Santander HR: Career Choices

Santander proposed the brief from Human Resources to promote their 'Career Choices' campaign internally. They required a range of collateral, from print to digital to animation. The following is a selection from each.

Intranet illustration
Firstly I was asked to illustrate a series of real Santander branches which were going to be featured on the company's intranet. These were then put together into a webspace connected by cartoon streets featuring objects and characters. When the viewer's cursor rolled over an individual branch, the red sections of it were activated to show that it was clickable.




Design for print
The illustrations from the intranet were then translated into print onto both large-scale (toolbox) and very small-scale (jelly-bean box) boxes, as well as further design for an associated Z-Card.




Storyboard for animation
Finally, I was provided with a script to which I had to use the street designs to create a storyboard for an animated film. Although the script was very precise, the illustrations provided great flexibility into what transitions could happen and how. A voice over was later recorded which explained the journey to the viewer.

Santander HR: Screensaver Storyboard

Following on from the Community Engagement Toolkit, the style was then extended into a new brief of a screensaver to promote the '3 e's': Education, Employment, Enterprise. I then designed each slide and created a storyboard that would explain in detail how each piece was to be animated. The animations needed to be simple as the client's computers had limited memory space.

Santander HR: Community Engagement Toolkit

On a very tight deadline, I was required to create a 28 page A4 brochure in the HR cartoon-people style to promote how branches could get involved in their communities. The client wanted the design to focus more on the building illustrations, so I set about using the provided copy to inform the viewer in an exciting and refreshing way on each spread.

I used various methods and illustration to help me highlight headlines and pull out important point within the text, as well as introducing cartoon polaroid images to hold small photographs that were required on specific pages.





I later created this animated presentation of the brochure in Adobe After Effects in order to promote our design work on a large screen within the business. I used the illustrations themselves as a backdrop so that the brochure could be placed within that 'world' and subtly animated objects such as the car and the clouds on brochure's front cover.

Santander HR: British Heart Foundation

Santander's charity of the year was announced as the British Heart Foundation and we were invited to create their internal collateral to promote their new charity and events.

They required a series of large-scale posters, stationary, as well as digital banners for Santander's intranet. All these had to be created in the brand's then current HR style which was cartoon people. This style had great flexibility and meant all manner of ideas and designs were possible.

I pushed the concept of doing so many 'steps' for charity by using a series of characters all 'stepping' in various ways. Some were images we already owned, some were tweaked so they all looked different and others were drawn from scratch. Placing them in a heart shape to push the charity's image further as well as keeping the colour scheme strict worked to both brand's advantages.

HIV (REVAMP)

I created a poster series for HIV awareness when I was in university. I had already become very attached to design for advertising and wanted to pick a tricky subject which had been done many times before, but to do it in a different way. I chose a new angle on the subject, researching statistics and realising that a lot of the spread of the virus is ignorance and a plain unawareness that they have it at all. Whilst this was the right way to go, I originally had too many ideas all rolled into one and what I really needed to do was the keep things simple.

In this revamp, I continued the target audience (as those who are simply unaware of their virus, and of course the suggestion that they could very easily pass it onto their partner without meaning to), but looked at some great use of stock imagery which could help me to send the right message in a very 'romantic' way. The three poster ideas were chosen as typical 'coupley' images, using photoframes, flowers and cards as a basis for the copy "You're the reason I live, and the reason I die."



These ideas could easily be translated into design for a website, digital banner, leaflets within a doctor's office, at student unions, fresher fayres or in freebie packs.

Below are just some of my initial ideas and rough scamps that I needed to get down on paper. Not only are there notes and drawings for concepts, but also ideas the angle of photography, and how a leaflet design could work.



Please note that all photographs belongs to Shutterstock.

Skin Cancer Awareness (REVAMP)

This self-initiated brief began back in 2007 at college as a simple idea for an advertisement to raise awareness of skin cancer.

I set out to do it in a way that at the time differentiated (and may still do) from the norm which was to use shock tactics in order to translate the message to the viewer. I instead wanted to use humour and memorable imagery to capture the information and I was very happy with the result. Even now, years later, I am completely in the 'less is more' boat and I feel that the simplicity of the metaphor carried off by the copyline continues to work, which is why I wanted to revamp the design and to expand the collateral into other formats.

Using Cancer Research as my hypothetical client, I used their colour palette within the design to ensure a direct link to the branding.



Poster series:
Although I took inspiration from the positioning of the original posters, I introduced some more up to date facts to base the images on. I have also created a new method of displaying the bodycopy through use of a coloured strip, with the copyline contained within a breadslice vector shape.




Leaflet design:
I continued the style into a leaflet, using a simple square design and allowing the bright colours, layout and photography draw the viewer in.




Light-Sensitive Billboard:
Expanding the idea onto a bigger, and more interactive scale, I looked into a simple billboard design, but with a twist. Parts of the image would be printed using a light-sensitive ink. This would mean that when the sunlight shines upon the print, the bright blue sky and the burnt texture on the toast would be revealed. This would be not only a reminder, but also a warning to passers by that they need to be careful with sun exposure to their skin on that day.


Because of the simplicity of the design and the flexibility of the imagery, I have no doubt that this idea could be translated into all sorts of formats – whether that be other print items, digital banners, a website design, or even an advert in motion.