Peter and Paul (continued)

Over Easter I worked full time within the studio in Sheffield. Although I really enjoyed the work it was quite gruelling to be working 9-6 during my holidays and subsequently I think my university work has taken some what of a hit.

However I don't regret it due to the valuable experience it has given me as well as helping to solidify my contact with the studio (I have been offered more work from the 23rd of May having finished for the year the week before).

This time much of the work I completed was creating gifs and images for social media campaigns. The first week was so as to create hype/keep people interested in and hopefully buying tickets for Tramlines music festival in Sheffield. The second week involved creating similar work so as to promote a campaign/competition/launch of a new beer for the Derbyshire based Thornbridge Brewery.

What I learned

This set of work particularly helped me understand and get to grasps with how context needs to be reflected in the work you produce. Although I have touched upon this before having other professionals be, at times quite brutally, honest with how a piece of work will function within a given context really helped me better understand it.

In this case it was all about keeping the work as punchy and engaging as possible given that, due to being a web campaign, it is unlikely people will spend more than a couple of seconds looking it it. Therefore it needs to say enough to entice the viewer to click to find out more and understand the promotion but be delivered in a concise way so as they won't ignore it.

Furthermore I really had to get to grips with how different demographics would be targeted by different aspects of the individual campaigns and how I could create work that would in turn maximise participation/engagement from a variety of different demographic.

Context and demographics isn't something I had thought about in too much detail when answering studio practice briefs yet is something I realise now is essential to working and being successful within the creative industry.