Presentation Script
SLIDE 1
This morning I am presenting ‘Dear Driver’, a fun, lighthearted road safety campaign about “equine road users”; my all-encompassing term for horse riders, horses in cart etc on the road. The campaign aims to educate unfamiliar tourist and urban-dwelling motorists of appropriate behaviour around equine road users. Illustrative communication techniques are used to reveal the dangerous consequences of unsafe actions to engage the audience in the issue and encourage compassion during encounters with horses on the road.
SLIDE 2
New Zealand has limited off-road equine recreational areas, unfortunately forcing most New Zealand horse owners to exercise their horses on public roads. While some motorists are considerate to horses, a growing majority are not, which can lead to the injury or even death of humans and horses. This is a issue that concerns a large number of New Zealand equestrians.
The rapid expansion of urban boundaries, rising urban population, and increasing tourism mean that more encounters between equine road users and unfamiliar motorists are likely to occur and the need for education is becoming vital.
There is a clear opportunity and need for a road safety campaign for equine road users in New Zealand that captures the attention of motorists in a refreshing and compelling way; shifting their attitudes, increasing their empathy for horses, and informing them of appropriate behaviour.
SLIDE 3
Therefore, my central proposition coming into this semester was:
“Although New Zealand motorists may be aware they need to behave safely around vulnerable road users, the actions of urban dwelling motorists around equine road users often do not reflect this. Illustrative communication design can educate these motorists about horses on the road and create an empathetic connection that influences behavioural change.”
SLIDE 4
So, coming into this semester I was aiming to target urban-dwelling motorists, for example: someone born and raised in Auckland who decides to go on a tiki tour of New Zealand. They are likely to have never encountered a horse on the road before, so if they came across an equine road user in their travels they wouldn’t know the proper etiquette.
Through the project’s development this audience was expanded to include tourist drivers as well. These drivers have been a part of many of the recent accidents involving horse riders on the road. They may be used to very different driving experiences than rural New Zealand roads, which can be narrow, winding, and rough, and combining this with an unfamiliarity of how to behave around equine road users is dangerous.
Therefore, Dear Driver provides educational material that aims to reduce the likelihood of road accidents involving these two motorist segments and equine road users.
These are the barriers to reaching the target audience that have I identified:
Therefore, to overcome these barriers, Dear Driver is designed to be: Educational and easily understandable, empathy increasing, visually appealing, colourful, and fun, humorous and engaging, and fast-consumable.
SLIDE 5
Dear Driver consists of a two part strategy: animated gifs disseminated through social media, and a website. I chose to use web based communication methods as they are far-reaching and accessible, therefore the target audience will be able to engage with the campaign material from all over New Zealand and the world.
SLIDE 6
Using gifs as my communication method allows me to hide a serious safety message inside eye-catching content the audience wants to engage with. The Dear Driver gifs, which are a mix of traditional animation and 2D computer animation, dramatically illustrate the consequences of unsafe motorist behaviour. Animation allows me to convey concepts beyond what live action could conceivably (and morally) capture. I chose to use traditional animation to challenge myself, but also because I believe it adds value as the imperfections make the work feel more real and personal.
To add to the hand-crafted feel, I chose a hand-written style font for my main brand. This also adds to the tone of the words ‘dear driver’ as the font feels like something someone is writing or saying to the viewer. The text in my gifs are short rhyming couplets to add to the lighthearted approach and engage the audience. I chose to use bold colours for my branding to appeal to the viewer and catch their attention when they are scrolling through their social media feeds. The colours also make the work more playful.
SLIDE 7
I used a different communication strategy for each of the three gifs I produced. In this gif I have made the scenario look high-risk to the human. Horses are at all times subject to their instincts and even the calmest, most well-trained horse can become irrational if spooked. I wanted to show this irrationality and how it can put the human in a vulnerable position, with the aim that this knowledge would convince motorists to treat equine road users with more respect.
SLIDE 8
In my second gif I used the strategy of making the horse, which is a large intimidating animal, appear vulnerable - tapping into human’s nurturing natures, also with the aim of effecting the way they act around horses on the road. I have made the horse the main character in each gif to show people that, unlike other vulnerable road users like cyclists, there are three minds at work when a motorist encounters an equine road user - and that third mind is unpredictable and easily upset!
