Cardiff Design Festival

Brief

Bridgend College is a dynamic Further Education College providing outstanding education and training to more than 12,000 students each year. They are also the largest provider of Higher Education courses of any FE College in Wales with over 1,000 students completing HNC, HND and degree courses each year. The College asked Savage and Gray Design create concepts for their 2010 Enrolment campaign and requested ideas which explored the theme of employment in the wider world with the College at its heart. Interest was also expressed in something interactive and unique.

Result

Bvillage was short-listed in the College Marketing Network's FE First Awards 2010 and at the Awards Ceremony in November 2010 won the Gold Award at for Best Integrated Media Campaign. The success of Bvillage within the College and with potential students resulted the it being further developed for the 2011 enrolment campaign, with the use of 3D avatars in promotional materials as well as the creation of a 3D avatar maker on the website.

Solution

We devised the ‘bvillage’ concept, a web-based community solution which would allow both potential, and existing students to enter an online world where they could work in a selection of virtual environments. The potential was for students to meet and interact with other users also interested in the same careers. An avatar creator was developed so that the user could make their ideal worker image, and each avatar area included a comments enabling discussions between users. Other facilities included an avatar ratings system and top ten, a polling area, forum, chatroom and quiz, all administered via a CMS backend, which also allowed the College to sort registered users into their specific courses and e-mail or SMS them with up-to-date course information. A mobile solution was also provided so that users could register via smart phone.

Project website

http://bvillage.co.uk