Reading: 13 + 14

Type, stock images, layout, the grid system, color, and software are all addressed in chapter thirteen (execution).  The Type section was a little redundant seeing as it was one of the first things we went over in vis. Com. I, but it was good to have that refresher. 

The stock images section, on the other hand, taught me something I didn’t know.  I always thought that for every ad the team had to come up with their own images and whatnot.  Of course that would take a lot of time and if you have to crank out a campaign really quick it would be difficult to have to do the photography for it.  Not to mention it would be annoying if it was a very basic image that you needed.  Stock images fix that problem with hundreds of images that are ready to use.  If you are working on a very specific campaign though, you would have to do your own photography to make sure your message is sent to the audience.

I love the author of this book.  In the section about the grid system and layout he actually put in the lines for the grid that he used to lay out the text.  He even shows an example of how to break the grid with a paragraph of his text.  Important rule: you have to understand the grid system in order to break it. 

The color section was pretty explanatory; don’t use light text on a light background, use dark text on a light back ground and vice versa. Also, if a color is mentioned in the name of a company, use it in the logo.  Something that I hadn’t thought of though was the fact that you have to make sure the color you use is different from the competitors in your market to keep your brand distinguished from theirs. 

Finally, the software was kind of a recap because we used a chunk of them in class, but there were a few that I hadn’t heard of before such as Freehand. 

Chapter 14 was short but full of important information.  Presentation and how people see your idea are of Godlike importance (at least it seems that way to me).  The client comes in with an idea of what it should be like and they will be very set in their ways.  A portion of the time what you had in mind and what they had in mind are not going to be the same so you have to stand up for your ideas and make sure they understand where you are coming from.  What I didn’t realize is that you get to talk up your idea before they see it, which could either be excellent or could take your campaign for a nosedive.  I thought it was also interesting that props could be used in the presentation, though it kind of made it sound like you are going to be talking to a bunch of five year olds instead of clients… that might just be me though.      

Reading: 08 + 09

           Ambient or guerilla advertising.  This chapter and the chapter after it were really interesting to me because they are the new way to advertize.  In ambient advertising the advertisement is in a place that no one would suspect and therefore makes it more memorable.  It also has the advantage of thinking of the concept for the design first and then finding the client that fits.  This gives the designer a lot more elbowroom to come up with a really excellent idea. 

            Of course there are some things that you have to consider while you using this method. It can get expensive, and it has to be easy to produce.  If it’s to expensive or takes a lot of work to produce it won’t be worth the cost and it will harder to spread it around and attract a bigger audience.  There are also the limits of reality.  Would it really work?  You have to think about placement, weather conditions (if it’s outside), the audience it would be effecting and so on.  Also, as with any other advertisement, you have to make sure your not insulting anyone in the process. 

            The next chapter was similar because it focused on interactive advertising, which draws the audience in even more than the ambient advertising.  It also creates a connection between the audience and the company because they are physically interacting with them.  It’s also interesting that we have come to expect that companies will have an interactive website that we can look at to learn more about the product.  In that way people argue that it’s not really advertising; that you would find the web address on an ad that would lead you to the site to find out more.  Either way it’s giving people information about the product so that they will be more likely to purchase it. 

            This form of advertising also has it’s in that it is online.  People will find it, think its interesting, and then foreword it to other people so they can get in on the action too and that draws an even greater audience.

            There is also the problem of an ad being intrusive.  If the ad is disrupting what the person is doing then it could turn them off to the product.  You have to be sneaky about it and draw their attention with something interesting like the HP pong banner. That way they feel like they made the choice to be distracted instead of you forcing them to be distracted.   But this is an ever expanding way of advertising that holds the reigns of future advertising which makes it both important and interesting.

Reading: 06

           Of the steps to creating a campaign the strategy phase is the first.  There are a boatload of strategies that they go over so I will pick a few that I found interesting.  The challenge strategy, though not applicable to all products or services, is an interesting way to sell a product.  It causes people to buy the product even if they may not have wanted it in the first place because it challenges them to do it.  People want to prove to the ad, the company, and the world that they have what it takes to use the product, and therefore the company makes sales. 

            Another interesting strategy was the logic strategy.  It asks you “you wouldn’t do that, so why do this.”  I believe that this is a very interesting concept and it really makes you think but at the same time you have to be careful about how you use it.  If the comparison doesn’t make sense then you are left with a confused audience and an unsold product.

