BUKI COLLECTIVE
Our design studio decided to take on Key4Life's type-driven project brief for the 2021 D&AD New Blood Awards
Meet Our design team
Key4Life
Backstory
In 2019 over 60,000 children were arrested in 2019 for over 14,000 knife crime offenses in the UK. Key4Life has a mission to reduce youth reoffending knife crime through the delivery of an innovative 7-step program that focuses on children; specifically young men aged 10-20 who are in prison, at risk of going to prison, and caught up in knife crime.
Those who have gone through the program share a passion to continue the work and help other young men escape the issue of knife crime so as not to follow in their footsteps. Through Key4Life's prison and preventative programs only 14% have reoffended, compared to the national rate of 64% reoffending the year after they're released from prison in the UK.
Design Problem
How can Key4Life cut through the noise and talk directly to young people to help them realize that knife crime isn't the only option?
Solution
Create a typographic-led campaign that uses the power of words and the visceral qualities of typography to stop young people in their tracks and help them realize implications of knife crime so they open their minds to discover other paths. We must include the Key4Life branding assets and our campaign must have one static element, one digital element, and one non-traditional touchpoint.
RESEARCH & BRAINSTORMING
TIFFANY'S RESEARCH
Tiffany made sure to cover the socio-economic constraints and cause of the problem. She found reasons why this issue was occurring, such as their safety needs and self esteem needs not being met.
PAUL'S RESEARCH
Paul did strategy competitor analysis to look at similar UK businesses that also focus on knife crime, and what their strategy is when tackling the issue. He found great insights looking between them all, and ways that we could be more unique in our approach.
STEPHANIE'S RESEARCH
Stephanie looked at visual competitors, and the content that was already out there for preventing knife crime. She found that certain campaigns and businesses putting out content did not have the engaging aspect that we were expecting to see.
ERIN'S RESEARCH
Erin looked at academic and scholar research and found that studies have been done and there were lots of statistics on knife crime. The research came up that the majority are young men, and they are mainly carrying knives due to gang relations and overall fear for their lives.
CAROLINE'S RESEARCH
Caroline looked at language and visual research to find how the UK is different in terms of speech and their popular visuals. She found lots of different slang that was very useful when considering what we would say to the audience, and found their typographic visual trends that we could be inspired from.
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH
We also found instrumental data showing specifically where the majority of knife crime was found and also how that related to how well that area was regulated by police. And this quote from previous research was very useful: "Also the Landscape of Fear: the young people's sense of fear and anxiety. 'Why do u carry a knife?' -they described a landscape of fear; ungoverned, unpoliced, and unsafe spaces. Places with no capable guardians, nobody governing those spaces, whether that’s online, a location, or school. To protect yourself in this hypersensitive environment u carry a knife. Young people will get involved in the mythology of carrying a knife, they think everyone is carrying a knife, even though that’s not true, but they don’t see it like that. They’re almost paranoid. And then there is the rise of mental health and anxiety of young people around the UK. And the costs of the services to help makes it inaccessible to young people." -National Centre for Gang Research at the University of West London
BRAINSTORMING
After finding all the research and areas of the issue of knife crime we felt confident to move on to the brainstorming part of our solution.
CONCEPT IDEATION
We went through a process determining what we needed our design solution to convey, and came up with conceptual ideas based off of those necessities to include.
A quick round of crazy 8's was done to get the ball rolling and begin the ideation process. So each person came up with really any idea for a solution off the top of their head, and then we looked over those to see if any could be expanded upon.
Our favorite ideas from crazy 8's were then compiled down into a more narrow list.
Which were separated into 3 main concepts.
Key adjectives were established to help us find our voice and a round of voting was done to come up with our final words: loud, approachable, understanding, inspiring, and brighter future.
SYSTEM PLANNING
The process and system were fully mapped out to connect what needed to be accomplished and how, creating a plan of attack for the project deliverables.
FINAL SYSTEM
DESIGN PROCESS
A few rounds of thumbnails were done to get initial graphic ideas out plus voting was conducted to highlight top ideas.
Bouncing off of everyone's thumbnails, a list of headlines were generated to act as a base for the typographic treatments to be explored further.
VISUAL EXPLORATION
TIFFANY TYPE EXPLORATIONS
Tiffany went through the past success stories of Key4Life and drew quotes out from their stories.
