As the designer of the promotional materials for Word of Mouth, I had a few key demographic targets for who I wanted to attract, and almost immediately knew what types of creative considerations I wanted to make. Most crucially, we were looking for an audience of hip hop enthusiasts, predominantly male, between the ages of 18-34 with auxiliary interests in sneaker culture, street art and nightlife.

Because of this, my aesthetic considerations originated from three key sources: urban nightlife promotion, the grandeur of the stage, and most crucially, hypebeast sneaker culture. Each component of the design, for this reason, is heavily inspired.

Urban Nightlife Promotion In many ways served as somewhat of a counter-inspiration. That is, when making an event poster to attract a predominantly African-American audience, I wanted to make sure that I did not fall into the same aesthetic pitfalls that some urban designers make. Thus, I largely strayed away from any usage of lens flares, 3-D text, or the visages of famous people and unattainable women. Inversely, I wanted to produce something that felt modern by nature, and also focalized itself on the person interested in participating the event. Thus, while the source image for our first event is one of a well-known and famous rapper, there is a red band over his face so as to allow for the viewer to see themselves in that position.

The Grandeur of the Stage was a feeling that I wanted to infuse from the perspective of marketing, just as much as it is partially an aesthetic consideration. The reason why is because while anybody can make an ad that sells a product or an event, I have come to find that some of the best promotion is of the type that is focalized on the customer instead of an unattainable 3rd party. Focalization is generally a term used in film, but I have come to find it as one that is also applicable in literature, advertising and photography. In general, however, it is a term used to denote the narrative focus of a given piece of media. Thus, while characters are powerful, the most powerful thing is for potential participants to envision themselves as the focus of the product, when marketing a product or service. Removing the face of the emcee, hence, allows for two types of people to see two types of things: The emcee sees the grandeur of themselves on the stage, and the opportunity to be the focus of an event, but when the patron sees the grandeur of the stage, they see an opportunity to be properly entertained by something, or someone, they have never seen before.

Hypebeast Sneaker Culture was the final point of inspiration, and from a coloring perspective. While the colors red and white are fairly typical in the design world, when utilized in proper conjunction with one another, they have the power of pulling on cues that hearken to people's most powerful interests. The colors red and white not only look good, they are also colors that speak to some of the most coveted sneakers in tandem: the Air Jordan 1's, in patent red and white leather.. The incorporation of gold as a color for our Volume II poster would also come from the same general place: Sneakers, and Jordans in particular. This time, however, the inspiration for our poster would most predominantly speak to the Air Jordan 7 Olympic edition released in 2012. While the shoe has a predominantly white upper, the usage of black, red and gold within the sole is the basis of our inspiration.

Ultimately, while Word of Mouth was a great idea, it would go on to be a fairly short lived one for the time that I was with Trickle Media. Much of this came from the fact that we had more than enough work to keep us busy, and getting into the nuts and bolts of running events either had to be its own endeavor, or had to be managed by a confederated party. Having had potential designs for an EDM equivalent for Word of Mouth, we started feeling as if we were getting in over our heads on promotion, and not focusing enough on being designers and producers.

From a marketing perspective, however, I think that our hearts and our minds were in the right place. While word of mouth would be somewhat of a mid-week time sink, it was only as such because we had nobody to run the event, as well as others like it, in a specialized capacity. So to be clear, this isn't to say that firms shouldn't try to do something like this, or that I would never do it again as a marketer and designer. I think the greater point is that if running an event series parallel to your business is something that you want to do, be prepared to have enough hands to do it.