SLIDE 9
My third gif uses the strategy of personifying the horse as another object (in this case an explosive) to metaphorically show the audience how volatile and reactive horses can be, again with the aim of influencing motorist’s behaviour. The use of humour in my gifs and their moving nature makes them memorable, increasing the likelihood of message recall the next time the viewer comes across an equine road user.
SLIDE 10
The audience will be reached and influenced by these gifs as they are eye-catching, dramatic, playful, humorous, engaging, and impactful. Their lighthearted nature makes them more attention grabbing as they are in contrast to the prevalence of fear appeals in most other road safety campaigns. Another important reason I chose to use gifs is that they are fast-consumable, allowing me to convey a story and an educational message in a quick snippet that doesn’t require a large time investment from the audience.
Although each gif tells it’s own story and showcases a different character pairing, they are all part of a larger metanarrative that unites them under the key idea; equipping motorists with the knowledge of how horses can react and this influencing the way they act during an encounter with an equine road user.
SLIDE 11
The campaigns’s animated gifs are posted on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram through Dear Driver pages. Social media has the reach, impact, and shareability to allow content to quickly disseminate - it’s the ‘Digital-Word-Of-Mouth’. Social media provides a space for discourse about the issue where audiences can interact with the gifs and share personal experiences, which helps humanise and ground the key messages of the campaign.
The sharability of content on social media also means that relevant groups such as the New Zealand Transport Agency and the New Zealand Police, and tourism pages such as Tourism New Zealand and 100% Pure New Zealand, can share the Dear Driver gifs. This is an important avenue for how the target audience can be reached by the campaign.
SLIDE 12
The Dear Driver website acts as the campaign home base and information centre. The first section gives a more general overview of safe etiquette, and the further sections show the different road environments motorists may encounter around New Zealand and exactly how to behave when passing horses in those scenarios.
Visitors scroll through the different sections following a road. In this animation I’ve tested out my idea of an illustrated car “driving” on the road that moves as the user scrolls. As the car avatar passes one of the horse characters, it moves at a slower speed and overtakes with a wide berth, reinforcing two of the key messages of the campaign.
On the website I have also included a possibility to expand into a ‘Dear Rider’ page, which would contain information for equine road users and the steps they can take to make themselves safer on the road.
The website also contains a Social Gallery page that collates all of the public social media posts that use the campaign hashtag. The gallery helps convince drivers that there is a need to behave in safer ways, as they can see how many people care about the issue and hear about it “straight from the horse’s mouth”.
SLIDE 13
It is my intention that the Dear Driver website would act as a resource for tourism sites such as Tourism New Zealand, 100% Pure New Zealand, and the New Zealand Tourism Guide, as they will draw the audience that Dear Driver is aiming to reach. I also intend for it to be an extension of the NZTA website’s ‘About Other Road Users’ page to help clarify and expand upon the information they provide.
SLIDE 14
Whakatinana means ‘to manifest your idea’. Through the manifestation of my project this semester it involved an in-depth process of ideation, making, testing and feedback, reworking, advisor and peer critiquing, and refining, that evolved Dear Driver into a final output I could never have imagined myself achieving.
This first image is one of the works I presented at ‘First Showing’ in week 2. The main insight I gained from this shared moment was that people responded most positively to my works that made the horse the comical main character.
As you can see, in some of my initial works I made the cars look like monsters to show what they can look like from a horse’s point-of-view. But even though the audience liked this, I decided to drop it as I felt that it made the car (and therefore the driver) look evil. I want to portray that people are simply unfamiliar with how they should behave - they are generally not actually out to do griev-ous harm to horse riders.
The centre image is a still of the run-cycle animation I presented at week 6’s ‘Super Crit’. This received an overwhelmingly positive response, which lead me to take up the challenge of making animated gifs instead of still illustrations.
I started this semester with my characters being the horse and rider on the left. This then developed into the horse and human pairing shown in the other two images. But by week 6 I had expanded my line up to four human and horse parings to portray the different equine road users motorists may encounter in New Zealand. This received positive feedback at ‘Super Crit’.
