OUGD504 STUDIO BRIEF FOUR - CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

After figuring out what Bear's Den's latest album ISLANDS is about, and getting a feel for the music, the next stage was to come up with a concept for the campaign website, one which interacted with the audience, and made people come back to the website time and time again to make sure they haven't missed anything. Some inspiration for the concepts, or to get the ideas rolling was listening to peers ideas in critiques and discussions, as everyone has such different ideas, that are all effective in their own ways, and personalised for their specific band and album.

It was difficult to come up with a concept exactly initially, as I didn't really know how to start. Eventually ideas started forming, the initial one being photograph incentives, so every week the band posts a photograph with a specific theme and a hashtag, such as #InTheDen, #BeFree or #Islands, the hashtag being consistent throughout the campaign. The challenge will be for the public to create their own version of the bands photograph, however they see fit, and one winner per week will be chosen by the band to win something. This is a very visual campaign, very photographic, and the themes could be one for each song on the album, revealing a bit about each song but not really at the same time. However it is unsure how this concept would work on a website visually, or how it will work at all really except on Instagram.
Another idea started out as "make your island" playing more on the name of the album. So on the website would be a sea illustration, and each week a new island would appear, with a link to something such as a competition, exclusive clips, or samples from the new album. You could also find things hidden in the islands, to find extra content or win something special. There could also be a hashtag trend, #MyIsland, encouraging people to create their own islands, their own worlds and share them with the world. This is much more of a solid, relevant concept which has a clear link to the album itself, and will work really well digitally on a website, whilst also be engaging and making people come back to find the next clue.

The next stage was to refine the make your own island idea, as this one was the most solid idea, and to determine each aspect of it, how it will actually work.

-The island illustration will be based on a specific set of islands which are relevant to the band or album.
- It could perhaps used the colours from the actual album cover, blue and white, to create a cohesive aesthetic.
- Each week a new island will develop, which is a link to a new element.
Links to:
- Competition to win VIP tickets to their tour
- Competition to win a signed album
- Competition to win a signed vinyl
- Exclusive video of the production of the album
- Q & A exclusive interview about the album with the band
- First 50 clicks win an exclusive ISLANDS t-shirt
- #MyIsland Instagram feed, creating their own islands. 3 winners get VIP tickets and a meet and greet with the band at one of their tour dates.
- Link to buy a limited edition ISLANDS illustration from the campaign website poster.

Following on from this concept development, research will be the next step into types of illustration to produce the islands in, as at the moment watercolour is the most appropriate medium to use, however others may work just as well, perhaps acrylics watered down or inks even. Experimentation into these is definitely needed. It should also be found out which islands to base the illustrations on, as they should have some relevance to the band itself in some way, however a bit of research needs to be done to figure this out, and which islands would work best with enough islands to make up enough spaces for the links to go.