            The demonstration strategy was also a good one.  It tells you about the product and if your smart you can do it in a way that is creative and eye-catching but at the same time still informs the audience.  Of course you have to watch out for the infomercial effect.  You don’t just want to stand there and show what your product can do.  You want to put it in a situation where it can prove itself.

            After strategizing comes the idea for the campaign.  There were oodles of types of ideas described, but there were a few that stood out to me.  The using of an image as a representation of something is always good.  If the audience can remember the image and what it stood for in the ad then they will probably have an easier time remembering what the ad is for.  You can say a lot with an image that you may not be able to with a sentence or two so you can get your idea across much quicker. 

            It’s also important to follow trends in the world.  People will already be concerned about what is happening and when you connect your product with the happenings of the world then it instantly becomes more important.  You have to make sure it is connected in a good way though; you don’t want to send the wrong message. 

            Which brings us to a different idea for advertising that I had never really heard of called “being anti-something”.  Literally taking a dig at something that needs to be addressed.  You also really have to be careful with this one.  If it’s not something that many people will be against you will end up turning away a chunk of your audience.  You also can’t be hurtful just for the sake of being hurtful.  The thing your digging at really has to deserve it.   A good example would be the national debt of the U.S. and the people responsible.  You’re not specifically pointing at individuals and everyone already knows it exists and that it is a problem.

            It also talks about “pushing” your campaigns or taking a good idea and making it even better or making the campaign last longer.  It tells us what to avoid such as college humor and negative advertising without a reason.  We also need to make sure that ideas are unique and don’t feel tacked on because that will not only lead to cheesy ideas but it will not help the audience remember your product.  There were many other very important parts in this chapter, but there were far to many to comment on all of them. 

Reading: 04 + 05

This chapter describes the differences between one shots and campaigns.  If something is a one shot it is a singular idea that cannot be stretched into other executions in order to constitute a campaign.  This doesn’t mean one shots are worthless.  If they are profound and memorable enough the effect may last years (such as the 1984 Apple commercial). 

            A campaign is an idea that can be used to create three or more executions of the idea.  A campaign that stops after three ideas is a small campaign and one that can be easily turned into numerous executions is a large campaign.  Of course, when you’re making your campaign you have to make sure that you’re not spreading the idea too thin and if it is really easy to expand upon, it might be too easy an idea and people will get bored.

            The teaser campaign is a very interesting approach but difficult to execute.  It is used to draw interest to the client without revealing them to the audience all at one time.  You reveal the idea part by part until the “big reveal” where the client or product is announced to the public.  You can’t drag it out for too long though or else the audience will lose interest.

            The tagline is very important to a campaign.  It harnesses the entire meaning that you are going for in one sentence and you use that to stay on track.  That doesn’t mean that the tagline always has to be seen, but you do have to stick to your idea (this is called the invisible tagline).  There are four other types of taglines; summation (sums up), explanation (explains), proposition (proposes the ad’s idea), and brand or umbrella.  The brand tagline is really more of a general brand explanation than a working tagline.  They tend to be longer and address things across the board. 

            When creating it is good to have an idea, campaign, and a working tagline that you can throw in and out of the process whenever you see fit in order to come up with an ad that suits the product.  Once you think you know what you’re doing it is good to polish up the tagline and make sure it says what you want it to say as simply as possible.  This is called the final tagline.  There are a whole slue of tagline type that I hadn’t even thought about (such as the “yeah…” tagline or the period between every word) but now that I know they exist I realize that I see them all over the place. 

Reading: 02 + 03

In these two chapters we learn that strategy is very important in advertising.  You really need to know your client before you dive into the campaign and a strategy will help you with that.  A strategy is the most basic of information that you need in order to start building the ideas that you will use to make your advertisements.  These are usually broken down into information such as client, audience, competition, and the product or service you are promoting among other things.  The strategy is the most important part because it is the skeleton or framework for the rest of your campaign.   A good strategy will result in a good campaign.  From there you can start working on actual ad ideas and then form those into a full-blown campaign.

            The third chapter is all about print media.  You should always focus on print media first because it is the most difficult to use.  It must contain an entire idea in 8 words that will take an average of three seconds to read.  If you can do this with your idea then you can definitely make it work in a thirty second TV ad (and even make it more interesting).  There is also a large focus on headlines and what you can do with them.  An example would be headline twisting which I found especially interesting.  You take something that is clichéd or obvious and twist it at the very end, turning it into something completely different and unexpected.  We are also taught to simplify our ideas by giving only what information is really needed to relay the idea.  I like to hear this because I love simplicity.  Finally it talks about how to use test and images together so that whichever is important catches the eye first and so that one does not distract from the other.      

