JTI City Clean Lab, realizzato da JTI (Japan Tobacco International) in collaborazione con Future Concept Lab, Istituto di Ricerca e consulenza strategica, è un contest internazionale, che nel corso delle sue varie edizioni, siamo giunti alla 4^, si è sempre distinto per saper sensibilizzare le persone al rispetto per l’ambiente coinvolgendo le più importanti scuole di design e comunicazione quali Politecnico di Milano, Chelsea College of Arts di Londra, IED Spagna di Barcellona e HEAD di Ginevra . Il prossimo 10 Aprile presso la Triennale Lab, in occasione della settimana del Salone del Mobile, saranno presentati i 3 progetti vincitori ed una selezione dei lavori realizzati dai vari finalisti. Ho avuto il piacere di andare a Londra a vedere i lavori dei ragazzi del Chelsea College of Arts ed essendo per loro un’occasione importante per mostrare il proprio talento ho deciso che fossero loro a raccontarsi rispondendo a quattro domande:
1. Tell us about you, about your idea and why did you choose Chelsea?
2. How the brief by JTI gives you the right idea about what you have to do.
3. How do you feel about your chances of winning? Do you think you’ll win?
4. After doing this project would you continue to get involved with this type of project?
Billy Osborne¬
1)I’m a third year Graphic Design Communication student at Chelsea College of the Arts. It’s surprising how hard it is to talk about yourself like this but as in terms of my personal approach to design I generally see it as a means of entertainment. We are there to create something entertaining for people, to tell a story.
Initially ‘Listen to your Butt’ was based on comparing a cigarette butt with the image of a lone cowboy, forever wandering the desert plains and highways. They like the cigarette butt roam the streets, seemingly invisible to those who pass them by. By giving a butt a voice and some kind of humanity, it forms an emotional link between the butt and those who see them on the street. By using humor the campaign draws peoples attention in an entertaining and unlikely fashion. Using an ongoing narrative people can get to know cigarette butts and their story. Like everyone else in London they are just trying to find a way home. And in this case the nearest public ash tray or trash can.
I chose the course at Chelsea mainly because of its integration with the city of London, but I had also previously heard of its professional and successful reputation, as well as the live briefs that are available. On opportunity which I was lucky enough to be part of was studying at The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York for four months last year.
2)At first the brief seems like it would be very restricting, and in a way it is, but that was part of the challenge, to make a common and mundane problem into something engaging and fun. It was made clear that we had to surprise the client and create something that solves the problem in a creative way but also in a realistic way.
3) I do not know about my chances of winning, so far its been a fantastic opportunity just to to gain feedback from an expert opinion. It’s been interesting to work on a project with so many restrictions and so far I have learnt alot from the experience.
Tobias Bschorr¬
1)Originally from Germany, I live in London and I’m currently finishing up my third year of Graphic Design at Chelsea College of Arts. The idea for this project came from aiming cigarette butts when you flick them after you’ve had a smoke. Its an engaging and witty way to get smokers to flick their butts at ashtrays rather than the pavement. The campaign is titled ‘Naughty’ and it allows the smoker to get away with things they normally wouldn’t dare, like flicking their butt into an old lady’s cup of tea or into the hat of an emotional cowboy.
2)The brief was well written and left plenty of room for interesting outcomes as long as you didn’t take it to seriously.
3)Theres a few good outcomes so hopefully among them somewhere!
4)Yes, although the subject of ashtrays, littering and cigarette butts can be a bit boring, I enjoyed the challenge of finding something interesting and engaging within it.
Matt Ashmore¬
1. My name is Matt Ashmore, I’m 22 years old studying BA (Hons) Graphic Communication at Chelsea College of Arts. I previously did a BTEC National Diploma and then a Higher National Diploma at Birmingham Metropolitan College both in Graphic Design.
I chose to further my education at Chelsea College of Arts because of it’s huge reputation of producing creative talent who strive to do the best within the industry. Not only that, but the freedom do be yourself, within the course, allows for a vast array of different creatives to emerge from the course, with no specified path forcing you to become a certain creative. Chelsea guides you and your personal practice, rather than make you a creative drone. 2 – 10 is a subtle awareness campaign aiming to change the behaviour of smokers within cities in a less intrusive way. It is a visual database of interesting facts, events and happenings, all of which have been achieved within the range of 2 to 10 years, which dependent on the environment, is the time a used cigarette butt takes to degrade. In doing so, it would highlight the scale of the life of a cigarette butt on the street, by showing what could be achieved within that timeframe. These are shown across a range of media, from print to digital. Randomly selected printed cards, which hold an interesting fact, are placed within cigarette packets, with a URL pointing to a website where you can access the full visual database. Along with this, posters and print media can also be placed around the city, again pointing towards the online visual database.
