The Project
After a very successful first recruitment campaign Essex Police needed to hit new audiences that the campaign didn’t reach. After extensive research it was found that the job was attractive to people all over the country and people were willing to travel or relocate. As well as selling the job and all it’s fantastic attributes we needed to sell Essex as a survey revealed that people didn’t know that Essex was a vibrant, beautiful, diverse with urban towns, thousands of miles of coastline, seaside towns and pretty villages.
My job was to illustrate 6 peoples journeys from their old life and job to their new exciting life and job in Essex. These ranged from people leaving built up London estates to live in the beautiful Essex countryside to leaving old factory jobs to live by the beach and work with the Essex Police marine unit.
The Design
After working for Essex Police for three years one of the selling points is that you feel like part of the family. I wanted to steer away from a corporate style and have a friendlier vibe to give people more of a feel of the force. I decided to create each journey as a scrap book style illustration showing the thought process of the person planning where the job could take their life.
I went out with the film crew who was making a 50 second film to accompany my graphics and photographed all the elements to make up each journeys. By keeping the same people and locations throughout the project brought everything in line with each other and kept a continuous feel. Using a mix of techniques I created this rough, scrap book style with the aim of not making it too clean and glossy but also getting the balance between having it too messy and hard to follow. Once designed they was looking a little flat so I run it though a displacement map to look like a creased/ folder poster to add a bit of texture which finished off the design really nicely.
The Result
The end result was 6 portrait graphics along with shorter square versions for Instagram along with a refresh of promotional material. I was very pleased with the result which gave the force a distinctive recruitment style that stood out from other forces. It was also recognised nationally and got a lot of interest as it was launched around a national campaign for more officers. Below is the video (created in house) that accompanied the graphics as well as an animation that was created based on my designs (designed by Tom and Steve). The campaign itself done great with recruitment increasing with a large group of these people being from outside of Essex.
