Somewhere to land
Work
Spec
/
For a campaign aimed at asylum seekers arriving in the North East, I wanted to avoid the usual visual language of displacement: stock photography, sad faces and people staring meaningfully into the distance. So I started looking up.
The Idea
I started thinking about birds.
Not as a literal representation of asylum seekers, but as a simple visual shorthand for movement, uncertainty and arrival.
The Visual Direction
The imagery is deliberately distant: a huge North East sky, a tiny bird and a familiar landmark mostly disappearing out of frame.
For someone arriving somewhere unfamiliar, the place itself is enormous. The bird is deliberately small.
As the campaign progresses, the bird gradually gets closer.
The Journey
The bird becomes a visual progress bar.
First it's distant. Then it's approaching. Then it lands.
As the information becomes more important, the metaphor becomes less so.
The Website
The visual language carries through to digital, with the North East landscape and birds becoming a simple, recognisable device across the site.
The hero could evolve into a subtle looping video, with birds moving around the landmark, bringing the campaign to life without distracting from the information.
What I Learned
The temptation with campaigns about difficult subjects is to make the subject look difficult. I wanted to do the opposite.
No distressed stock photography. No visual shorthand for trauma. No inspirational sunset.
Just a bird, a lot of sky and somewhere recognisable in the distance.
Ultimately, the idea gave the campaign a simple visual language that could work across every touchpoint.
