Category: Branding, print, video

Client: Linkpoint

Date: August 2003

Lovehub

In the early 2000’s, mobile phones were becoming increasingly more common and popular with younger people. Lovehub was a mobile phone service that enabled people to chat and flirt anonymously via SMS text messages.

The project

The first project was simply to create a logo and branding for the service. The branding was based around the colours pink and blue to represent male and female, making use of exciting imagery and contemporary typefaces to appeal to a younger audience.

Once the branding was established, the next phase was to produce printed material such as brochures, postcards and magazine adverts to advertise the product and promote the brand.

To promote the service further, the marketing team behind Lovehub created hosted club nights where clubbers were invited to sign up and flirt with other people in the club. A large screen was set up behind the DJ decks to display the messages as they flew back and forth. I created the graphics for this using Macromedia Flash (Pre Adobe), which was fed dynamic content from the web via the sms text messages.

The club nights were so successful that it was decided to see if the concept would work for a tv programme, so a media company was hired to create a pilot episode. This showed a group of young people out and about around the Notting Hill carnival in London. They were texting and flirting throughout the day. My part was to design and create both still and animated motion graphics to overlay the footage.

As Lovehub was designed and built around sms messaging, it’s popularity faded as other technologies such as instant messaging via the web became more widely used.