OUGD504 - Brief 4 - Instagram Filter

OUGD504: Brief 4: SONY music / ONLY studio Brief

Instagram Filter 

I created a simple gif simulating the process of using the filter and how this would be interacted with by the user on a smartphone. The GIF shows the process of choosing the image, applying the filter, Tagging the band, using custom hash tags and sharing the post. The could be used within the website as a small infographic of how to enter the instagram competition and share the images via other social media platforms. 

via GIPHY

OUGD504 - Brief 4 - Filter Development

OUGD504: Brief 4: SONY music / ONLY studio Brief

Filter Development 

The bands distinct visual aesthetic makes them recognisable and distinguishable from other bands within the genre, there collateral is consistent across a range of collateral from album covers to posters and merchandise. It is an aesthetic that appeal to the target audience with the muted tones and pastel colours representing the ambience and easy listening of their music. I planned to create an instagram filter to simulate this to allow fans to engage with the band and create their images in this distinct aesthetic to create a buzz surrounding the album. If this was a live brief it would be programmed by a developer to work within the app however for the purpose of this brief I will simulate a filter that would allow a similar aesthetic to the bands collateral to represent how this would work on a live scale. 

I started with pure experimentation, testing different photo filters and adjustment settings in photoshop. Through the process of these developments I started to come close to the desired aesthetic however it was still inconsistent with the bands aesthetic for example the brightness was too high in experiment 1 and there was too much of a colour overlay produced when developing experiment 2. I felt I needed a clearer direction in order to progress. I showed a photography student the bands album cover and asked if she knew how the photograph would have been produced. She said it was most likely taken with 35 mm film which produced the gains texture and colours within the picture, This was really helpful as with a better understanding of the original I could then start to develop my filter with a better insight. 

I then searched online how to replicate a 35mm film in photoshop and found the basis for my final filter, this gave more specific adjustments to add such as motion blurs, curve adjustments and colour overlays. Although I needed to extensively tweak this to produce an aesthetic as similar as possible to the original I created a filter that fits in well with the existing aesthetic of the bands visual identity and would be recognisable as 'The Japanese House' I then applied this with the boarder used surrounding the bands images to create the final filter. Having identified limitations with developing the filter myself and using photoshop as the primary tool for this, I accepted that the resolution would never be perfect however I feel the final filter works within the context of simulating what a live procedure would look like. 

With a filter developed I then applied this across a range of original photography to be able to simulate how the filter will work across a range of images and will be of use when designing the digital website as this will showcase the uploaded images. The filter translated successfully across the breath of photography creating a range of images that are similar to the brands visual aesthetic. These images will be used within the design of the website and gives a better representation of how fans can apply the filter to their own photography to create the engaging aesthetic of the band. 

OUGD504 - Brief 4 - Concept Feedback

OUGD504: Brief 4: SONY music / ONLY studio Brief

Concept Feedback

With a concept formulated I presented it to a group of students for feedback,  I asked specific questions in order to get the most out of the feedback to which students responded really well to. I asked would you engage with a similar campaign? students mostly agreed to this elaborating with previous competitors they have entered, with a good percentage of these being through instagram. 

I then asked how they felt the target audience would react to the campaign, students felt their engagement with social media would ensure the target audience react positively and actively engage with the campaign one student said 'I think this would be really cool and the fans would definitely get involved because their target audience is quite hipster-ish so will love the instagram filter'. 

Finally I asked if students felt the campaign will encourage sales and how this could be developed, I received feedback that the instagram aspect will create a huge buzz surrounding the album which will in turn encourage pre orders the main feedback they gave was to ensure I push the pre-orders on the digital site and maybe include some alternatives to the tour pre-sale for international fans. I think this is good feedback and will consider limited edition rewards/bonuses for fans that pre order the album.

 More general feedback included 'really cool concept' AND 'I love the custom hash tags because it will really interact with the target audience'. This gave me confidence in my concept and encouraged me to develop this further into a resolution to the brief. 

OUGD504 - Brief 4 - Concept Development

OUGD504: Brief 4: SONY music / ONLY studio Brief

Concept Development 

Based on feedback from a group of students I found the strongest initial concept was the Instagram photography campaign as this appealed to the target audiences social lifestyle and interest in visual culture. I will identify the viability of this concept through further research and development in order to asses the potential success of this digital campaign. This infographic informed my decision as my target audience is 14-25, these statistics show the 37% of 18-29 year olds use instagram which is a significantly large proportion of the target audience. To further establish this I conducted some simple primary research asking students about their Instagram habits, I found 85% my sample used Instagram on a daily basis. I also found that 65% of students have entered Instagram competitions or giveaways and of these students the average number of competitions entered was a 5. This research shows shows that utilising Instagram for my digital campaign would be successful as a high percentage of my target audience interact with this form of social media and engage with competitions through the application. 

The basis for my concept is a photo-filter to be used through instagram that will be an engaging extension of the bands current visual identity with the distinct aesthetic of their album, posters and collateral. The campaign will engage the target audience to apply the filter to their own photos and share them across instagram and other forms of social media using custom hash tags to promote the album and create a buzz surrounding its release. 

