How to write up your planning and production log

You need to write about the work we did in class, what kinds of leaflets you looked at, what you learned about them and the kinds of campaigns they waged e.g. Barnardos had a campaign using children’s bodies and older heads to show that children lose their childhood and innocence when abused, another had children injecting drugs but the captions referred to the 23 year old they grew into who died.

Some campaigns portray the sufferers as victims but some seek to empower the sufferers by explaining that will a little bit of help they will be able to lead independent lives etc

We looked at slogans and styles of logos too – what makes a good slogan / logo?

We looked at campaigns that imitated existing advertising products like the ‘Wonderbra’ ad which was parodied by Age Concern to great effect.

We explored the methods by which charities gain the public’s sympathies and ultimately their money, words used, choices of images, camera angles even whether it was in black and white or colour.

We also devised a questionnaire to find out…….. each distributed 10 copies to a range of people – why? And found out………

When coming up with your own ideas

  • Why did you choose the charity or issue you did?
  • What did you already know?
  • Why did you choose the slogan and logo that you did?
  • How are they effective?
  • Why did you choose to do the artefacts that you did?
  • What independent research did you do?
  • What did you find out?
  • What decisions did you make about how you would portray the sufferers?
  • Why?
  • To what extent if any were you influenced by previous research and campaigns?
  • What pictures did you decide to take yourself?
  • Why those? Why and where did you find the other images you used?
  • How did you go about making each artefact?

For each artefact –

  • What programs / font / colours / wording / layout / background /composition /images / etc did you use / choose?
  • What revisions did you have to make as you went along?
  • What is the exact purpose?
  • Why?
  • What is its intended location?
  • Why?
  • Who is its intended audience?
  • Why?
  • When complete – are you pleased with it? What changes would you make? Is it effective? Does it do the job it was intended to?

Did you learn anything? Did you enjoy it? What was the hardest bit? The most rewarding? Frustrating?

How to write up your charity research findings

I suggest you do it on the computer so you can add to it or amend it later if needed.

We have looked at:

  • 2 junk mail campaigns
  • lots of leaflets
  • Barnardos
  • Multiple sclerosis
  • Wonder bra – age concern
  • Unicef
  • The Leonard Cheshire Foundation leaflet
  • Etc

Your write up is to summarise what you have learned about the techniques charities use to raise awareness, raise money and induce guilt.

Look for examples of images used and what effects they have on people.

Look for examples of language used e.g. imperatives, urgents, demand for immediate response, emotive language, words that induce guilt, sympathy or what ever.

Discuss attitudes to adverts, those that were complained about, on what grounds, why taken off, what constrains advertisers.

Victim or empowerment?

You will be able to add to these findings from the Barnardos work from tomorrow and our group survey findings.