Here’s the cutely animated result of a short script we wrote recently to explain QuidCycle, a new ethical peer-to-peer lending programme. totalcontent was brought in by branding agency Collider to help with launch materials for this new venture — and to write their website too. The aim was to take the fear factor out of money by using reassuringly friendly, accessible language.
Showing posts with label totalcontent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label totalcontent. Show all posts
Strange yet gratifying when something you've written pops into your email inbox unexpectedly. Here's a little something we crafted recently for Godiva, the luxury Belgian chocolatier. Sweet.
It all started with a slightly skewed phrase that popped into my head one day for no reason... ‘A leopard never changes his spats’. This conjured a comical image of a dapper feline with an immaculate top hat and cane but inexplicably dirty footwear. A children's illustrator could have a field day, I thought.
Building on the theme, I racked my brain for more well-known sayings, and made a rule for myself... each idiom could only be changed by a single letter. And then I came up with a title that explained the concept by almost acting it out — ‘From Idioms to Idiots — How One Letter Can Make All The Difference’.
We were drafted in by design company hat-trick to provide words around the theme of a 'day in the life' of the college, quite a radical approach for an institution of this kind. In reality, the times of the day became pegs on which to hang different aspects of the school, from its emphasis on 'co-curricular' activities, to the benefits of boarding, to its impressive facilities. Underlying all this was the idea of promoting a broad, joined-up education, which offered more than just academic excellence.
Christmas seems to have come early at totalcontent. Last week we brought you Royal Mail's Madonna and Child stamp presentation pack. This week, we unwrap the children's Christmas stamp competition pack, charmingly designed by our good friends at NB Studio.Here, we were asked to tell the story of the nationwide hunt for designs striking enough to grace first- and second-class during the 2013 festive period. The challenge was open to children in the UK aged 4–11, and there were prizes of £100, £500 and £1000 to be won. This is only the third time Royal Mail have staged a kids' stamp competition, and the response was overwhelming, with over 240,000 entries covering all kinds of Yuletide subject matter in every conceivable style.
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| Bucket... just add content |
Suddenly, it seems, our 12-year-old company name has (global) currency.
As it happens, I’m a bit conflicted about totalcontent these days. Because, as with so many words (or conjunctions of words), its context and meaning has changed. As someone who spends a good deal of time naming things for clients — we’ve come up with everything from shirts to colleges to mobile phones and a cheese — it’s perhaps something I should be more wary of… but on the other hand, there’s not a jot you can do about it.
‘Content’ has an entirely different connotation than it did a dozen years ago. I originally homed in on it because of the slight play on ‘content’ = ‘what is contained’, and ‘content = ‘peaceful happiness’. But today it tends to just mean stuff, filler, goop… if a website is a bucket, then content is the stuff you fill it with — generic pictures, words, headlines, links etc. It’s become a tag with no romance or resonance — you buy content by the yard, it fills the space, no more no less.
But clearly, this doesn’t put too many people off. Content services have come to contaminate the Internet, selling words as a commodity — off-the-shelf articles ‘optimised for SEO’, or new material ‘competitively priced’ by length or quality level. A quick Google search unearths Content Now, Star Content, Constant Content, Pure Content, Snappy Content Writing (could be snappier), Content Equals Money, Content Proz, and many, many more. Occasionally I get emails from similarly named companies offering to help out with my content. Thanks for that.
I’m not going to throw stones in the dark. For all I know, Content Equals Money may have the verbal virtuosity of Jane Austen. I’ll just observe that there’s a difference between buying a suit from Burton or Savile Row. Ours tend to fit a lot better and don’t fall apart at the seams so readily.
The word ‘copy’ is one step up from ‘content’ — functional and commercial, but at least honed and targeted. And ‘writing’, of course, implies real craft and dexterity, the ability to create light and shade, achieve emotional nuance, make people chuckle or empathise.
So all in all, the service we offer couldn’t be further removed from providing ‘content’. You’d hope that people think of our name as a kind of knowing, post-modern joke, a clever anti-name that flies in the face of the word’s current meaning. Like Andy Warhol’s Factory or Factory Records, hotbeds of creativity and originality with a wink in their nomenclature.
Next week, maybe we’ll move on to the ‘total’ bit.
totalcontent were delighted to help out with words for the website, and especially taken with the new Alphabet range, which we’re sure will go down a storm with letter-crazy graphic designers. In case you’re wondering, the typeface is Orator (all lower case apart from the L, which looked decidedly odd). And you can order a gross of them for your studio here.
Yes, we’ve won our first Grand Prix. Our self-promotional monkey posters were judged to be toppermost banana at the Cream of Yorkshire Awards, held at the Mint in Leeds last Thursday. Unfortunately we weren’t there in person (as you’ll see above) but we’d like to extend our thanks and congratulations to everyone who’s helped them climb to the top of this particular awards tree.
The Cream Awards is the latest in a long list of accolades for our simian friends. Earlier in the year, they were warmly welcomed into the D&AD Annual, and they also picked up two Golds and a Silver at the Fresh Awards. We sincerely hope all this acclaim isn’t going to their heads — but to be honest, they seem as monkey-brained as ever.
By the way… we still have several hundred monkey posters cluttering up our studio. So if you want to get your hands on some multi-award winning chimps, please drop us an email. For a reminder of what all the fuss is about, have a look here.
Many thanks to Elmwood Design for inviting Jim to the Fresh Awards in Manchester last week. In case you didn’t know, Fresh is a seven-year-old creative awards for design and advertising agencies outside the M25 corridor. Held at the towering Deansgate Hilton, it was a glitzy affair – undercut by refectory-style tables and an ironic menu featuring Lancashire hot-pot and steamed pudding.
totalcontent’s typewriting monkey posters had been nominated in three categories – Posters, Self-promotion and Copywriting. We kicked off with a Silver in the first, followed by a handsome pair of Golds in the other two. Not a bad night’s haul. Congratulations to Elmwood's Simon Morrow and Richard Scholey (now creative director at The Chase) for the design, and Rob Ball for the monkey illustrations.
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