Dempster Family Foundation - Tour Bus Design
Being from Chicago, and a life long Cubs fan...let's just say that when Ryan Dempster offers you a chance to design a bus for his personal Foundation, you take the offer.
This competition forced all artists to create a comletely different themes/ideas/visuals, literally within minutes of your last creation. This has been the only project that I've ever been a part of where the message and focus revamped themselves within the drop of a hat. Talk about thinking on your feet!
Driving awareness of a little known disorder, called 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome. Ryan Dempster's creation of The Dempster Family Foundation (www.DempsterFamilyFoundation.org) after his daughter, Riley, was diagnosed, in 2009 and with a genetic syndrome called 22q Deletion Syndrome. A syndrome that is associated with approximately 180 different diagnostic findings that range from mild to life-threatening.
The 22q Awareness Tour is a way of supporting the families of children with 22q across the country who’s local grass roots efforts are raising the awareness of this very common but widely unrecognized disorder. The 22Q Awareness Tour is The Dempster Foundation’s way to partner with families from coast to coast who are organizing community efforts where they live, and tries to ensure that a parent or support group offers to educate the public about 22q or support the 22q community.
Objectives:
- Engage the viewer -Call to action (like us on Facebook, Tweet us, Mobile Giving, etc...)
- Encourage families to raise awareness where THEY live through grass roots efforts. (Think if you build it we will come)
- Raise Money or sponsors
- Encourage families to raise awareness where THEY live through grass roots efforts. (Think if you build it we will come)
- Raise Money or sponsors
- Display the website links and phone number
- Show Ryan Dempster
There were over 200 enteries.
This first design, and slight variation was my very first entry into the competition. The idea I was going for was to make the connection between baseball superstar, (his organization), and the sense of hope/call to action that the organization is trying to branch through-out communities...and my mind went to Field of Dreams. The only materials that were given to the artists were official D.F.F. logo and slogan variations and a picture of the tour bus, which we has to wrap (obviously)..it was up to the artists to go from there. Who knew this design was going to place second, overall? :)
Next up, the project manager for D.F.F. put out the suggestion to try and play with the "tour" idea...as if it were a concert or something to that effect. Eye catching, maybe aiming at a slightly younger crowd (since everyone should be aware of 22Q)..just another way to turn a head. For this particular design, the shadow crowd and overall design went over well; but the colors were less than thrilling, and the banner forced Ryan's picture to cover-up the window (vehicles need to see out of windows)...so I moved onto the next variation..
Sticking with the same design, I tweaked the colors to those of the Chicago Cubs...and America (since this is a national tour), it looked far more appealing. Next up was a change of verbage/message as well as a better placement of a new picture. Since the design itsef is busy, I moved the social media information and extra branding to the back of the bus.
Decided the spotlights were too distracting, so cut them. Took advantage of putting branding, tag-lines and "calls to action" on opposite sides, and decided to utilize the entire back of the bus for organizational breakdown. This end design went over very well, I was really please with how it turned out.
At this point, the competition took a different turn. Instead of filling the bus with facts, ideas, etc. Artists were asked to change the bus into a mysterious/eye-catching machine (for the cause of course)...but bring into question "What is this? I want to check it out.."
My idea was to keep the basics, but then I added an Inception-esque twist, kind of fun, kind of creepy.
This design went over very well, and actually lead to the project manager to change her mind again...
The next direction for the artists was to COMPLETELY drop all ideas of baseball, Ryan Dempster, 22Q information...and just focus on cathing the eyes of children, using more movie type references. The main focus would be asking the question "What's 22Q?" or "Heard of 22Q?"
Taking from my own childhood experience, I decided to use Wizard of Oz as a backdrop. 22Q logos and websites were integrated with Wiz's phrasing...as well as urging people to use their heart/brains/courage in order to find a cure.
Within an hour, the project manager changed up the competition...again haha. This time there would be verbage on the bus except "Who's on this bus?" or "What's on the Bus?" along with the website. The ideas were to use total mystery along with some sort of celebrity secret in order to grab attention.
This was my entry...and I thought this would be the last variation, as the p.m. was now going back and scoring past ideas and enteries very high (even with this new direction).
Finally, with 2 days left in the competition...the idea went to displaying a cartoon/comic type bus (of any kind) that was filled with mystery figures...and only displayed "who's on the bus?" along with the website.
These were my 3 variations.
This blue bus variation surprisingly made a very strong last stand in the final hour or the competition.
When all was said and done, none of the artists enteries were chosen for the bus...too many good ideas to pick a winner, apparently. Even with the lack luster ending, this competition was one of my favorites due to it's "wipe the slate, start fresh" mentality every few hours...it keeps creativity flowing and leads to some pretty cut throat enteries.
