Project 1

My project based around Mint was an attempt to re-brand the herb as a cool, underground tool with which a teenager could “invade” the city, take back what belongs to the public, and create a movement to provide free health care to other city residents.  I promoted it as a way an individual could make a big difference in the community.  For instance, by using seed bombs (“bombs” made from a mix of seeds, clay, and compost) individuals could turn an empty, unused lot into a field of mint.  This field of mint could then be used by other members of the community for cooking and healing, as mint has many different health benefits.

I also promoted mint and the spread of mint across the city as a way for individuals to form stronger communities.  It was not simply an herb that could be cooked and used to heal physical ailments, but also an herb that could form connections between different people within a community.  Teenagers could form “bombing”squads to spread seed bombs across the community, and could also form tagging teams to spray paint the stencil from the posters of the campaign across the city.  They could also use the mint fields created to promote self-sufficiency within a community, rather than relying on outdated and inefficient systems.

My Target Audience lives in Brooklyn, in Downtown Brooklyn (Fort Greene) around DUMBO.  They take the F train and live on Dekalb Avenue or Flatbush Ave.  They are extremely independent, strong minded, and like to skateboard and hang out with friends.  They tag graffiti, make random videos of funny and weird things, and they go to eclectic concerts every once in a while.  They go to Union Square to hang out with friends on Friday nights and can be seen skating around the rest of downtown throughout the week.  They are between the ages of 13 and 18.  Their family doesn’t have that much money, but enough to get by.  Both mom and dad have full time jobs, and sometimes work two jobs, and they themselves may sometimes have a part time job.  They are laid back and fun to hang out with, but are very skeptical of advertisements and large organized media channels.  They question everything and are extremely critical.  To speak to them the campaign needed to be smart and authentic.  They know who we are and what we want them to do, so the campaign must have a tone of voice to show them that we really are keeping them as an individual in mind.  Guerilla marketing techniques would be used rather than traditional media channels, with interactive advertisements and smart campaigns.

Based on my target market and the guerilla style of marketing, my aesthetic needed to be both alternative and simple.  No bells and whistles. Thus, I used illustrations that mimicked graffiti stencils, and photos that zoomed into the mint plant so much that it became abstract.  I chose black and green as my colors to keep the campaign monotone like many hand-made zines that are popular among groups in my target audience.  The green and black aesthetic enabled me to create simplified illustrations that mimic street art stencil designs.  I also looked further into the zine aesthetic and found that many zines used the Courier New typeface throughout.  Because of this, I chose Courier New as my main title typeface.  I then decided to use the Letter Gothic std. as my second typeface because of its simplicity, but also because of its mechanical aesthetic, which is similar to the cut-and-paste aesthetic of zines that use typefaces from magazines and newspapers to form text.