Challenge: For this project, we were challenged to create a souvenir for a selected town in the north east. I was in a team with two other people to each create a souvenir for South Shields.
Solution: We began by all collating our research. Here, we developed our knowledge and understanding of the town through online resources. Although I developed a new understanding of the coastal town, I began creating a visual identity for it with a collage of my memory of the town from when I was a child. This was based on the town’s fairground ‘Ocean Beach’. When presenting my collage to my peers, I got some positive feedback from multiple people saying how it made them feel ‘nostalgic’. I decided to go off this feedback to create my souvenir. I decided the age group I would focus on is people my age who had the same experience as me and have not visited the town since. I took an in-depth look at what my consumer group’s needs are and focused on how almost everything is now set in the digital world. Within the world of nostalgia for this age group, I found that there is currently a revival of the ‘disposable camera’. When thinking about how I could utilise this, I focused on the appeal of social platforms like TikTok and its trends, more specifically, ‘challenges’. This is when the ‘Aye Spy’ was created. The aye spy is a disposable film camera challenge sold in south shields. The packaging prompts customers to take photos guided by the instructions on the packaging of the camera. The packaging takes inspiration from a child-like idea of the town. The prompts on the back guide customers through different thoughts and memories of south shields. The camera would be sold in small businesses around the area as many of the prompts encourage customers to visit these shops. When the camera is sent away for development, each Photo is printed with a frame that summarises the prompt. The camera would come into production in the summer of 2023 as this is the town’s most popular tourist season.