The third image is one of the initial animated gifs I produced and received feedback on in week 9. These gifs were mostly still apart from one or two moving elements, such as the tail and pacifier moving in this example. My advisor challenged me to take the animation further; to make each gif slightly longer with more of a dramatic story. This pushed me to produce the final gifs shown earlier.
SLIDE 15
The clear way to move forward with this project is to produce more ‘Dear Driver’ gifs, and there is also room to extend the range of character pairings. There is the opportunity to develop the ‘Dear Rider’ section of the website and create social media content for this audience - like this example I produced during my process about making sure you stand out.
There is also the possibility to expand into more campaign materials and mediums such as billboards and other prompts where the behaviour is likely to occur, and also posters, pamphlets, merchandise etc - perhaps even a longer animated video that could be aired on incoming flights.
SLIDE 16
At the start of the semester I wanted to engage tourist and urban-dwelling motorists in educational illustrative material that influenced them to behave in safer ways around equine road users. I believe I have developed a fun and original response to this aim with my Dear Driver campaign.
The concept of whakatinana encompasses your responsibility to your project and its future. I believe Dear Driver would improve the safety of equine road users in New Zealand. This design project could be taken on by the NZTA or the NZ Police and developed into a national campaign. I am also confident that Dear Driver would be a worthwhile inclusion in New Zealand’s 'Vulnerable Road User Month’ this November and would create much needed conversation about the issue.
SLIDE 17
Through the process of whakatinana - turning my central proposition into a final design output - I pushed myself entirely out of my comfort zone. Reflecting on it now I am glad, because it made me produce something unique; something I never could have envisioned myself achieving at the start of this year.
Throughout the process of this project, I have learnt so many new skills and taken up challenges I never thought I would attempt. At the beginning of the year, I wouldn’t have even called myself an illustrator - and now I am someone who produced traditional animation for their final output! If I’d had more time, I would have liked to develop my characters into more of a unique style and perhaps developed the website to be more responsive for those who would access it via a smart phone, but I am proud of what I managed to learn and produce within the time frame.
This project has set me up to emerge from university as a confident, social-good designer ready to tackle any challenge with empathy and a story-telling mindset.
This morning I am presenting ‘Dear Driver’, a fun, lighthearted road safety campaign about “equine road users”; my all-encompassing term for horse riders, horses in cart etc on the road. The campaign aims to educate unfamiliar tourist and urban-dwelling motorists of appropriate behaviour around equine road users. Illustrative communication techniques are used to reveal the dangerous consequences of unsafe actions to engage the audience in the issue and encourage compassion during encounters with horses on the road.
SLIDE 2
New Zealand has limited off-road equine recreational areas, unfortunately forcing most New Zealand horse owners to exercise their horses on public roads. While some motorists are considerate to horses, a growing majority are not, which can lead to the injury or even death of humans and horses. This is a issue that concerns a large number of New Zealand equestrians.
The rapid expansion of urban boundaries, rising urban population, and increasing tourism mean that more encounters between equine road users and unfamiliar motorists are likely to occur and the need for education is becoming vital.
There is a clear opportunity and need for a road safety campaign for equine road users in New Zealand that captures the attention of motorists in a refreshing and compelling way; shifting their attitudes, increasing their empathy for horses, and informing them of appropriate behaviour.
SLIDE 3
Therefore, my central proposition coming into this semester was:
“Although New Zealand motorists may be aware they need to behave safely around vulnerable road users, the actions of urban dwelling motorists around equine road users often do not reflect this. Illustrative communication design can educate these motorists about horses on the road and create an empathetic connection that influences behavioural change.”
SLIDE 4
So, coming into this semester I was aiming to target urban-dwelling motorists, for example: someone born and raised in Auckland who decides to go on a tiki tour of New Zealand. They are likely to have never encountered a horse on the road before, so if they came across an equine road user in their travels they wouldn’t know the proper etiquette.
Through the project’s development this audience was expanded to include tourist drivers as well. These drivers have been a part of many of the recent accidents involving horse riders on the road. They may be used to very different driving experiences than rural New Zealand roads, which can be narrow, winding, and rough, and combining this with an unfamiliarity of how to behave around equine road users is dangerous.
Therefore, Dear Driver provides educational material that aims to reduce the likelihood of road accidents involving these two motorist segments and equine road users.
