can students learn to avoid it?

-Treatment. What is the best method of curing it, and will they need some prescribed drugs, or can it be cured by home remedy?

Why do they need to know?

Freshers Flu can cause serious health risks. Not just the consumption of toxins into the body, but also the effect in which these have.

How will we tell them?

Being directed at students, our promotion would need to be in places which students would find, as well as pay attention to.

Freshers Fair. As a student myself, I know that most students attend the fair, particularly for the freebies. If we promoted the campaign here, people will pick up any leaflet as long as something is given away with it.

Flyposting. In Leeds, I noticed a considerable amount of posters around my halls. We could possibly stick some up around different student locations, such as on campus or outside halls of residence. We could also attempt to stick them up inside campus buildings, clubs and the Student Union.

-Student Magazines. It would be interesting to see how many people would read an article or advert in a student magazine to do with Freshers Flu.

-Merchandise. I would like to have a wide range of products to promote the problem, these could include T- shirts, posters, stickers etc.. The wider the range of products, the more likely people are to notice our campaign.

Branding

We decided that as we are treating Freshers Flu as a serious problem, we would act as a branch from the NHS, in a similar way to "Drinkaware" and "Talk To Frank".

Research Conclusions. After careful analysis of NHS as a brand, we summarised the following about the NHS "brand":

-Colour: They mainly use a royal blue and complimentary orange to promote.

-Typeface: Friendly and easy to read, such as Helvetica, Arial, Futura and Myriad.

-Wording: Common use of second person singular pronoun "you", as they want to talk directly to their audience.

-Facts: To make a strong impact and to raise awareness of different health issues, the NHS include facts to give certainty.

Name: We chose to go with "FHS"- Freshers Health Service. We chose this as the name makes it clear that we are a sub - service of the NHS, and also seems to be serious.

Logo

We were inspired by the Greek symbol for medicine- The Caduceus, a logo often associated with ambulances.

We replaced the staff with a beer bottle (representing the cause of the problem), as well as a stethoscope instead of two snakes (representing medicine).

We wanted to create the logo as a simple stencil, so that it stands out against a background, as well as giving it much more clarity.

Above are sketches that I came up with when considering the logo. The most difficult part of the logo was giving the shapes a 3D appearance without using any tone. The page on the left shows three ideas I came up with for the bottom of the stethoscope, whilst on the right I have shown the progression from the flat shape of the headphones to the clearer curved edges.

Leaflet and Box

We decided to just focus on two pieces of design: A leaflet which holds information to inform and direct, and a Survival Kit to cure the problem. The idea was that Students could pick up a leaflet at a Freshers Fair, and fill in their details to take to their local Doctors Surgery so that they can receive their free pack of freebies. (The location of the box changed after feedback)

Initial Ideas For Leaflet:

-Prescription. We liked the idea of creating a fake prescription form, where the details have been changed to details of Freshers Flu. The students would hand these in at the doctors (like you would with a real prescription at a pharmacy) to receive their pack. The prescription would also list the free products that the students would receive, motivating them to pick it up.

-Social Networking. We considered creating a Facebook or Twitter page, as these are commonly used by students. The leaflet would contain information on the links to where these could be found on Networking Sites.

Initial Ideas For Box:

-Nicorette. A common problem is "smokers cough". In the pack we thought to include a nicorette patch in order to help the student quit the bad habit.

-Water. An essential in everyday life, and commonly craved by anyone with a hangover.

- Something Containing Lots Of Sugar. We chose to go with Haribo sweets, as they will fit well in our pack. These are to give students energy they had burnt off from very little sleep and heavy socialising.

-Tissues. An obvious item to include for cold sufferers.

-Lemsip. The same reason as above.

-Tea bags. When ill or hungover, tea bags provide much needed comfort.

Feedback of Initial Ideas

We presented and discussed our ideas with another group, and this is the feedback we received:

Key Points Brought Up & Solution:

-Not too serious. We need to be careful that the campaign is not TOO serious, as this takes away from the humour.

-Students are too lazy to go to the doctors. When picking the pack up, we have decided to change it so they can pick the packs up then and there at the Freshers Fair, and the leaflets are used merely for information.

-Using social networking is a good idea. Having heard positive feedback, I have decided to create a Twitter Page for the FHS. This also means we are able to receive feedback from people that have picked up the packs on if they have helped or not. It also means that students can ask questions they have about symptoms etc..

Completed Leaflet

Front - Prescription

We wanted to make this prescription look as genuine a possible. This was so that when the Fresher is handed the leaflet, they are confused as to why they have been given a prescription. After a second look, they realise that the symptoms and prescribed medicine are cures to what they are suffering from, and pick up a survival kit.

We replicated several things:

- The same typeface used in prescriptions.

- A signature of our doctor "Dr Fred Resher"

-Similar wording, with the use of "(s)", "quant." and "TWO TO BE TAKEN TWICE A DAY"

- We even changed the treatement time to 14 days, ie. the same as Freshers Week.

Back - Information

As you can see, we chose to use the same colour scheme as the NHS, as well as adding the NHS logo. We also added a fact in the style of the NHS.

We chose to use Century Gothic as our font, as it gives the feel of being friendly, as well as informative.

Formality: As we learnt from our feedback, we should not treat Freshers Flu as an extremely serious issue, as that takes away the comic factor. We chose to use a friendly tone, in order to appeal to students.

Another thing we learnt from our feedback is that the use of social networking seems appealing. This is why we included a twitter address at the top of the page.

We made the form at the bottom easy to use and fill out. It also includes all the necessary details to use for a survey (which could have been possible if we had more times). This would tell us how many people have picked up Freshers Survival Kits.

Twitter Page

This is the Twitter Page I made for "Dr. Fred Resher", the FHS doctor.

Benefits of the Twitter page:

- Students often use Twitter, so it could be their easier source of communication.

-It is also the easier form of feedback. Students can also discuss problems in privacy as oppose to having to go to the doctors.

Survival Kit

Labels of Box Contents

Below are labels my group produced to stick onto the products that go inside the box. Like the prescription receipt, these replicate medicinal packaging. We also tried to make them the same size as the stickers you would see on a prescription.