Wish You Were Here?

FRIDAY 13TH MARCH 2009

BRIEF -

To create a series of six postcards.

My initial thoughts were about why I no longer send postcards. When I was younger I always used to send them, but since modern technologies have become more easily accessible to me, as I got older I preferred to use new methods.

I like the idea of creating a project based around the fact that postcards aren’t sent anymore due to alternative forms of communication, such as email, text messaging etc. A variety of online applications are now available to everyone that enable us to communicate globally and instantly. Postcrossing is a website which allows anyone to exchange postcards from all over the world.

http://www.postcrossing.com/

I like this idea as it combines tradition with modern methods. I also found the Origami postcard contest; postcards are submitted from the location where the website is viewed. I could somehow combine various forms of communication from across the eras, such as telegrams,  phone and email. It could be that the use of technologies could somehow reinvent the postcard.

My second idea was to construct postcards based on origami folding techniques. Postcards were originally sent as they were cheaper to post due to not needing an envelope. The downside to this is that it can be read by anyone, it cannot contain private information, so the advantage to an origami postcard is that it could be folded up to keep the information confidential. I could produce a set of origami postcards in the shape of famous landmarks like Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower. The designs would have to be flat origami as 3D would get squashed during the posting process. I could use a popular paper from that country, for example for Britain I could use newspaper, as it is associated with fish and chips.

I found this origami ‘puzzle purse’ on the internet.  It has to be unfolded in the correct way to read the verses handwritten on the folds, and see the small illustrations.

My third idea was that postcards portray an image of perfection, they are often so heavily touched up in Photoshop that in reality they do  not look the same – they express a false idealistic image. I could photograph places where you wouldn’t want to be within that area – polluted beaches, rubbish dumps, places in Brighton with used needles all over the floor. Below is some existing examples of a similar idea  from Helsinki.

SATURDAY 14TH MARCH 2009

I bought some existing examples of postcards. I may have to consider designing a back to keep mine authentic.

TUESDAY 17TH MARCH 2009

The strongest idea that I felt I could continue with and develop further was the first.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/mar/29/britishidentity.post

Coast magazine has recently launched a campaign to save the postcard, but they don’t seem to be really pushing it. From what I could find on the net their campaign consists of articles in their magazine asking readers to submit their old postcard collections. Coverage from both national and local newspapers seemed to raise more awareness of the issue, as they reach out to a more varied audience, not to just subscribers.
I would like to push this idea on a larger scale, advertising on billboards, and public transport. My finished designs could be displayed on tubes and at Underground stations, I could print them off, stick them onto places like tube advertising spaces and photograph them.
I’ll also produce them on a smaller scale, shrunk down to standard postcard size. I’m going to highlight the advantages of the postcard over modern technologies, and why we should still be sending them. A postcard is something you can keep, it is not as disposable and forgotten as easy as a text. Physically holding a postcard in front of you has something over a text or email, similar to a book compared to the internet.

This quote from the Skegness Standard gave me the idea of linking the campaign to other British institutions, and using some typical British humour  -

‘Postcards are as important an element of the British seaside as fish and chips and sticks of rock.’

I researched into using postcards as a form of advertising, and discovered that several campaigns have been produced on postcards, for example Save the Post Office petition was written on over 1,000 postcards and sent to Downing Street.

www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/3310797/Text-message-tourists-write-off-the-postcard.html

I looked at postcard sales statistics, which show that they have dropped by 75% in last 10 years. Royal Mail figures show that the amount of postcards being sent are falling by a million a year, from 30 million five years ago to 25 million. Out of 2,000 people surveyed by ITV.com 67% of the population now log on abroad to keep in touch. I could somehow use these stats on my postcard designs, for example using the figures that postcard sales are falling by a million a year, I could drop a million postcard off the top of a cliff (links to seaside).

I sketched out a few ideas for a logo. I wanted to incorporate the British flag, and some aspects of the postcard, such as the stamp.

I made a few notes on things that I considered to be typically British.

I looked at puns and idioms, the way that advertisers gain the viewers attention with witty lines. I tried to find typically British sayings and cultures, including cockney rhyming slang. Hopefully I will be able to incorporate these into my designs.

Initial designs (not my images, if I want to continue with the idea I will photograph the objects myself).

After reassessing my aims, I decided to scrap the British postcard theme, and just focus purely on a save the postcard campaign.I designed a logo in Illustrator, initially was just a circle, but then I added the additional wavy lines which feature on a postcards stamp when I decided to use the layout of a postcard.

I orginally tried to photograph objects to use on my postcard, but I didn’t think the finish looked professional enough, so I drew out the objects in Illustrator. I would like to re-do the last two postcard designs, changing them into vector format so that they look like the rest of the set. I did try running them through live trace in Illustrator, but they looked better as they are.