These are the barriers to reaching the target audience that have I identified:
- They may not know appropriate behaviour or how quickly and dangerously horses can react
- They may not think there's a problem or they lack respect for horses on the road
- They might not be interested in horses
- They may turn off from safety messages
- They are likely to have a short attention span (especially for educational material)
Therefore, to overcome these barriers, Dear Driver is designed to be: Educational and easily understandable, empathy increasing, visually appealing, colourful, and fun, humorous and engaging, and fast-consumable.
SLIDE 5
Dear Driver consists of a two part strategy: animated gifs disseminated through social media, and a website. I chose to use web based communication methods as they are far-reaching and accessible, therefore the target audience will be able to engage with the campaign material from all over New Zealand and the world.
SLIDE 6
Using gifs as my communication method allows me to hide a serious safety message inside eye-catching content the audience wants to engage with. The Dear Driver gifs, which are a mix of traditional animation and 2D computer animation, dramatically illustrate the consequences of unsafe motorist behaviour. Animation allows me to convey concepts beyond what live action could conceivably (and morally) capture. I chose to use traditional animation to challenge myself, but also because I believe it adds value as the imperfections make the work feel more real and personal.
To add to the hand-crafted feel, I chose a hand-written style font for my main brand. This also adds to the tone of the words ‘dear driver’ as the font feels like something someone is writing or saying to the viewer. The text in my gifs are short rhyming couplets to add to the lighthearted approach and engage the audience. I chose to use bold colours for my branding to appeal to the viewer and catch their attention when they are scrolling through their social media feeds. The colours also make the work more playful.
SLIDE 7
I used a different communication strategy for each of the three gifs I produced. In this gif I have made the scenario look high-risk to the human. Horses are at all times subject to their instincts and even the calmest, most well-trained horse can become irrational if spooked. I wanted to show this irrationality and how it can put the human in a vulnerable position, with the aim that this knowledge would convince motorists to treat equine road users with more respect.
SLIDE 8
In my second gif I used the strategy of making the horse, which is a large intimidating animal, appear vulnerable - tapping into human’s nurturing natures, also with the aim of effecting the way they act around horses on the road. I have made the horse the main character in each gif to show people that, unlike other vulnerable road users like cyclists, there are three minds at work when a motorist encounters an equine road user - and that third mind is unpredictable and easily upset!
SLIDE 9
My third gif uses the strategy of personifying the horse as another object (in this case an explosive) to metaphorically show the audience how volatile and reactive horses can be, again with the aim of influencing motorist’s behaviour. The use of humour in my gifs and their moving nature makes them memorable, increasing the likelihood of message recall the next time the viewer comes across an equine road user.
SLIDE 10
The audience will be reached and influenced by these gifs as they are eye-catching, dramatic, playful, humorous, engaging, and impactful. Their lighthearted nature makes them more attention grabbing as they are in contrast to the prevalence of fear appeals in most other road safety campaigns. Another important reason I chose to use gifs is that they are fast-consumable, allowing me to convey a story and an educational message in a quick snippet that doesn’t require a large time investment from the audience.
Although each gif tells it’s own story and showcases a different character pairing, they are all part of a larger metanarrative that unites them under the key idea; equipping motorists with the knowledge of how horses can react and this influencing the way they act during an encounter with an equine road user.
SLIDE 11
The campaigns’s animated gifs are posted on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram through Dear Driver pages. Social media has the reach, impact, and shareability to allow content to quickly disseminate - it’s the ‘Digital-Word-Of-Mouth’. Social media provides a space for discourse about the issue where audiences can interact with the gifs and share personal experiences, which helps humanise and ground the key messages of the campaign.
The sharability of content on social media also means that relevant groups such as the New Zealand Transport Agency and the New Zealand Police, and tourism pages such as Tourism New Zealand and 100% Pure New Zealand, can share the Dear Driver gifs. This is an important avenue for how the target audience can be reached by the campaign.
SLIDE 12
The Dear Driver website acts as the campaign home base and information centre. The first section gives a more general overview of safe etiquette, and the further sections show the different road environments motorists may encounter around New Zealand and exactly how to behave when passing horses in those scenarios.
Visitors scroll through the different sections following a road. In this animation I’ve tested out my idea of an illustrated car “driving” on the road that moves as the user scrolls. As the car avatar passes one of the horse characters, it moves at a slower speed and overtakes with a wide berth, reinforcing two of the key messages of the campaign.
