Ian Anderson then gave us the brief : ‘In the future the world is run by one powerful thing/ one corporation. Its up to us how they run the world whether it is good or evil. Situations conspired that in this future each colour is owned by a different company. Somebody at the world government has decided they need to re-brand across the world with new signs and uniforms etc. Because of language barriers the best form of communication is by colour coding. Of course this means that the company who’s colour is chosen will be quid’s in as their colour will be used on everything across the world. Each company is desperate to win the contract and each team represents a company. Present a fool proof but entertaining pitch as to why your colour should be used.’
Our team were given the colour Orange. ‘Oh dear’ We had landed one of the hardest colours. How are you supposed to persuade a room of people that orange is the best colour when you don’t feel too friendly towards it yourself? We decided to start considering the emotions linked to the colour orange, such as energy, warmth and good health. I thought this was a good place to start and after going through some of these factors I did start to believe in our colour. Next we looked at the things in our world we associate with orange like high visibility jackets and juicy fruit. However, after a chat with Ian we started to think a little more outside the box. Ian reminded us that this was the future and we could make up the situation with which the world was currently in to perhaps help our argument. Although he reminded us that if we were going to make up a story it had to be believable and we had to be able to answer questions succinctly and with confidence so as to convince our audience.
Our next approach was to make up a humorous story, which was completely untrue but which could be believed. I’m not sure how we landed on this idea but between the four of us we made up the story that in this future all our skin was orange due to eating too many carrots. This was after the hit of global warming the government had decided to ban all artificial lighting leaving it impossibly dark at night time. Scientists had suggested that everyone in the world eat at least five carrots a day to improve their night vision but with the unfortunate side effect that everyone was now a slight shade of orange (strangely enough we actually investigated this and found the something in carrots does actually improve your eye sight and if you eat too many of them you will actually turn orange). This meant that orange was a colour with which we were very familiar and comfortable with and which united everyone in the world.
Our argument suggested three different ideas; the first suggested that the left over peal from the 5 carrots everyone eats a day could be crushed up and scientifically mixed to be turned into a bright orange paint to be used for the signs. This would be recyclable and an efficient way of disposing with all the carrot waste. The second idea mentioned the colour being of high visibility in the dark world that we now live in. The third idea suggested that emotionally the colour would bring a feeling of energy and joy to the world’s inhabitants, which is much needed in the darkness.
Compared to the other teams presentations we were the only team who thought openly and outside the box. Everyone else took quite a formal approach to the topic. We were the only team that made up a story. However, because we spent so much time trying to come up with a funny story for our presentation we didn’t actually have time to practice and so fell short in our delivery. I think the carrots and watsits we handed out went down well though.
This was very much a team effort. I couldn’t say whether anyone contributed more or not. Although we lost Ian Anderson said that as a group we all had good creative minds and it was good that we took a totally different approach to all the other teams. It was mostly about thinking outside the box and having fun, which I think we were successful in doing. I am really glad that I took part in this workshop. At first I was worried about the amount of days for my other project work I would miss out on, but I feel that it was worth it. Ian Anderson was an interesting person to meet and I thought it was really interesting to see what he thought about each groups presentations and ideas. Our presentation would defiantly have been received better if we had practiced it before hand instead. I think we sold ourselves short by not practicing it and it didn’t show off our creative ideas as well as they deserved. However, mostly from this workshop I have learned that I definatly still don’t like the colour orange.