She also did type explorations that the rest of the team was able to vote on to give her insight as to what we were liking of hers.
PAUL'S TYPE EXPLORATIONS
Paul focused on exploring hand made typography with the use of various traditional art materials (charcoal, ink, markers, etc).
STEPHANIE'S TYPE EXPLORATIONS
Stephanie tried various typefaces and texture explorations for type.
ERIN'S TYPE EXPLORATIONS
Erin did different explorations of typefaces and hand drawn type
CAROLINE'S TYPE EXPLORATIONS
Caroline started with some digital typefaces with the intention of exploring further by distorting them for a futuristic/technological feel.
EXECUTION OF DELIVERABLES
Our first deliverable was the static element. We chose to create a series of posters and each explored different styles and ideas that fit the overall concept.
FURTHER POSTER VARIATIONS
After our first round of poster roughs we did many variations refinements, making sure to include color explorations, hand drawn type, and personal imagery.
After the second round we looked at how we could make them more cohesive as a whole, and even asked people we knew in the target audience age range for feedback. We found they liked a lot of the bright colors, but too many bright colors may cause it to feel less serious. So we needed to find a balance in between.
TIFFANY'S ROUGHS
Tiffany did some more type and color exploration in her poster roughs, and did mockups for the wall projection.
PAUL'S ROUGHS
Paul did variations on the poster with different colors and hand done type.
STEPHANIE'S ROUGHS
Stephanie did roughs for our Instagram story deliverable, and used silhouettes of the figures from Key4Life's page and also hand done type.
ERIN'S ROUGHS
Erin did more variations for the poster using different spray paint texture and hand done type. And variations for the animated wall projected.
CAROLINE'S ROUGHS
Caroline did more with the poster by using silhouettes as well, and Paul's hand done type in different colors and layouts.
TIFFANY'S ROUGHS ROUND 2
Tiffany worked more on our interactive wall, that we were exploring as a possible deliverable as well as more poster roughs.
PAUL'S ROUGHS ROUND 2
Paul did more roughs for the poster deliverable.
STEPHANIE'S ROUGHS ROUND 2
Stephanie did animations for the Instagram story delivarble.
ERIN'S ROUGHS ROUND 2
Erin did more poster roughs and animated gifs for the wall projection deliverable.
CAROLINE'S ROUGHS ROUND 2
Caroline did more poster roughs, and did animations for the projection as well.
REFINING THE STYLE
At this point the final color palette was established and the poster series was becoming more cohesive in style application. At this point work on the second and third deliverable begun with some rough animation explorations in Procreate and After Effects
TIFFANY'S REFINED ROUGHS ROUND 2
PAUL'S REFINED ROUGHS ROUND 2
STEPHANIE'S REFINED ROUGHS 2
ERIN'S REFINED ROUGHS ROUND 2
CAROLINE'S REFINED ROUGHS
Caroline continued to work on the animated projection in AfterEffects.
POSTER STYLES
After our several variations done with different type, texture, and color combinations we were able to organize them out into 4 solid styles, and then voted on our favorites for each style so we could move forward and further refine the design.
DELIVERABLES
DELIVERABLE 1 - POSTER
Tiffany did layouts for our poster deliverable that would be displayed in a guerilla marketing style of different posters in a grid. And then was able to test out different mockup layouts.
DELIVERABLE 2 - INSTAGRAM STORY ANIMATED GIFS
Stephanie did variations on animated gifs for the Instagram story deliverable.
DELIVERABLE 3 - ANIMATED PROJECTION
Paul, Erin, and Caroline worked on different frames for the animated projection, here are a few stills that give the feel of how we were making the video.
FINALS
DESIGN NARRATIVE
The target audience is no stranger to the knife crime problem. They are used to being talked down to and patronized. Our solution communicates to them on their level through understanding and inspiring them without directly saying ‘put down the knife. The stories of Key 4 Life members became the base of the design solution. Inspirational quotes were pulled to be featured on the deliverables in handwriting that feels human and raw. Silhouettes of the members were used to give the information a face while keeping an anonymous feeling. The viewer can see themselves in the message in a way that feels personal. Textures were added to appeal to the target group, making it feel more like street art to grab attention.