The photos shared with the hash tag will be entered into a competition to be used on the bands merchandise, this will further engage the target audience to share photos with the incentive of a prize. 

This will utilise social media creating a buzz around the album however to encourage pre orders of the album the digital website will have a pre-order section that when a user signs up to pre order the album they will receive an exclusive pre-sale code to the bands upcoming tour to ensure a a higher chance of  getting a ticket for the tour. 

The digital website will have a live feed of the entries to instagram filter competition displaying fan photography on the website in real time, there will be a pre-sale section, upcoming information about the tour and blog posts from the band to make the fans feel more connected to the band members. 

These components will all come together succinctly to create a cohesive and engaging digital campaign that appeals to the target audience using social media to create a buzz surrounding the release of the album and will encourage pre-orders through the incentive to receive a pre-sale code for the tour. Further futures of the digital website are used to further engage the audience and keep them returning to the website with constantly updated information and blog posts adding extra insight to the album such as 'behind the scenes' and 'updates form amber'. This will create a immersive digital experience for the target audience that will ultimately create an engaging platform for fans to engage with upon the release of the bands debut album.

OUGD504 - Brief 4 - Concept Generation

OUGD504: Brief 4: SONY music / ONLY studio Brief

Concept Generation 

Having conducted a range of focused research into music campaigns and website analysis I felt confident in generating a range of concepts for The Japanese House these needed to be relevant, focused and engaging to the target audience.  I started by bullet pointing how I could incorporate social media into my concept and summarised the target audience to ensure my concepts are focused and relatable back to the target audience. 


Soundscape website - Create an immersive website that will allow users to create their own custom soundscapes using basic music editing software similar to the bands style of music. 

Pros - Creative and engaging
          Sharable on social media 
          Will appeal to the target audience

Cons - Time Consuming 
            Fans may find it difficult 
            cost of music editing software


Social Responsibility - Play on the name of the band to create a campaign that raises awareness of urban homeless ness around key cities globally; London, Berlin, LA. Shows a social responsibility of the band and positions them as roll models which will appeal to the target audience. Could link to homeless charity as raise awareness and funds to support them.

Pros - Socially responsible
           Supports a good cause
           In connection with a charity 

Cons - Demographics of the target audience mean they may not have a high disposable income to spend on charity donations 
             Not particularly relevant to the music
             May disinterest some fans 


Photography Campaign - Instagram campaign creating a custom filter similar to the bands visual aesthetic through their promotional photography. Fans can create their own images and upload them to social media which could then be developed into a competition. 

Pros - Very social (appealing to the target audience) 
          Creating on online buzz around the album 
          Contemporary and consistent with the bands image 

Cons - Cost of creating filter 

I feel these concepts all have varying levels of successful application. I asked a range of students which they felt the most promising concept that I should develop further into a more sophisticated concept. The students surveyed like the concept of the soundscapes however felt it would be too time consuming and wouldn't work as well on a mobile device. They felt the social responsibility targeting homelessness was the weakest concept as the socio-economic grouping of the target audience would assume they do not have a high disposable income to consider to donating to charities. Finally they felt the photography campaign was overall the strongest concept thus far as it appeal to the target audiences social forms of communication and highlighting instagram as a key application would help drive this campaign as contemporary and relevant to the target audience. One student said 'I think it would be really cool to be able to add your own pictures and if this was developed into a competition that would encourage the audience to upload and hash tag these images'. Based on this feedback I will develop the final concept into a more refined campaign that I can obtain for informed feedback as to whether the campaign will be successful. 

OUGD504 - Brief 4 - Parallax Studio Talk

OUGD504: Brief 4: SONY music / ONLY studio Brief

Parallax Studio Talk 

Laurence and Louis from Parallax studio came in to talk about designing for digital platform, they run a highly successful digital design studio in Leeds and London with an impressive client list. They introduced us to their studio, they type of work they do and gave an insight into their design process. From the talk I found that the main struggle they have is the crossover between the designers and the developers, within their studio they keep the design and development of a website separate and have found there can be issues with the crossover of the two. They explained to their top 10 tips for designing digitally to ensure the resolution is as successful as possible. 

• Wire framing - To ensue the aesthetic is feasible and reproducible across various web pages 

• Fonts - Make sure the fonts you want to use are available as web fonts 

• Responsive Design - Ensure the design is thought out and usable 

• Research - Research the target audience and ensure the design is appropriate

• Retina - Design with a range of screen sizes in mind to ensure there is no loss of quality across a range of devices

• Interactivity - Mock up any animations to spell it out for the developers

• Understanding - Make sure there is a clear dialogue between the designers developers and the client 

• Consistency - Create style guides so when handed over to the client the aesthetic can be continued

• Compromise - Prepare for honest feedback and that the client has the final word despite your personal opinions

These tips really made me aware of some of the complications found within the industry, With an understanding of these common problems I can proactively design with these in mind to get into good habits. These tips will also help me with any live project undertaken at university to present a sense of professionalism to clients and external studios. 

