For the Illustrator and After Effects Projects in the CRI 300 (Digital Design Studio) course at TMU, we were asked to come up with our own brand to play with and incorporate into a poster advertisement and a 20-second long video advertisement.
I decided to bring back my interest in TV networks/channels and film/television by advertising a fictional streaming service named grove. My target audience was those who were frustrated with the complexities of finding media to watch due to the compartmentalization of the modern streaming landscape today. The name comes from nature—a grove is a group of trees with little to no undergrowth. Curated. Organized. grove.
Examples provided below: brainstorm sketches for the brand and its elements, an initial design for the poster advertisement, the poster advertisement and its out-of-home mockup, brainstorm storyboards for the video advertisement, and screenshots of frames from the video advertisement.
On the left: some brainstorm sketches for the brand and its elements. I settled on the idea of a distorted television set representing today's fractured streaming service landscape with a more organized television set representing grove. The slogan I stuck with was "TV TOO TRICKY? GET grove." On the right: an initial design for the poster advertisement, drawn in Procreate.
On the top: the final poster advertisement! The final grove logo was vectorized and touched up in Illustrator by tracing over the raster-based logo from my Procreate sketch. As previously discussed, every other streaming service is represented inside of the "tricky TV" with jagged/distorted shapes, whilst the "careful TV" represents grove—an organized and curated rabbit hole of media to watch and enjoy. Additionally, green was used as the primary colour for the grove brand as it is typically associated with ease-of-use and the greenery in natural groves!
On the bottom: in a separate course at TMU (GCM 111, Graphic Communication Technologies), I was introduced to mockups, learning how to create beautiful ones that can represent the designs one creates in the real world. This mockup places the poster on wall next to a sidewalk. Easy to view from across the street and while walking next to it. The poster advertisement could definitely be extended to other areas, such as underground in the subway, at bus shelters, or on digital displays.
Lastly, on the left: brainstorm storyboards for the video advertisement created in Freeform. I used different colours to indicate between graphic elements, intended motion graphic directions, sounds, and notes for the storyboards. I had a much more dense plan to use actual clips of my favourite television and movies along with their respective brands from the real world (i.e., with a streaming service like Crave here in Canada, their advertisements show the respective brands they've licensed the media from, such as "Max Original" for those specific shows on HBO Max in the US), but the assignment brief did not recommend that idea. Thus, when the time came to create the video advertisement, I came up with 4 additional fictional brands to showcase as the star media providers for grove.
On the right: screenshots of frames from the video advertisement. It was a lot of fun to bring grove to life for the first time! Inspired by popular entertainment brands AMC, FX, and Hulu, I came up with the rectangular boxes expanding and contracting inwards and outwards for the start and end of the ad. An energetic, stock hip-hop song was added to give the ad a rhythm to stick with. The ad solidifies the idea that Grove is "your number one fan", secondary copy that I came up with specifically for the poster, but decided to keep.
Overall, a lot of fun was had here! My intention is to continue to create more personal projects aligned with the TV, film, and entertainment industries.