Unboring Boring: How Picsart Helped Businesses in Boring, Oregon Stand Out
First off, to answer the question that is probably on your mind: yes, Boring is a real town. But don’t judge a book by its cover, or a town by its name. For the 8,000 residents calling Boring, Oregon home, the town is way more interesting than what its name might suggest.
In a sense, that’s exactly what we set out to prove with Unboring Boring. Behind every creator, entrepreneur, and small business there is a fascinating story waiting to be told. But people are often quick to judge a book by its cover and dismiss something that isn’t visually appealing.
Together with creative production company Quality Meats we set out to go beyond just talking about all the incredibly smart and easy design tools business owners now have at their disposal with Picsart. Instead, we showed how easier access to design can transform any type of business and help anyone stand out.
Roles and Contributions: Creative Director, Strategy, Production, Photography.
Boring Bean Coffee Roasters
For over 20 years, Boring Bean has been sourcing, roasting, and selling their own coffee beans. And while they have become the go-to spot for local coffee connoisseurs, their packaging was a little… watered down. Together we created unique packaging designs for their beans from around the world.
Nuts-N-Boltz Nonprofit Theater
The Lazenby family has been operating this nonprofit theater company for over a decade. Frustrated with the lack of quality theater in the area, they decided to simply open their own. Together, we created new templates so they can easily promote upcoming shows, and modernized their signage to attract passersby.
North American Bigfoot Center
The North American Bigfoot Center is probably the most well known attraction in Boring – and it’s anything but boring. At the museum visitors can examine odd footprints, watch footage of bigfoot sightings, and pick up cool merch. And while the museum itself attracts a lot of attention, their social media presence didn’t really have a big footprint.
Digital: Telling a Deeper Product Story
We knew early on that we wanted to create a destination where we could house all of the Unboring stories. That allowed us to provide a deeper dive into the tools that were used by each business, and highlight the design process behind every story. On top of that, we created bespoke templates, stickers, and other resources for creators to enable them to make similar designs.
Featured as site of the day on FWA, Awwwards, and CSS Design Awards.
OOH: Showing Some Love to the Town of Boring in Portland.
To celebrate the town of Boring and the work we’ve done together with the three businesses we partnered with, we chose to start our OOH portion of the campaign in the Portland area.
Using photography captured by the talented Sage East, my challenge to the team was that viewers in Portland would never encounter the same image twice. Our designers probably hate me for that 😅
And because we wanted to show these businesses some local love, we also featured our films in local movie theaters so we can bring their stories to life “on the big screen” while also supporting independent theaters.
Design Tutorials: Giving Other Businesses the Tools to Succeed.
A big part of our day to day work includes creating tutorials for first time designers and curious creators who are looking for inspiration. For this campaign, we wanted to cover the basic design principals behind creating your own brand, essentially creating an online course for small businesses.
Design: Creating the Unboring Look and Feel.
When it came to designing the overall look and feel of our campaign, we were faced with an interesting challenge: how do we create a type lockup that embodies the transition from ‘boring’ to ‘unboring’?
We settled on creating a dynamic typeface that had two modes. One was straightforward and clean (our ‘boring’ mode) and the other playful and unexpected (our ‘unboring’ mode). We partnered with Spanish type designer Marta Cerdà Alimbau to create a type lockup that can transform through motion. Having the ability to add movement and playfulness felt like a perfect match for our premise of turning something that seems dated and stale, into something imaginative and inspiring.