Bellatrix Lestrange voted best of a bad bunch…. turned good!
With a General Election on the horizon, presenting a ‘candidate’ for the constituency of ‘Southampton City Walls’ proved a particularly timely challenge for a group of Southampton Solent University Graphic Design students.
Presented with one of ten notorious ‘baddies’ each team were set the task of identifying core values and unique selling points of their characters to provide the foundation for a campaign strategy.
The students provided candidates with a visual identity, complete with a suitable logo and slogan that would be relevant to the electorate of Southampton. They developed a set of core messages and a promotional strategy with a trio of publicity tactics to be used ahead of a launch as well as the launch itself.
The characters allocated were The Wicked Witch of the West, Gordon Gekko, Darth Vader, The Joker, Cruella DeVil, Lex Luthor, Lady MacBeth, Bellatrix Lestrange, Magneto and Nurse Ratched.
Students worked with the attributes of a character to develop their strategy. For example Sam Bullock and Jeanine Davidsen who worked on team Darth Vader said: ‘Darth Vader created the ‘Death Star’ so we took the approach that he was constantly building and developing technologies. We related this to developments in Southampton.”
The winning candidate was Bellatrix Lestrange who promised a ‘no trix’ policy.
Team Bellatrix explained: “We went for a ‘revolution’ idea in the style of Russell Brand and used crosses in our theme …. crossing out things we didn’t want such as the existing politicians.
“The whole process has made us think about what goes on behind the scenes in the build-up to the General Election. We will definitely be looking more closely at policies before adding our own ‘cross’ on polling day.”
The project was written and delivered by Cork Institute of Technology lecturers, Dr. Emmett Coffey, Frank O’Donovan and Gwen Lettis, who specialise in public relations, marketing and publicity design. Nick Long, programme group leader for Visual Communication and Visual Arts said: ‘We have a number of Erasmus CIT students studying on our design courses, and it was great to have their lecturers over to Southampton Solent University to deliver this innovative project”
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT THE MEDIA OFFICE ON 023 8201 3048 or press.office@solent.ac.uk
About Southampton Solent University
Southampton Solent University offers more than 23,000 students over 200 qualifications ranging from HND to PhD, in subjects such as maritime education and training, fashion and design, media and television, music, health, sport and leisure, business, IT and technology. The University was awarded the 2013 Quality Assurance kitemark for quality and standards of teaching and learning. Solent was voted one of the most creative universities in the UK in a Which? University 2014 poll of students. Solent Business School has been awarded the Small Business Charter Award, which is supported by the Association of Business Schools and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and ‘gold approval’ by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA).
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