On Brief: Archie Proudfoot’s vibrant GIFs for Peanut
Our On Brief project pairs emerging creative talent with startups to produce scroll-stopping visuals for Facebook and Instagram. Here, we take a look at signwriter Archie Proudfoot’s collaboration with Peanut – an app that helps mums meet like-minded mums in their area
On Brief is part of Inspire, a year-long partnership between Creative Review, Facebook and Instagram to showcase creative talent and great campaigns on both platforms.
Throughout this year, we’ve been highlighting emerging creatives through our New Talent series. We’ve also been inviting creatives featured in New Talent to work with a UK-based startup and produce visual content to promote their brand or product on Facebook and Instagram.
We invited four creatives each quarter to submit a rough idea in response to a brief from a startup. The first brief was set by Peanut – a free app designed to help mums meet mothers with similar interests in their area. Creatives were asked to come up with an idea for three to five visual assets that would raise awareness of the app on Facebook and Instagram and encourage downloads.
Images had to promote the functionality of the app and its ability to help mothers make new friends in their neighbourhood. Creatives were also asked to incorporate an element of movement such as looping video or changing backgrounds and reflect Peanut’s fun and friendly aesthetic.
London-based artist and signwriter Archie Proudfoot was selected after pitching his idea to create typographic GIFs featuring Peanut’s strapline, Mama Meet Mama.
Proudfoot worked with Head of Brand Hannah Hastings and Facebook’s Creative Shop to produce GIFs featuring graphic patterns and Peanut’s core brand colours. His initial idea was to hand paint letters and patterns on to photographs but the final works were created digitally.
“I really wanted to convey a feeling of energy and fun in the work. The app is all about women making new friends who are sharing the madness of parenthood, so I wanted it to fit the intensity of all of that,” says Proudfoot.
The result is a bold and eye-catching set of visuals that can be used as a single GIF or a set of still images. Phrases such as Mum Boss and Foodie reference ‘packs’ that Peanut users can add to their profile to describe their interests or lifestyle.
Proudfoot started out with fast-paced GIFs before toning down patterns and reducing the speed of animations to remain more in keeping with Peanut’s organic content.
“Colour-wise, I stuck rigidly to [Peanut’s] colour scheme. There’s a lot you can do with black, white, a few pinks and a red. These sorts of limitations are often quite useful,” he explains.
“There was plenty of experimenting going on while I was creating the patterns and painted photos. Not a huge amount of it made it into the final work but it triggered a lot of the style of some of my recent personal work so it certainly wasn’t wasted time.”
Proudfoot’s work has proved popular among Peanut’s followers. One image has generated 500 downloads of the app in just a few weeks with minimal ad spend and Hastings says she has also seen high engagement.
Hastings says Proudfoot was selected to work on the project his style was a good fit with Peanut’s black and pink aesthetic. “He often uses bold colours with strong typefaces…. There was one project in particular that we fell in love with. It was called TOO BAD I. The artwork was bold yet feminine, and used a similar colour scheme to what we had in mind.”
Peanut’s organic Instagram content has a distinct aesthetic. Most of its posts feature the same font and a mix of black, white and pale pink. The project is the first time the brand has collaborated with an external creative to produce content for Facebook or Instagram and Hastings says it has made her more open to experimenting with animations and new visual styles.
“We’re only six months old so it is still early days for Peanut. Apart from our in-house designer, Archie is the first artist who has designed ads for Peanut,” she says.
“At first, I felt very protective over Peanut’s visual identity and I was worried about deviating too far. However, after showing Archie’s designs to some of our mamas, the reception was great and I felt more relaxed. The performance on Instagram has also been great, so I think I need to be a bit more open to veering from what we know and be more willing to try new things,” she adds.
To submit your portfolio in consideration for New Talent or On Brief email rachael.steven@centaurmedia.com.
Creatives are paid for their involvement in On Brief and are not asked to produce speculative work – only a rough outline of their ideas – at pitch stage.
On Brief is part of Inspire, a year-long partnership between Creative Review, Facebook and Instagram to showcase outstanding creative work across both platforms. Facebook and Instagram’s Creative Hub was launched this year to help the creative communities understand mobile marketing. The online tool allows creatives to experiment with content formats – from Instagram video to Facebook Canvas – and produce mock-ups to share with clients and stakeholders. It also showcases successful campaigns created for mobile. Try out the mock up tool at facebook.com/ads/creativehub and see the inspiration gallery at facebook.com/ads/creativehub/gallery.