Project Evaluation – Make Museums Sexy / Neg 1
A challenging but interesting project looking at changing the perception of how certain people may view Museums. Why I chose this as a project was due to the challenge of producing a concept that would attract maybe a younger audience to museums, those who may view such places as boring, stagnant and non-interactive. I remember the TV show ‘The Tudors’ and this was a big hit – bringing sex and relationships to the table in a Hollywood style that drew audiences in like ‘Sex in the city’ or ‘Gossip Girl’ did. So it can be done – museums can be sexy and interesting and this gave me the inspiration to take on this project.
My first ideas were based loosely around computer games and interacting with people, drawing them into a world that inspires and interests them, under the title of ‘Live The History’. I visited museums and galleries in London and after collecting some source materials produced a mock-up movie of someone being sucked into the history and living it. For this I used computer game intros and gameplay to represent the ‘world’ of history. It was an interesting starting-point but did lack a ‘sexy’ edge (unless you were an computer game fanatic) yet I did produce some posters that aimed to draw people into their own worlds based on history/legends of history.
My next ideas were based around artefacts and interesting points from history based on my visits to museums, such as the invention of soap ‘If it wasn’t for Babylon…you’d stink’. Again it had to be ‘sexy’ so I began looking into areas such as the invention of rubber and which warrior had the biggest weapon etc. One interesting area was the invention of volleyball dating back to the Villa Romana Del Casale back in 100 BC – so this was change to say if it wasn’t for the Romans we wouldn’t have beach volleyball…
I developed this idea but with but the problem was that the original painting wasn’t in a museum so would it stand up? So I left my ideas on the drawing board with that one and looked into relationships and being ‘on a promise’. For example it could have taken the shape of a viral clip of two people running off, taking clothes off, short of breath etc and you would assume they would be going to a motel or bedroom yet the twist would be they would arrive at a museum, go inside and look all around taking it all in. So here my ideas were moving much more towards the ‘sexy’ and it was this theme of ‘being on a promise’ that began the project really moving and away from anything that could be perceived as boring. In hindsight I probably should have developed this idea further instead of using it to springboard onto other ideas. I Maybe should have mocked up a promotional poster and mock viral as I began looking at the promotional material for the film ‘Date Night’ which went along with this ‘on a promise’ idea which evolved into an idea of ‘Where were you last night?’. Anyway I did move on from this and began looking at artefacts again.
My ideas took on the form of a split screen between an original artefact and what we have now such as MP3 player and the Gramophone. It was an interesting collection of ideas but again lacked the ‘sexy’ aspect. I also went down the road of styles and hairstyles down the ages one idea was moustaches – Genghis Kahn > Albert Einstein > Hulk Hogan. Bit of a laugh and would have connected with people but maybe lacked longevity as a concept – seen once funny, seen again boring?
I decided at this point to choose two characters from history that are well known and had a scandalous record – I chose Cleopatra and Henry VIII for obvious reasons. My idea in basing it around well know figures gave a focal point to a concept as people would instantly recognise the character. My initial thoughts were of a newspaper cover story displaying scandal or maybe a gossip mag but I found out that this idea had already been developed so I decided to look at and produce ideas based on a ‘censored’ stamp such as the one below:
I developed a style of branding that gives the concept a theme and is used across the different designs using Cleopatra’s sleeping around past and Henry VIII’s wives and severe breaking-up tactics. The dirty, inky, decrepit style of a stamp I feel goes well with gossip and scandal and emphasises the concept of ‘digging up dirt’. Below is a first draft of this branding:
Overall I am happy with the concept of ‘digging up’ some juicy scandalous past as we all today are intrigued to read gossip mags, tabloids that relish on stars and relationship stories and TV programs that delve into a part of life we all know about – relationships. I feel that younger audiences should respond well to an ad campaign for museums that goes down this road of ‘see what you can dig up’ or ‘who was the most scandalous’ and maybe will be an extra bit of gossip to look into instead of reading about Katie Price/Jordan all the time! Daily Star type headlines such as:
You think Jordan is scandalous…check out Cleopatra
Cleopatra makes Jordan look flat
I believe that the audience museums want to attract such as young people who maybe don’t go to museums very often (if at all) would react with curiosity to something that they may watch on TV or read about everyday – which is scandal and celebs.
