Magpie brands National Prison Radio
Magpie Studio has created a new identity for the National Prison Radio network, and a series of communications designed to appeal to inmates and their families.
The pro-bono project come on the back of Magpie’s branding of parent charity the Prison Radio Association in 2008.
An award-winning education charity, the PRA runs NPR in partnership with the National Offender Management Service. The service is available to prisoners across England and Wales directly to their cells through their TVs.
The final lock-up identity for NPR is ‘very much in keeping with the original marque we created four years ago,’ according to Magpie creative partner Jamie Elull, who says, ‘The branding has stood the test of time and still encompasses what the PRA does, so their Chief Executive Phil Maguire felt the new national network should feel very much a sister brand’.
The PRA aims to change prisoner’s lives through radio. Magpie has created branding to demonstrate the NPR’s outreach to inmates and their families.
Elull says, ‘We were asked to create a set of visually arresting posters which could communicate without words; due to an audience with limited literacy. Our approach was to use duel imagery, which communicated two messages in one image.
‘We then styled the poster campaign to feel slightly subversive, with a concrete background. And paired this with Steven Bonner’s lovely stencil face Muirside, which we’re using as NPR’s headline typeface.’
The poster campaign goes live in prisons next week and Magpie will continue to work with NPR to roll out further prison-side communications.
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On the surface the ‘Banksy’ style graphics are seductive, but i think the use of bars in the logo and the general graffiti style sends out the wrong negative message about prisons pandering to the old cliches.