Reading: Intro and 01

I really like this book, and I’m not just saying that because I’m getting graded.  It really makes you think about the ads that you see all over the place and the amount of work that went into them.  Just the introduction of this book taught me things that I didn’t know, or at least didn’t realize.

            One of the main points that this book stresses is that your ad will not be good if the original idea is terrible.  There are ways to cover a terrible idea for an ad with frill and distractions, but that is the last thing you want to do.  You want a simple (because people don’t have much time), significant (so people remember it) ad that doesn’t lose the product in all the jazz.  That’s only the final product or the tip of the iceberg as the book puts it.  It goes on to point out that there are many, many facets that the ad has to go through before it becomes a great ad. 

            It goes on to explain how a team works and how the brain works and what that means for an ad.  There are two different ways to come at an advertisement; hard sell and soft sell.  These apply to the different sides of the brain; logical and creative.  Usually in a good team there is and analytical, logical thinker and a creative thinker that come together to create a great idea.

            The first chapter bumped up the level of interesting for me.  Getting to see the logic and thinking behind the ads that I’ve seen all over the place was really excellent.  In this chapter they went over basic tools that are used in advertising, a good part of which I was already aware of.   Some of it was brand new to me though, especially the concept of literal vs. lateral.  He touches on it throughout the chapter and before reading the book it had never struck me that it was a strategy.  Of course now it seems like the most important thing you can work with.  If all the ads out there were literal, no mater how much you spice them up eventually they would become boring and predictable.  Making them lateral tweaks them just enough that the ads kind of comes at you from the side and takes you off guard, makes you think and therefore think about the product which is exactly what you want in advertising.  He also points out another important part of this advertising though, that being you always have to start in truth especially when tweaking your ad.  Anything not based in truth will be hard to believe, hard to follow, or flat out lying to the customer which something you don’t want to do.

Movie Posters (Final Project!)

For our last assignment in Visual Communications 1 (*sniff sniff*) we were to create movie posters in three different genres; romance, thriller, and comedy.  First step, as always, research!

 

We took note of the similarities between genres so that we could use them when we create our own posters.  I saw that most horror film posters are dark, the text is usually not very clean cut (appears to be disintegrating or dripping) and the poster may or may not have a touch of color somewhere (usually read, to represent blood).  The Comedy posters on the other hand have lots of color, actors with strange expressions, and the font tends to be rounder and larger.  Romances have a common thread in that they usually have lighter colors, the actors, if present, are looking at each other, and the titles are in a more script like font. 

            Now I started my own sketching and brainstorming.  The title of the film was to be the same for each movie - “Stockholm Drive”.  We were also only allowed to use photos that we had taken ourselves.  I immediately thought of a collection of photos wherein I took pictures of streets very low to the ground.  With these in mind I started sketching. 

 

While I was doing this I also started to think up taglines.  Of course, none of those taglines made it into the actual posters because once I got on the computer most of my ideas changed.  It started with the comedy. I wanted to do a “why did the chicken cross the road” parody without actually having the chicken crossing the road.  So I used a picture of a chicken I had taken in Hawaii and one of the low road shots and combined them to form a chicken silhouette.

 

 

From there I found a font (Hobo std) that was round, but not too childish and laid it out so that it would get bigger on either end of the word ‘Stockholm’.   Underneath the chicken I used the tagline “the age old question will be answered” trying to be snarky about the ‘why did the chicken cross the road’ question.  Finally I needed a background that was brightly colored and contrasting to the yellow from the road lines.  I found a picture taken at the air show where the sky was bright blue with just a little bit of cloud. 

 

Finally I used the colors from the road to make the title look like a road and added the color to the tagline as well finishing with this result.  

  But the poster still felt a little empty, so I made two copies of the cicada and shrunk them down a little.  I then stumbled upon the idea of the cicadas (being the hungry hoard of insects that they are) eating the words on the poster so I broke of the “th” from the “July15th” and fed it to the cicada in the bottom right hand corner.  Took “The infestation” and fed it to the one if the upper left hand corner and then pulled out the “o” from Stockholm and fed it to the large one in the middle.  This gave the text some interest and told you a little about the movie at the same time. 

