'The
Big Ask' is currently the most successful campaign from Friends of
the Earth (FoE). It is about asking the biggest question that any
one of us can ask today; 'what is my governement doing about climate
change?'
After seven weeks of trying Friends of the Earth were unhappy with
the results that had been presented to them by another agency and
asked me to develop some ideas.
It
seemed almost to obvious, but for us the core of this campaign was
about the individual asking a question, regardless of age, race or
sex.
Since the campaign was about targetting a wide and varied audience
but also the individual it needed to have a personality.
Taking that literally we based our initial idea on the simple task
of asking a question. Just like at school, the pose of someone standing
with their arm raised seemed to be the perfect visual metaphor.
After numerous attempts using just a child, an adult figure, an adult
figure with a child there seemed only one logical solution: make an
entire 'logo-family'.
Friends of the Earth has a captive audience but an audience that ranges
from the young to the elderly, and the logo needed to communicate
to each and every one.
In all there
are sixteen members of this logotype family. There are no issues surrounding
consistency because each logo is based upon the same typographical
layout and treatment. The only part that changes is the character.
This embraces each age and gender group. Sounds crazy? We don't think
so, and thankfully FoE were delighted with the idea. Especially since
the figures that we drew came from photographs that we took of FoE
employees!
Given that we had just one week to develop an entire brand for such
a major campaign is the reason why we love our logotype family so
much.
