UKCBC Refer a Friend Campaign 2019

Materials for the new Refer a Friend campaign at the UK College of Business and Computing (UKCBC). The project keeps the previous year’s focus on vector characters whilst changing the design and working from a new tagline - ‘Sharing is Caring’.

The ‘Refer a Friend’ campaigns at UKCBC produces the highest number of students and are therefore a very important part of the design communication at the College. Towards the end of last year new, updated cartoon characters were created to replace the less detailed previous options, the characters have now become part of a clear ‘Refer a Friend’ identity and have even featured in other animated projects. The campaign this year therefore features the characters prominently with only some small updates, time was taken to make small tweaks to the posture and details of each character to make them seem more lifelike and ‘human’. This was achieved by adding a much larger variety of poses, body types and props whilst making them interact with each other more as opposed to having a group of cartoons staring blankly out of the page.

The ‘Sharing is Caring’ campaign came from the concept that as many friends as possible can be referred onto the courses offered at the college, the inspiration behind the design comes from this and highlights the connections shared between friends. This is presented by the spider-web type graphics connecting the characters, showing the link between the different figures. This ‘spider-web’ design is also largely based off of the diagrams you have to highlight different connections across social media. Each character is gesturing towards one another and acting in their own way, adding to the friendly tone of imagery across materials and this carries over to the social media materials for the campaign.

The main example of this can be seen on the left with this animated, looping GIF. The GIF is designed be posted across the separate UKCBC social media profiles and to raise awareness of the campaign in a way that is separate to still images. As well as this, the moving version manages to boost this more ‘lifelike’ approach that was pushed in the printed materials. Being a more largely internal campaign it is important to be present not only in the campuses but to be recognisable across social media platforms also.