2. The brief set by JTI and Future Concept Lab was very clear from the start. With the past years focussing on a product which would act as a place or item for smokers use to dispose of their used cigarettes, this year focused on creating a campaign to make smokers aware that throwing used cigarettes on the floor was harming the environments we live in.
3. It has been a great opportunity in which to try and think intelligently about an issue that maybe isn’t directly personal to me. I feel I’ve created a campaign that is a subtle way of tackling the problem which doesn’t target smokers in a derogatory way. In this sense I feel I have been successful.
4. I feel it’s important that as a designer, on occasions you must use the skills you have to make some form of impact within sustainability as an issue and also tackle problems which effect the environment we live in.
Sophie Devine¬
1. I’m a designer and illustrator originally from Oxford. My project for JTI is a pop up installation, about infusing the city with homely furnishings, with the tagline ‘The city is your home, treat it like one.’. I chose to study Chelsea as I was inspired by the projects I saw each year from its graduates, they were always diverse and imaginative and to a professional standard. Chelsea give you the tools and experience to attack the design world head on, as an accomplished designer.
2. At first, as a collective, the students struggled with the idea that we could take the brief in a new direction away from product design. We’re all really excited to inject a bit of British humour into the competition and look at the project in a new way.
3. Within the Chelsea entries, the competition is wide open, we all have accomplished projects and I actually like them all! The other universities, I assume, have a very different direction and way of working with this project, so I think the judges are going to find themselves with a very diverse project range on their desks!
4. Within doing installation work, I am working in a way that I have less experience in, and I am really enjoying it. Who knows what the future brings for other projects!?
Mackenzie Beth Leary ¬
1) I’m Mackenzie Leary, a 21 year old Graphic Design Student living in London, originally from Brighton, on the South Coast of England. I have lived in London for four years now and I have fallen in love with the city. During my first year at Chelsea I won a competition that gave me the opportunity to study Graphic Design in New York for four months, at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Getting the experience to live in New York and experience the design world was a dream come true. I was able to work on live projects for well-known organisations such as the Art Directors Club and the One Club. The semester of studying abroad broadened my horizons and has given me the determination to work as a designer in many multinational cities once I graduate.
The reason that I choose Chelsea College of Art because not only does it offer opportunities such as New York, but it is well known for the wide variety of live projects it offers, similar to this one for JTI. I think it’s important to undertake as many live projects as possible whilst studying, because it pushes your work to become a higher industry standard.
Cleaner City Lab has been a really exciting project for me, I am very interested in urban interventions and a lot of my recent work has looked at design within the city landscape. When JTI first visited Chelsea, I could see that this project was the perfect opportunity for me to showcase my intervention skills and re-designing of the urban infrastructure that we have in London. Within ‘Smoke Spot’, I was conscious of the position that the UK government are in at the moment, with cuts on expenditure I was keen to come up with an answer to the brief that did not have to add to the city, but instead changing the existing infrastructure.
The research for Cleaner City Lab involved a day of travelling around my local area of North London, searching for cigarette bins. I discovered that there were already a vast number of cigarette bins on the walls outside pubs, club, restaurants etc. The problem is that for smokers on the go, these bins are often invisible and simply blend into the urban landscape. For the final submission, I created a guerrilla marketing campaign called ‘Smoke Spot’ which aims to draw attention to existing ashtrays around the city. The campaign consists of six self-created graphic vinyl that are placed behind the cigarette bins, making them more visible against city walls. Smoke Spot aims to inform smokers of the where about bins are in the city, in a fun and non-intrusive way.
2) The brief was very well explained and gave me a good idea of what JTI wanted from Chelsea. I tried to integrate a bit of humour within Smoke Spot campaign and not using serious language or graphics that are often surrounding the smoker.
3) I am so pleased to have got this fair in the project, getting through to the final seven has been a great opportunity for me and has pushed me to create a piece of work for my portfolio that I am very happy with. To have such a well-known company such as JTI and Future Concept Lab in my portfolio will be really beneficial to me when I graduate. I would absolutely love to win this project, I have worked hard to try and get the best piece of work out of my concept as possible.
4 I would love to work with this type of project again, I think it’s important in the modern world that we live in to work on a project that focuses on the environment and bettering the urban landscape for a good cause.