Project focus
Concept
Sara Acosta is an artist that mainly does photography and videography. Although she is a flexible creative that can tackle down any project in any context, her work is highlighted for taking place under the water. We both like and understand each others work and we believe a collaboration would boost our careers.
As an artist, she measures the quality of her work by the impact this has on the audience. Nevertheless, designers should work to solve problems. For an effective collaboration, the most important factor is to perfectly understand who Sara is and what she needs. Solving her problem will be the answer to take our work as far as possible.
To know more about Sara and to know what to design, I need to understand her brand. Using a tool called 'Core' that is usually for branding, the intention is to define Sara's mission, clients and priorities in a simple sentence.
Previous opportunities/Problems
Sara is an artists that is growing at an incredible pace thanks to her high quality work and social media. One of the first chats I had with her was about an award she received at Art Jobs (USA) to the best international artist.
She comments that she has had great opportunities of work in countries like Australia or Chile, which is a good indicator of the global repercussion her work has. She has rejected this opportunities, since her objective is to develop her career in the Canaries. The next step for her is to what she calls 'dress' her photographs. In other words, she needs to place them in a professional context, so her clients can understand and value her work as a possible way to advertise their products. For example, this can be done by using her photographs as fashion magazines, posters for famous sport brands, etc.
The other problem she talks about is the lack of designers in Las Palmas in opposition with the great opportunities she see in the local and international advertisement sector.
Defining the brief: Core
Brand Attributes
'Core' is the tool that facilitates the strategy that defines the brief and what needs to be done.
The process was quite long. It required hours and hours of conversations over the phone and many notes. Summarised, the definition of the attributes of Sara's brand allowed us to know more about each other, which re-inforced the professional bond.
In this process, the objective is that Sara points out the direction of the project instead of doing a research without aiming first.
For that, the values of culture, users, tone of voice, emotional benefit and value were defined with single words. Then, three words of each column were shortlisted for a final selection of only one word per column.
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| Apologies. Some of the words are in Spanish. |
The result was 5 words that defined down to the 'T' Sara's mission and, what's more important for her, but the process was what allowed me to understand her business much better.
The sentence is the following: 'Sara Acosta offers photographic and video shows to inaccessible users in an open-minded environment with a transgressor tone of voice helping them to feel unique'.
She wants to let clients know she is more than a photographer, an artist that can communicates and that creates content of high quality accessible for big businesses in the Canaries.
Target audience
After many conversations about who she wanted to be the target audience, we concluded that it has to be local fashion agencies and international ambitious clients. She also had interests i aiming to other industries like hostelry, cinema or food. This process helped to identify the international audience she really wants to aim her work to.
The following examples of audience are two imaginary persons with their own personalities that can fit the role of the perfect client.
1.- Josh Gallagher, 42. London
Demographics: Josh is married and he is the father of two girls. His character and tenacity have taken him to be one of the most successful businessmen in London. He is the owner of an IT company.
Story/problems/challenges: Josh's story is full of success, but also of failure. He is not an easy person to impress and he doesn't pretend anything. He is obsessed with what seems impossible to achieve and the services/products of his company are the results of his beliefs.
Needs. Why?: He has an intrinsic need of being the first in anything he puts his mind in. He is ambitious, and despite not trying to impress others, he is happy with impressing himself.
How to surpass his needs: Sara can offer the innovation that reflects his challenges, needs and ambitions. This could be taken to the next level adding more dimensions of exclusivity to a job done for him. For example, not only a photographic campaign under the water, but the model under the water look like it is in the real world but with the physical attributes of being under the water (weightlessness, oniric perception, etc).
2.- Aanisa El-Hashem, 23, Dubai.
Demographics: Aanisa is the daughter of an arab sheikh and has a life anyone would envy. He is not wasteful, but she doesn't count pennies when she finds what she wants.
Story/problems/challenges: Aanisa was always a spoiled girl during her childhood, but she experimented a change when she was in her 20's that made her become more mature. She is now a businesswoman dedicated to luxury cosmetics. She doesn't like to be on the media, but her fame precedes her and it's inevitable that her name comes up here and there from time to time.
Needs. Why?: She wants to position her business and products as goods that multimillionaires buy but they are also accessible for people with less acquisitive level. She wants to project this image to be the most desired brand of cosmetics.
How to surpass her needs: It's very important for Aanisa to project this image of exclusivity and make their audience feel unique. To take this even further, she considers to make an advertisement campaign not only with the aesthetics Sara can offer, but also to extend this aesthetic and embed it into the brand, so in the stores everything can have a feeling of being underwater. It would be like being in a world of dreams where only the select elite can access to.
Visual research
Now that we know the kind of style we are aiming for, I started to research into designs I already knew about and new ones. I was trying to look for minimalist and powerful designs that could potentially go well along Sara's photos.
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