OUGD504 - Brief 4 - Freed By Design Talk

OUGD504: Brief 4: SONY music / ONLY studio Brief

Freed By Design Talk

Kimberly from Freed by Design came into the studio to give a brief introduction to user experience design (UX). She talked through how she became involved in user experience design and its relationship to graphic design. She highlighted the point of informed research within a project as the greatest design in the world still needs to be able to connect with the audience it needs to be marketed at to ensure success for the client. The feedback loop in terms of user experience is often a lot more user focused to ensure a successful resolution to the brief she highlighted this sketch visually representing her typical design process; 

The second half of Kimberly's talk focused more on 'what is a user' she defined these as;

• Consumers 
• Customers 
• Audience 
• People 
• HUMANS

She stressed the fact that we seem to neglect that users are humans with physical emotions just like us and that we need to design with humans in mind not just 'users' which become much more structured and stereotyped. From this we looked at different research techniques to help collate data from these HUMANS. She explained several research techniques that can be fast, efficient and most importantly cost effective. 

FOG - asking if this is a FACT, OPINION or GUESS, is important when designing for an audience as it allows the audience to remain at the focus and for the design to not run off in sporadic directions. 

Surveys - Utilising social media networks with free tools such as survey monkey to quickly compile a range of usable data that can be applied to the development of the design. 

Coffee Shop Test - Asking to buy people a coffee in exchange for their opinions on a product, feature or development of the product

Observation - getting out to the places your target audience are, experiencing the same environments they do to get a better understanding of how they live and what appeals to them. 

We then took part in a workshop sing another research technique, I was tasked to create some lean personas of the target audience for the current ONLY/SONY music brief. These personas look at creating individuals to make them more real and unique than compiling from stereotypes looking at demographics as well as their needs and wants from the product. As my target audience was made up of males and females I creates two personas that I can refer back to when designing asking the question 'would this appeal to [persona name]'

This talk/workshop helped me to understand more about the importance of appealing to an audience on a commercial level. I have gained a better knowledge of research techniques and how I can apply the to current and forte briefs as well has having a much better insight to user experience design and how this can affect the success of a product. 

OUGD504 - Brief 4 - Campaign Analysis

OUGD504: Brief 4: SONY music / ONLY studio Brief

Campaign Analysis


The next stage in my research was to analyse a range of music campaigns to understand how bands have engaged and audience and created a successful buzz surrounding the release of their latest albums. This would allow me to further understand techniques in which bands target their audience to promote their new releases. I feel this research will give me a much better understanding of music campaigns and will provide me with inspiration of how I can create an engaging digital campaign for The Japanese House. 

5 seconds of summer created an elaborate digital platform consisting of two retro games that created a truly engaging and immersive experience for the user. They also created 3D gifs and hosted their own fan convention to further push their album ultimately naming them as the biggest breakthrough artist of the year. The results of this campaign were truly impressive with over 40,000 purchases within the first 24 hours of launch and 500,000 entries to attend the fan convention. This highlights how effective a digital campaign can be when marketing appropriately at the target audience. I feel the success of this campaign largely is largely attributed to the digital awareness of the target audience allowing them to fully immerse themselves within the features of the campaign. 

Taylor Swifts campaign for the release of her album encouraged fans to purchase physical product to receive unique codes that would win them meet and greets, merchandise and tickets to the upcoming world tour. The 7 day period of the campaign added a sense of urgency and upped the hype surrounding the release of the album. The results saw over 175,000 physical CD code sales inputted showing a huge jump in sales during the first week of release. The unique codes engaged fans and saw a significant increase in sales in order to win prizes, the digital element of inputting codes was a great way to collate data allowing the marketing campaign to measure the success of the campaign much more accurately to then apply to future campaigns.

Ed Sheeran moved away from a solely digital campaign incorporating more personal factors into his campaign. He featured in a Global Q&A with youtube that received over 40,000 questions and trended globally. He performed 3 gigs in one day across multiple locations in the UK, released instant great tracks on the days leading up to the album launch and featured in an interactive TV campaign. This campaign was so extensive due to the large budget of £25,000+ however the success is reflected in this as the campaign generated over 2 million album pre-orderes as well as creating a serious hype around the album across a range of platforms such as TV, twitter and the internet.

Paloma Faith targeted a more specific audience within her marketing campaign she invited artists fans and illustrators from around the world to create their own interpretation of her album allowing them to feel connected to the artist add their personal views to the album. This campaign worked well demonstrating how a small budget can still be effective in creating a buzz surrounding the album and can be successful. The results of this campaign included 465 submissions and increased her social media following by over 88,000 followers across social media and tracked clicks on her music exceeded 15m across the campaign.

This research has given me a far better understanding of music campaigns how these can appeal to the artists target audience to create a buzz surrounding the new release of music. The campaigns analysed varied in terms of approach and budget however were all determined to be successful, I found the majority of the campaigns used social media to push the release and as a key way for fans to share and connect with the campaign. I will take this information and apply it to the generation of my own campaign. These examples have inspired me to look outside the obvious of just promoting the music as these campaigns extend form this finding unique way to appeal to the target audience and creative inventive immersive experiences for the user that builds genuine excitement surrounding the release of their favourite artists music.