Mosquitoes Are Jerks
Sometimes a project arrives with a storyboard. Sometimes it starts with a brief and an invitation to explore.
Mosquitoes Are Jerks started with the second.
As Gibson Kochanek, we joined the project as Lead Designers, working with the Sarofsky team on the campaign for Lamplight, TIKI® Brand BiteFighter Plug & Repel. Our role was to create the core visual concept and visual language that would become the foundation of the campaign.
But before there was a visual language, there were questions.
We always want to understand what we are solving before deciding what something should look like. So we asked about the story, the product, the formats, the assets and how much room there was for the idea to grow.
Then came research, conversations between the two of us, gathering imagery and lots of very rough drawings in our notebooks.
Mosquitoes entering the frame. A hand trying to slap them. Circles appearing like bites. Annoying buzzing. People trying to enjoy being outside. Even a mosquito wearing sunglasses.
Nothing polished. Just ideas being caught before they disappeared.
From there, we started building. We sourced photographs, cut out elements, created collages and experimented with composition, scale, contrast and colour. One idea led to another, and slowly the campaign began to develop its own personality.
Humour became an important part of it. We introduced irritating red mosquito bites and playful little details left behind by the mosquitoes, bringing a sense of controlled chaos into the collages. We also developed a limited colour palette, with red representing the irritation of the bite and yellow signalling relief from the solution.
Throughout the process, we shared, listened and refined, working closely with Sarofsky and Cramer Krasselt as the concept grew into a flexible visual system for animation, short form content and static executions.
Behind the finished campaign were questions, scribbles, conversations, cut out photographs, experiments and lots of small decisions.
What we love about projects like this is watching an idea find its character. In this case, it happened somewhere between an annoying buzz, a red bite, a badly behaved mosquito and a lot of collage experimentation.
That little bit of chaos became the visual world of Mosquitoes Are Jerks.
