Motion, print and interactive design company L.inc Design was recently tapped by Mervyn's to execute an ambitious back-to-school campaign, which includes colorful graphics-driven branding and promo spots.
"L.inc Design is a true gem!" says Julie St. Clair, Mervyn's Associate Creative Director of Broadcast Media, who also directed the campaign. "A very unique partner in that they are capable of taking a client from conception thorough production - planning, plotting and partnering every step of the way - ensuring a final product that is beyond expectations. Super creative and tech talented - they've raised the level of our work, year after year."
L.inc Design was tasked with creating three branding spots, one in English and two in Spanish, as well as 24 unique :15 promo spots. Fusing hand-drawn-style fonts and colorful graphics, the spots feature real children as they interact and dance with illustrations of cityscapes, birds, flowers and paint splatters.
"Mervyn's came to us with initial ideas derived from their overall back-to-school print campaign, such as the hand-drawn fonts and flower graphic elements," explains Lisa Berghout, L.inc Design Creative Director / President. "The scripts were in place, but we worked with them in advance of the production to determine how we would shoot and layout the graphics for the spots. The illustrations had to carry out the idea of the campaign in a kid-friendly and narrative way."
With a tight timeframe of five weeks and over 50 versions of spots to create, the L.inc Design team did not have the luxury of time to plan every scenario and create elaborate shooting boards for the three-day shoot. Berghout provided on-set supervision, working closely with St. Clair to discuss the shoot and tracking elements needed for the design.
"Julie and I understand each other, which made our process much more fluid," continues Berghout. "We were shooting a spot every 45 minutes, so we really had to be in sync creatively. While we were shooting, we made spontaneous decisions about the volume of graphic elements we were going to achieve in post."
Once the shoot was completed, detailed storyboards were created to determine the editorial flow and animation layout. L.inc collaborated with the editors at Radium to ensure the graphics worked cohesively within each spot.
"This was a fun opportunity for us," concludes Berghout. "Mervyn's is such a great client, and we've been doing retail campaigns together for a long time. This project wasn't about typical sales promos. We were able to take it to another level, using graphics and animation to bring the stories to life in each spot. We enjoyed the creative collaboration immensely."
Adobe After Effects was the main tool used in the campaign for VFX, design and tracking.