Question: How did student Tom Hubbard win such a unique and prestigious trophy? A hand-crafted, hand-painted masterpiece, topped with a golden microchip and worthy of any bookcase or designer’s desk?
Answer: Tom simply took part in a boring student brief set by Elmwood.
When deciding on a theme for student competition briefs, it’s easy to think of exciting and cool things to design; from book jackets and CD covers to TV idents and phone apps. But these things are already interesting to start with. So we decided to set students a particularly dull and boring brief. Because interesting ideas often come from uninteresting briefs.
It was simply titled ‘The Boring Brief’ and was set to various Universities this year. Those students who took part were instructed to pick out a ‘boring’ word from a hat and asked to re-brand it. They were judged on giving this dull word a brand that was unexpected, exciting and stood out from the usual designs found in its field.
If you rummaged through any designer’s bucket list, it would be rare to find any of these words in it. Words such as dry cleaners, Internet security company, removal hire, toaster or window blinds. But there lay the challenge, and most importantly the opportunity to rethink the product or service, rebranding it with a unique and memorable solution.
Students were asked to think about what the brand would be called and how it would look. What would its tone of voice be? How would the new brand live? What point of difference would it have?
The shortlisted students came back to Elmwood to present on their ideas, and Tom Hubbard, from Leeds University, became the overall winner for rebranding a microchip manufacturer.
Tom based his idea on two key insights:
1. Microchip manufacturers are constantly striving to produce smaller and smaller microchips that are more and more powerful.
2. Microchip manufacturers are usually regarded as corporate and functional organisations.
Tom therefore presented a strategy to create a brand identity that was more light-hearted and approachable, using a friendly tone of voice. All themed around his big concept: ‘Tiny but Mighty’.
Tom created the brand ‘Itsybitsy’, a name that combines both tiny and technology, with ‘bits’ relating to the binary digits used in key components on microchips.
The brand toolkit included a large speech bubble that gave the tiny microchip its mighty, but friendly voice. The content of the speech bubble translated the complex language of the industry into something digestible, light-hearted and easy to understand.
With this, and the help of the colour palette and rounded typography, ‘Itsybitsy’ turned a microchip manufacturer – usually regarded as cold, informal and technical – into something engaging, warm and single-minded. Itsybitsy is the tiny microchip manufacturer with a mighty output.
After an articulate and insightful presentation, Tom Hubbard became the winner of the first ever Elmwood student brief trophy, tailor-made to suit his solution with the golden microchip. Most importantly, Tom takes home the title of ‘The Boring Brief Champion 2013’. Something he can proudly tell his grandchildren all about in years to come.