On the website I have also included a possibility to expand into a ‘Dear Rider’ page, which would contain information for equine road users and the steps they can take to make themselves safer on the road.
The website also contains a Social Gallery page that collates all of the public social media posts that use the campaign hashtag. The gallery helps convince drivers that there is a need to behave in safer ways, as they can see how many people care about the issue and hear about it “straight from the horse’s mouth”.
SLIDE 13
It is my intention that the Dear Driver website would act as a resource for tourism sites such as Tourism New Zealand, 100% Pure New Zealand, and the New Zealand Tourism Guide, as they will draw the audience that Dear Driver is aiming to reach. I also intend for it to be an extension of the NZTA website’s ‘About Other Road Users’ page to help clarify and expand upon the information they provide.
SLIDE 14
Whakatinana means ‘to manifest your idea’. Through the manifestation of my project this semester it involved an in-depth process of ideation, making, testing and feedback, reworking, advisor and peer critiquing, and refining, that evolved Dear Driver into a final output I could never have imagined myself achieving.
This first image is one of the works I presented at ‘First Showing’ in week 2. The main insight I gained from this shared moment was that people responded most positively to my works that made the horse the comical main character.
As you can see, in some of my initial works I made the cars look like monsters to show what they can look like from a horse’s point-of-view. But even though the audience liked this, I decided to drop it as I felt that it made the car (and therefore the driver) look evil. I want to portray that people are simply unfamiliar with how they should behave - they are generally not actually out to do griev-ous harm to horse riders.
The centre image is a still of the run-cycle animation I presented at week 6’s ‘Super Crit’. This received an overwhelmingly positive response, which lead me to take up the challenge of making animated gifs instead of still illustrations.
I started this semester with my characters being the horse and rider on the left. This then developed into the horse and human pairing shown in the other two images. But by week 6 I had expanded my line up to four human and horse parings to portray the different equine road users motorists may encounter in New Zealand. This received positive feedback at ‘Super Crit’.
The third image is one of the initial animated gifs I produced and received feedback on in week 9. These gifs were mostly still apart from one or two moving elements, such as the tail and pacifier moving in this example. My advisor challenged me to take the animation further; to make each gif slightly longer with more of a dramatic story. This pushed me to produce the final gifs shown earlier.
SLIDE 15
The clear way to move forward with this project is to produce more ‘Dear Driver’ gifs, and there is also room to extend the range of character pairings. There is the opportunity to develop the ‘Dear Rider’ section of the website and create social media content for this audience - like this example I produced during my process about making sure you stand out.
There is also the possibility to expand into more campaign materials and mediums such as billboards and other prompts where the behaviour is likely to occur, and also posters, pamphlets, merchandise etc - perhaps even a longer animated video that could be aired on incoming flights.
SLIDE 16
At the start of the semester I wanted to engage tourist and urban-dwelling motorists in educational illustrative material that influenced them to behave in safer ways around equine road users. I believe I have developed a fun and original response to this aim with my Dear Driver campaign.
The concept of whakatinana encompasses your responsibility to your project and its future. I believe Dear Driver would improve the safety of equine road users in New Zealand. This design project could be taken on by the NZTA or the NZ Police and developed into a national campaign. I am also confident that Dear Driver would be a worthwhile inclusion in New Zealand’s 'Vulnerable Road User Month’ this November and would create much needed conversation about the issue.
SLIDE 17
Through the process of whakatinana - turning my central proposition into a final design output - I pushed myself entirely out of my comfort zone. Reflecting on it now I am glad, because it made me produce something unique; something I never could have envisioned myself achieving at the start of this year.
Throughout the process of this project, I have learnt so many new skills and taken up challenges I never thought I would attempt. At the beginning of the year, I wouldn’t have even called myself an illustrator - and now I am someone who produced traditional animation for their final output! If I’d had more time, I would have liked to develop my characters into more of a unique style and perhaps developed the website to be more responsive for those who would access it via a smart phone, but I am proud of what I managed to learn and produce within the time frame.
This project has set me up to emerge from university as a confident, social-good designer ready to tackle any challenge with empathy and a story-telling mindset.