 

Finally the Romance poster.  This was the toughest one for me.  I knew I wanted white somewhere but when I had a white background it seemed far too empty.  I found pictures from some vacations and put white frames around them then placed them at angles around the poster.   Then I pulled up a larger picture of Hawaii from the top of Diamond Head with a nice view of the beach and ocean and decided to use it for my background.  When I placed the type over it I initially made it white, but it didn’t look right, so I moved the type into one of the smaller pictures where the background was darker.  The font I used was ‘Mistrel’ because it had a hand written and script feel.  I placed it at an angle within the picture so that it looked like the title was written on the photo.  I then needed a place to put the tag line and the date so I faded out the bottom of the picture and placed it there. The tagline plays off the scattered pictures saying “The picture perfect place for love”  (cheesy, I know, but the alliteration helps).  Resulting in this final poster.        

 

Paula Scher (Project 5)

For our fifth project we were to pay homage to a famous graphic designer by designing a logo for their name and using it in a bio poster.  The designer I chose was Paula Scher and the first step was research.  I found a large amount of her work (above) and learned that she was a leader in the retro design movement with her different approach to typography.  I was attracted to her design because it had a very clean feel even though the way she places her type is all over the place.
So I started to sketch ideas before I went to the computer.  What I wanted to do was somehow contain her name.  Also there needed to be strange angles somewhere.  These are some of the initial sketches.  

I then went to the computer and put down some solid ideas. (below)  They were printed out and put on the “war wall” and I got feedback from the rest of the class on what was working and what was not.   

After some more ideas I finally chose a logo (last one in the one above).  It combined the container style used in her “Ballet Tech” poster and the angles that come up in a lot of her works.  Also, the font I used (Eurostile) is a san serif font because she used san serif fonts in a lot of her work.  

On to the bio poster!  First up was a lot more research.  Prof. Davis let me borrow a few of her books (Megg’s History of Graphic Design by Philip B. Meggs; Women of Design by Bryony Gomez-Palacio and Armin Vit; Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide by Johanna Drucher and Emily McVarish.) and I pulled out all the information about Scher and her influence on the Graphic design community.  Then I had to narrow that information down.  I ended up including her education, employment, clients and what she works with for the basic information as well as a paragraph about her design influence.  Finally I used a few of her own quotes from an interview that I thought really illustrated her character and her outlook on design. 

            Now it’s time to lay it out on the poster.  We had to use a picture of the designer, but in an interesting way, so that was the first thing I did.  I found a picture of her and cut her out and placed her in the corner of the poster.  I didn’t like how it looked though so I put it through live trace just to see what it would look like and it came out looking really interesting.  So I made her blue and the background yellow, a color scheme seen in some of her works.  Then I added the logo and put it in the center of the poster.  The rest of the information came after that and in keeping with the angles that she used I tried to align the information with the angles of the logo.  The final step was to bold the important things, add some more blue, and make sure that all the text was aligned correctly and I ended up with the final product below.    

Covering Shakespeare (project 3)

Our third assignment was to create book covers for three of William Shakespeare’s plays.  Out of the list I chose As You Like It, Measure for Measure, and Twelfth night.  I wanted to create a similarity between the covers so I tried to pick plays that had similar plot lines.  In As You Like It and Twelfth Night there is the similarity of women disguising themselves as men.  Though in Measure for Measure there was no cross dressing there were many times where people were to pretend they were someone else, which fit in with the theme.

            So I started brainstorming (as shown above).  I knew I wanted to use faces on the covers to tie them all together. I came up with the idea, for Twelfth Night and As you like it, to find a woman’s face and a man’s face from magazines and to combine them to make one face.  This however would not work for the third book, but I happened to find a very surprised looking lady and thought she would be a perfect fit for the nun in Measure for Measure.

            As I was going through the magazines I came across a tree made out of vitamins for a health store and cut it out.  I wanted to use it to represent the forest in As You Like It, but I wanted it to look more like a tree and less like crushed up vitamins.  So I cut it out and traced it and then colored it in solid black, leaving some space between the leaves and the branches to make them distinguishable.  I decided then that I would use it on the back cover along with the blurb about the story.  To keep the similarity going I needed a ship (drawn from a photo I had taken of a tall ship) and a guillotine (drawn from an online image) for the backs of the other two books.  These were then scanned in (shown below) scaled and cut out to be placed on the back with the blurbs.

