Designing Social Media Characters for Visio
4th April 2011
|In Design
We were recently asked to design a set of social media characters for Visio (Microsoft commercial diagramming program), which they could use in presentations. The brief was followed with the “it’s only half a days work, you can do it for free, with the potential of more work” line. We immediately struck off the timescale as being unrealistic but felt it an interesting challenge where we could flex our creative muscles and we agreed.
PHASE 1 – THE INNOCENT BEGINNING
As with any project, research is vital. We spent half a day, researching Visio and the style of existing stencils within the program. The variation was vast. From simple stencils to full-blown 3D objects. Our designers work on Mac’s and Visio is a PC only program, so this involved team members hopping from Mac to PC and back again.
Once our research of Visio was complete, the brainstorming began. Creating characters is a complex task, detail being paramount. Our brief required we provide five character types. From very positive to very negative, these were: Evangelist, Advocator, Neutral, Critic and Detractor.
Considering the timescale, our first approach was to keep it simple. We decided that creating faces, illustrating positive to negative emotions would get the message across effectively. We designed a few style options and facial expression variants and sent them to the client. The response was: “these are not Visio enough”. We were also instructed that “faces” were not what they wanted.
PHASE 2 – THE REALISATION
Our next approach was to look at how to communicate character types and personalities through full or half body characters. We used positive and negative symbols to illustrate the range of characteristics from very positive to very negative. We created a few style options based on a selection of existing Visio stencils. We sent these out for approval and got the same response as previously, “these are not Visio enough”.
Considering we based these characters on existing Visio stencils, we were now a bit confused about what the client wanted. We organised a call to re-address their requirements. Through the call it became clear that the client wasn’t sure what they wanted, or indeed of their vision of what ‘Visio style’ was. They decided to spend some time looking through Visio so that they could provide us with clear direction.
PHASE 3 – THE FINAL APPROACH
The client decides they want full figure 3D style characters (definitely not half a days work). With clear guidance, we get stuck into creating new 3D characters, illustrating their characteristics through body language. Getting this right is a time consuming process. Deciding how to communicate characteristics through body language, designing the characters, creating each one with their own language, ensuring they work at large and small scale and re-addressing the design when they didn’t quite hit the mark.
When we get sign-off from the client, our task doesn’t end there. We then convert the characters into a Visio stencil toolkit, which involves more hopping between PC and Mac.
Four and a half days later we are done, and we are very proud of our creations. So that’s half a days work according to a client.
If you would like these free stencils for Visio, please contact us.
PHASE 1 – THE INNOCENT BEGINNING
As with any project, research is vital. We spent half a day, researching Visio and the style of existing stencils within the program. The variation was vast. From simple stencils to full-blown 3D objects. Our designers work on Mac’s and Visio is a PC only program, so this involved team members hopping from Mac to PC and back again.
Once our research of Visio was complete, the brainstorming began. Creating characters is a complex task, detail being paramount. Our brief required we provide five character types. From very positive to very negative, these were: Evangelist, Advocator, Neutral, Critic and Detractor.
Considering the timescale, our first approach was to keep it simple. We decided that creating faces, illustrating positive to negative emotions would get the message across effectively. We designed a few style options and facial expression variants and sent them to the client. The response was: “these are not Visio enough”. We were also instructed that “faces” were not what they wanted.
PHASE 2 – THE REALISATION
Our next approach was to look at how to communicate character types and personalities through full or half body characters. We used positive and negative symbols to illustrate the range of characteristics from very positive to very negative. We created a few style options based on a selection of existing Visio stencils. We sent these out for approval and got the same response as previously, “these are not Visio enough”.
Considering we based these characters on existing Visio stencils, we were now a bit confused about what the client wanted. We organised a call to re-address their requirements. Through the call it became clear that the client wasn’t sure what they wanted, or indeed of their vision of what ‘Visio style’ was. They decided to spend some time looking through Visio so that they could provide us with clear direction.
PHASE 3 – THE FINAL APPROACH
The client decides they want full figure 3D style characters (definitely not half a days work). With clear guidance, we get stuck into creating new 3D characters, illustrating their characteristics through body language. Getting this right is a time consuming process. Deciding how to communicate characteristics through body language, designing the characters, creating each one with their own language, ensuring they work at large and small scale and re-addressing the design when they didn’t quite hit the mark.
When we get sign-off from the client, our task doesn’t end there. We then convert the characters into a Visio stencil toolkit, which involves more hopping between PC and Mac.
Four and a half days later we are done, and we are very proud of our creations. So that’s half a days work according to a client.
If you would like these free stencils for Visio, please contact us.