Our involvement in the management of the PR strategy of NEoN, and specifically the recent  ’Character’ design competition,  strengthens our belief of the importance of integrating digital PR into the overall communications strategy in order to fulfil the client’s objectives.

In addition to good old fashioned, traditional public relations, which included making use of the office telephone to ensure the most influential people were being targeted with news of the design competition, the Revolver PR team employed our digital strategies to facilitate a publicity ‘push’ on a global scale. The results speak for themselves.

The NEoN judging panel were inundated with entries from far and wide, receiving over 500 entries from South America to Asia, and everywhere in between. Noteworthy is the group of entries from pupils aged between 11 – 16 from Invicta Grammar School, Maidstone in Kent, who entered the NEoN design competition as part of a school project.

The winner of the Industry Guru category is David Rafael Leyva Silva, an Illustrator from Peru, whose character is named Guzzler.

Industry Guru category winning design by David Rafael Leyva Silva

The winner of the Layperson category is Ivana Strukelj, a Copywriter from Croatia whose character is named neOne-eyed Fred.

Layperson category winning design by Ivana Strukelj

The winner of the For the Kids category is Josh Beech, a student from Lincolnshire, England, whose character is named: Dot.

For the Kids category winning design by Josh Beech

It is certainly true that the calibre and quantity of the winning design entries demonstrates the growing importance of digital to the art world, however there are definitely issues relevant to PR to be drawn upon from the success of the NEoN ‘Character’ design competition.

The diversity and sheer range of entries from all over the world reiterates the power of online and digital PR when it comes to publicising a brand, and strategically managing a specific campaign. Digital PR is now a necessary component of any public relations consultancy‘s PR campaign to ensure optimal coverage and target audience reach.

We would like to congratulate the winners of the NEoN ‘Character’ design competition and wish them every success in the future!

I’m the co-founder and Creative Director for digital design studio YUVA.  I  trained as a Graphic Designer originally, but it has become a much wider discipline embracing what used to be a dozen different professions. This has opened up traditional boundaries between graphics, product design, new media, architecture and film/video to encourage the development of multi-faceted designers. I  write software, build hardware,  shoot and edit film, animate and produce Motion Graphics because I am constantly looking for new mediums to explore.

What inspires you?

I love being a designer. I love thinking about ideas freely and seeing them taking shape. I love working intensely on a project all day, losing myself in the work, and seeing it go live. Its the act of solving the problem that inspires me, the ideas themselves can come from anywhere.

In your opinion what are the biggest issues that digital could be used to address?

Net Neutrality is a big issue for me, the internet should be open and information freely available, after all thats what makes it work so well, oh and it would be nice to make access to the internet a basic right for all people everywhere… anyone else getting withdrawal symptoms when you go to the country?

Who/ what is the next big thing?

As more and more powerful screens invade every aspect of our lives I think there is a massive opportunity to be had in creating visual albums over the coming years. There has been this great void in music since we went to digital downloads with people sacrificing album artwork for ipod portability and its not going to be filled by 4 gigs of music video files. Instead I think interactive software art that will make that breakthrough as its lightweight, resolution independent and interactive. Check out demoscene.

What was the best advice you were ever given?

Learning by doing is the best thing, and so you just learn by default when you just start working. Also don’t be afraid to try things and never loose that habit. The worst thing that can happen is that you’ll get fired, but that could turn out to be the best thing after all.

In 5 years time….

In five years time I hope I still get time to actually do any design work. I see it all the time at other design studio’s that are founded by designers  – eventually the business part takes over their whole working day. So in that respect I hope we can maintain our flexibility and concentrate on projects that push the envelope or give me a chance to pass on my experience and support to the next generation of designers.

http://yuva.tv

The commercial law specialist selected the digital agency to work on its creative strategy and site design following a multi-agency selection process. Responsible for all aspects of the online platform’s development, Bourne will bring its strategic, design and commercial expertise to bear upon a complete refresh of Semple Fraser’s web activities, it says here

“I was pleasantly surprised and very impressed with Bourne’s pitch for our website redevelopment. Not only did they have the creative credentials, but the added value was the knowledge of their whole team that was brought to the table. Their ability to look at the bigger picture and provide strategic advice as well as creative input is giving us a much more rounded solution for the project, which I’m sure will give us a much better finished result,” said Julie Hecht, Marketing Manager at Semple Fraser LLP.