                                                                                                                                                                   

            I wanted the blurbs to stand out from the background, but I didn’t want them printed on a solid paper.  To compromise I bought some velum and printed on that.  The velum does not cover up the texture of the background, but blurs it sufficiently enough so that you can read the text easily.  As for the rest of the text, I printed on transparencies.  The type used for the titles was bold enough that I wouldn’t have to worry about losing it to the background.  The backgrounds are scrap-booking paper.

            For the front covers I went through magazines and cut out faces that looked like they could be combined.  I scanned in the ones I thought would work and scaled them to match each other in size.  I then printed them and tried different ways of tearing and cutting until the two different faces formed one face.

                                                                                                                                                                 

           Now with all the pieces made I had to place them on the covers.  At first I had the text and the images separate from one another, thinking that I needed to spread them out, but Professor Davis suggested using some overlap in order to bring them together.  After playing around with the pieces I eventually taped them in place (seen below).  They were now ready to be scanned into the computer.

                                                                                                                                                                     

            After scanning them in I removed the lines from the transparencies and tape the best I could and got rid of any other blemishes that showed up.  Then I spent a good half hour trying to figure out the printer, but eventually got it to work and thus the finished product.   

    

Music and Arts Festival (Project 2)

For this project we were to design a logo for the Westerville Area Chamber of Commerce Music and Arts Festival.  The first step in the process of creating my logo design was meeting with the Westerville Area Chamber of Commerce representative.  We all asked questions about what information was to be included where, what they were interested in seeing in the logo, and looking at old logo contest winners.

We then took all this information and hit the paper.  First thing first was to brainstorm and put some thumbnail sketches down.

 

Then I picked three different ideas that I thought I could use as a logo. 

I then drew them out larger and made sure all the information that needed to live in the logo had a place to be.  After this we took these images to the Xerox machine and blew them up.  These images were transferred back to my sketchbook by covering the back of the paper with graphite and tracing the logo.  I then traced it again with pen to make it really clean looking.  These are the result after they were scanned into the computer.

These scans were imported into Illustrator and put through the live trace process.  This turned my scan into a group of paths that could be manipulated and cleaned up even further.  Now I was able to start filling the spaces with color.  We were limited to two or three colors so I went on Kuler.com and found some color palettes that I thought worked well.

The concept for the final logo that I used (seen below) came about through a combination of a few different ideas.  I knew I wanted to use the image part of the logo to create a part of the font used.  This was done by connecting the A in art to the neck of the guitar.  Brainstorming things made of a similar shape gave me the idea for turning a paint palette into the body of the guitar.  

   

 

I Wish it Would Rain (Project 1)

For this project we had to create an image using only the lyrics from a song by Gladys Knight and the Pips.  While listening to her music I heard alot about peace and love, but I also heard about heartbreak and sorrow.  I tried to reflect that in my thumbnail images in my sketchbook.

  I wasn't to familiar with her work until I heard "I Wish it Would Rain".  My father had sung a version of this song in a band he used to be in so I thought I'd pay tribute.  The sketch of the eye (above right) is what I decided to base my image off of.  I then sketched out another, simpler version on a larger sheet of paper and started plotting out where the different verses would go.  When trying to construct the base image of the eye I had to chose lines in the song that would be long enough to make up the lines of the eye that I needed. The rest of the lyrics that were left over (after the basic construction) were then used to create the eyelashes and eyebrows.

  I chose a couple of fonts.  Cooper Black for the bolder lines in the eye, and Handwriting Dakota for the eyelashes and eyebrow.  I constructed the parts of the eye separately on tracing paper and then taped them all down where they formed the rough image of the eye (seen above).  This was then placed in the xerox machine and copied, making it easier to see and ALOT less smudgy.
  I then covered the back of the Xerox copy with graphite, creating a "carbon copy" type paper... only with graphite.  This paper was then placed graphite down on the illustration board where it was taped down and traced again.  This made a ghost print of what I would be inking.  This ghost print was then traced yet again in ink.  In the picture below I am halfway through inking, to show the difference between the ghost copy and the ink. 

   When I was inking I traced all the cooper black writing first and then filled it in once all the other tracing was done.  For the crease above the eye and for the outline of the iris I used stippling instead of solid black because I didn't want it to compete with the outline of the eye and the eyebrow/eyelashes.  I'm pretty pleased with the final product.