This has been the best brief yet. I had to create a mailshot that reinforces my message from the previous posters. My resolution had to fit inside the size of an envelope (11.5cm x 16cm) and again we could only use 2 colours plus stock. The mailshot had to be easy enough to reproduce as I would have to create 10 editions for the final submission. I also had to think about an appropriate mailing list for the 10 editions, one version would have to be sent to college which will determine if the stock used was suitable for a mailshot.
We created some open and closed questions as well as found out some facts and opinions on our chosen message. The open questions seemed like they would engage the audience a bit more and lead onto more interest. I had to think about the what, why, how and who as well and write my own brief from this.
WHAT? The sea covers approximately 71% of the earths surface, yet we have surveyed less than 1% of the ocean floors.
WHY? To make people aware and become more interested. Hopefully this will give the subject more credability.
HOW? Through something that pulls/folds/pops out to reveal so much more... linking to the "what?".
WHO? Aimed at schools (teachers) to maybe teach their class about it so kids can do something about it in the future, promote interest.
I thought about different ways in which my audience could interact with my mailshot to make it more interesting. I looked into something which pops out of the envelope to make the people jump but I didn't think this would really fit with what I was trying to say. As my "what?" includes facts and figures, I wondered if I could do something to represent the 71% and the 1%.
I liked the idea of pulling a line of information out of the envelope and it demonstrating 100% of the ocean... with a small 1% of it that we actually know about. I felt that a horizontal feel was better for my subject matter as then I could show more sea floor. I tried to stick with the same style and design I used in my final posters to continue the theme.
I thought about the process of making this and it seemed quite simple. It was similar to the net of the original envelope with some sides to make it thicker so it could hold the inner line of "sea". I originally experimented with tracing paper and soon realised this wouldn't be appropriate as I could only use one stock and tracing paper would easily rip in the post and would also be transparent. I tested my idea on card and it seemed to work just aswell.
Designing was quite simple once I had decided upon the net as I already had a starting point (my posters) and from my research I had background information and knew which stock I would use. I had also been down to the digital print room and discovered that I would have to make some adjustments, such as shortening the inner line of "sea" due to cost and was that I was unable to print double sided on my selected stock.
I decided to use an open ended question to create more interest. "How much do we know about the ocean floor?" Doesn't really communicate that much but when teamed with the inner "sea" I thought it would create quite a powerful statement.
When I showed my ideas in a group crit, the feedback I received was pretty positive (much better than the poster!). A few suggestions were made, one of which about the information inside the envelope. I had thought about putting some text informing what we can do about the fact we know so little about the ocean floors. I had done some extra research and found out some interesting facts, such as it took over 70 years to find Titanic. In the crit, someone suggested that my target audience may not relate to this fact as it is not in a childs lifetime. I began to think more about what kids would find interesting. For my final design I used 3 facts and 2 statements. My facts were about dinosaurs, Titanic and the sunken city of Pavlopetri. All of these facts related to my subject.
I created my design in Illustrator to create the same feeling as my poster and for them to be consistent. I also used the same colours. Above are the files I used, when I printed them I got rid of the fold lines. I used the font Gill Sans Ultra Bold for the main headings. I felt that this worked really well with the style of illustration and doesn't argue with the message or is too overpowering. I wanted the text and image to work alongside each other and feel each needs the other in this mailshot which I am fine with, I don't think it would have worked with just text or just image. For the informative text I used Gill Sans to keep the theme and same font family.
The images below show how I produced the final resolution. I didn't encounter any problems whilst producing my 10 mailshots so I was very pleased! I just had to cut out the inner and outer nets and stick together.
Here is my mailshot in action...
