Rebranding the Apostrophe
Brief: To re-brand an antiquated, out of date, mundane, discarded, tired, dysfunctional, boring product, object, place or thing. Your role is to rejuvenate, reposition, promote, re-invent, create a new use for, advertise, package, etc.
I believe that good grammar should be a natural part of everyday life; something that should be easily understood and used without thinking. The apostrophe is one of the most misused and misunderstood punctuation mark, with half of Britons saying that they find the apostrophe “confusing”.
The current brand pillars for the apostrophe are:
Personality - formal, intimidating, traditional
Values - rigid set of rules
Promise - omission, possession and inambiguity
Identity - academic, confusing
My projected brand pillars are:
Personality - friendly, practical, essential
Values - enhances grammar, standardised writing, accessible to all, life skill
Promise - confident writing, clarity, makes things easy to understand
Identity - basic grammar tool, to the point, easy to understand
To resolve the brief, the key was for me to break the rules of the apostrophe down into fun and accessible chunks that would allow people to engage with the brand.
I made each type of apostrophe into a character: Singular Possession, Plural Possession and Omission, with colours and patterns to match each character’s personality. These ‘pocket apostrophes’ are made of magnetic material, and have two additional information cards - uses and misuses - that can be collected and stacked either in their character form or spread out to show all the content. The 'S' has to be matched to the correct apostrophe in the right place for its use.
The Apostrotree
"The apostrophe should be a natural part of everyday life."
With this in mind, I decided to create a campaign using an interactive device that would travel around public places: The Apostrotree. The apostrophe characters stick to the magnetised Apostrotree, allowing the public to ‘pick’ the apostrophes, collect their information cards and take them away with them.
To find out more information, there is a QR code linking to the Apostrotree website, and also a Twitter feed and hashtag that would enable users to ‘get to know’ the characters and enable the campaign to trend.
The characters have the potential to become a brand of their own, creating merchandise such as plush toys and stickers etc. This would enable the apostrophe - and potentially lots of different punctuation marks - to become a fun, collectable and accessible-to-all learning tool.
