The Bent Bullet – Another Exciting Film Microsite

X-Men: Days of Future Past has created another viral microsite for the upcoming film. This site details the story of how Magneto was arrested and found guilty for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. According to the information on this site, authorities believed that Magneto used his mutant ability (he is able to alter magnetic fields) to change the trajectory of Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullet, asserting this so-called “Bent Bullet Theory”. The site itself is interactive and allows you to scroll through a series of panels that chronicles the events that took place. The site uses grainy, full-framed, and sometimes moving images to tell the story. The creators did a great job at giving this site an old-yet-sleek, 1970s-feel and did an even better job at getting X-Men fans (like myself) even excited to see the film – if that is even possible. My favorite part is the tour of Magneto’s prison cell, built courtesy of the great people over at Trask Industries. The narrated informational tour explains in detail how Trask Industries was able to design a cell that is capable of containing a man who can manipulate metal.

Something worth noting here is that I discovered the site after seeing a tweet with a link to an article about it. The website and corresponding  YouTube video (below) have already garnered a good amount of online media coverage and will certainly help generate significant social media buzz for the film and its (very slowly…) approaching release date (which is May 22, 2014 – in case you don’t already have it in your calendar).

Check out my screen grabs and the YouTube video that goes along with the site and, of course, the website itself. While you are doing that, imagine how much fun the people behind this site had while making it.

Front Page

Tour of Prison Cell

Brand Identity for Rapid Creative

This is a branding design I created for my team’s fictional creative firm as a part of a class project for one of my public relations and advertising courses. The entire course is based around creating a campaign plan book for an actual, pre-determined client. Our first assignment was to come up with a name and brand image for our firm. We chose Rapid Creative because “Rapid” ties in with the city in which we operate (Grand Rapids) and suggests forward motion and advancement, which aligns with our mission of enabling our clients to excel. We went with “Creative” because alternatives such as “Public Relations Firm”, “Advertising Agency”, or “Marketing Agency” were too wordy and limited the perceived capabilities of our group to one function or another. We wanted a more ambiguous name that served as a statement that our abilities expand into all of these fields. As the self-appointed creative director, it was my job to design a logo that reflected our brand image.

For the graphic, I went with some muted blues to reflect water which aligns with “Rapid” in the natural sense. Likewise, the circular shape is meant to portray the churning of a rapid, as well as a wheel-like figure that is in motion. From this visual, we derived our slogan “Always moving forward”.

Business Card Front and Back

Letterhead

Versus Gallery of Fine Art – Logo and Ad Design

These designs were created for a class-wide group project in my Art 101 course. The logo is meant to represent a fictional art gallery and was the starting point of the marketing campaign to promote the gallery. I am in the marketing group and our contribution will serve as just one component to the overall project – the creation of an art gallery. Our class chose “Nature Vs. Technology” as theme of our gallery. The name “Versus” was chosen by the Building Design team.

The “V” featured in these designs is an inverted version of the “V”-shaped archway that will serve as an entrance to the gallery – as conceptualized by the Building Design team. In the primary versions of the logo, the design is meant to illustrate the contrast between nature (the leaf-like “V”) and technology (the modern chrome plate with rivets). The “V” is dividing the back plate into two halves, further reinforcing the idea of two separate art styles under one roof.

I also created sample advertisements for the campaign. These ads are very minimalist and pairs very short copy with bright, bold images. The side-by-side images are meant to reflect the “Nature Vs. Technology” by poising two things that possess the same purpose, and yet are shown in completely contrasting contexts. The copy encourages the audience to consider what they believe to be a better reflection of beauty or art, which is essentially the whole idea behind the gallery itself. These ads are meant to evoke curiosity through simplistic ambiguity.

I presented these logos  and advertisements to my class a week ago and received positive feedback.

Minimal version. Good for use as icon or symbol for easy recognition.

Earthy green color

Bright green color

Bluegreen color

Color swap between “V” and backplate

Monochromatic

Ad Example

Ad Example

Billboard Example

Billboard Example

Microsites and Viral Marketing for Films

This is the kind of stuff I want to do for a living.

There are many things I would love to be a part of at some point in my career in the realm of television, film and entertainment in general. One of the things at the top of that list is to create online content for films that further immerses viewers into the fictional world, deeper than the film itself. (Think this dream job is too far out of my league? Yeah, I don’t care.)

The Daily Bugle The Amazing Spider-Man

This example for the Daily Bugle, the newspaper that employs Peter Parker/Spider-man, is a rather simple approach, but still awesome. All the writing must be done in-character while also aligning with the theme/tone of the film. What I think I love most about this, from a marketing standpoint, is how it never directly promotes the film out-right (as it would be breaking character), and yet still manages to build excitement through rich content.

Oscorp Industries The Amazing Spider-Man

(The site has been removed.)

Another great example of an off-screen, interactive fan experience are websites that serve as a ‘real’ version of fictional entities pulled from films. Prior to the release of The Amazing Spider-Man, a microsite was created for the fictional Oscorp Industries. Any web-slinger fan would recognize the company name and, upon visiting the site, would find it to be both content-rich (concise copy, images, videos and even mini-games) and very well-aligned to the representation of Oscorp through the comic books and other media. Additionally, taking in the content provided on the site gave fans clues to the plot of the film, which helped to build anticipation without spoiling the story. This microsite was a part of a comprehensive viral marketing campaign

Trask Industries  X-Men: Days Of Futures Past

My final example of this is the website for the upcoming film X-Men: Days Of Futures Past. (Sensing the superhero theme yet?) Any Marvel fan can tell you that Trask Industries plays a major role in the world of X-Men and the super-microsite launched to generate buzz for the film is Trask Industries company page. The interface is very interactive and the information is presented in a manner which one would find on any corporate website. The very creation of this microsite gave fans a hint of the plot of the film well before any information had been release. The site itself allows users to share links onto their own social media feeds, leveraging user-level advocacy to build awareness for the film. This site sparked interest, from inciting peer-to-peer level discussion to garnered media coverage from prominent online entertainment blogs and publications.

Update:

As I mentioned above, the use of microsites is excellent for attracting media attention. The latest post from the Daily Bugle viral Tumblr page was published yesterday from the point-of-view of J. Jonah Jameson, the fictional publication’s editor-in-chief. Today, I came across an article from ScreenRant discussing the post (they actually embedded the entire post into their article) and speculating whether or not this meant the eccentric character would be making an appearance in the sequel. This was, of course, one of the desired results of the viral site.