Readings: Chapters 13 and 14

Chapter 13

Chapter 13 focuses on the physical execution of an ad concept, detailing the process from beginning to end. Barry begins by explaining how students are often expected to be a so called "agency of one", meaning they are expected to be able to produce the whole concept and execute it well instead of just creating the concepts. I find this particularly interesting as a student, because I am an agency of one for each project that I create in class, and I believe this is a valuable skill to possess. Aside from that, Barry gives several tips on where to begin, like keeping a visual scrapbook and to not make your finished piece look like it has been done on a computer. Next, he details bits about different types of logos and the anatomy of type and suggestions for commonly accepted typefaces. The necessity of a basic grid system and creating layouts follows next with some helpful hints as to how to begin with basic ideas and then expand them. Barry continues with technological suggestions and tips and concludes the chapter with questions that one should ask of each layout to determine its effectiveness.

Chapter 14

A short, but interesting chapter on how to present and sell one's work follows the chapter on execution. Barry speaks of how to make eye contact and communicate with clients and bosses as well as account people. These sections are very useful as each person will require a slightly different tactic when explaining your work to them. I found the idea of a mysterious prop intriguing and slightly confusing. I get that this prop is supposed to draw in the client, but Barry does not do the best job in explaining what this prop might or might not be.

Readings: Chapters 8 and 9

Chapter 8: Ambient

This chapter explored the different forms of ambient advertising and what each form meant. Beyond defining Ambient as ads out in the environment, Barry explains what makes good ambient ads. As with other types of advertisements, the idea must be simple and original, something that others have not thought of before. He also advises to keep the idea non-threatening, practical and relevant. I find it interesting how he comments on the fact that as a student, I have the ability to create a concept and then find a brand or client while in the real world, a client would approach me and the idea would be formed from that relationship.

Chapter 9: Interactive

This chapter looks into interactive media, i.e., non-traditional print media that includes the ads placed on the internet. Barry once again states the importance of creating a good idea from which to start as the Internet has many bad ads on display. A plus side to this form of advertising is that consumers can now consume at a much faster rate than ever before (185), allowing form more consumption and advertising for products. An interesting piece of information from this chapter is the notion that Interactive marketing is not an interference like TV ads, but rather an invitation to look at a product and learn more about it. As the chapter progesses, Barry discusses multiple forms of interactive media such as social networking cites, blogs, and CDs. He gives pros and cons for each setting, and also states how CDs are dying out as an advertising form as technology improves. With the advent of new technology, advertising will change and grow to take advantage of the new possibilities offered by that advancement.   

Reading Chapter 6: Generating Strategies and Ideas

Chapter 6 is an intensive and extensive examination of different techniques and strategies that one can employ when creating an ad campaign. Barry defines a strategy as an approach, and idea that communicates the proposition to the right audience in a consistent tone (106). After this, he describes various types of strategies including: the 'Before and After Strategy', the Before Only Strategy, the After Only strategy, the Advice Strategy, the Knowledge Strategy, and so on. The point of these explanations is to detail some of the many ways in which a designer can focus a campaign idea on. He or she may use on or a combination of these techniques as long as the theme and tone remain cohesive and do not become disjointed. Following these descriptions are different types of ideas, such as visual metaphor and similie. These techniques are good for creating interesting and intriguing ads that go beyond the literal and into the lateral.I found most interesting the social commentary idea and how a designer can use social issues to sell a product or service/evoke emotion in the consumer. Also interesting was using truisms in a campaigns as well as interesting facts to draw in the viewer of the ad. The next section focused on how to use aspects of the individual product (such as the brand name, its packaging, or how it is consumed) to create individualized campaign that promote the specific purposes of a product. Barry advises against using college humor, but focusing on unique humor that ultimately promotes a product or service. He also explains how often times, ideas are 90% there but need that extra push to make it a great ad instead of a good one, which happens often with my own designs.

Readings: Chapter 4 and 5

Chapter 4: The Campaign

 This chapter presented several ideas and directions in which to create and develop a campaign, as well as defining exactly what a campaign is. Barry talks on the distinctions between one-shots and campaigns; one-shots being ads that cannot translate into multiple mediums or executions. He also elaborates on how campaigns with consistency help create brand loyalty and that some campaigns are big or small idea campaigns. With a campaign idea that can go beyond three executions constitutes a big idea campaign, but this method is not always the best as they can become too vague and broad. The last half of the chapter explains several mistakes to avoid when creating a campaign. One of those mistakes, and probably the most important piece of information from this chapter is to create executions that are related, but not too closely related that they are the same idea repeated over and over again.


Chapter 5: The Tagline

 "The Tagline" chapter elaborates on the topic of how to create meaningful and effective taglines. Included are several dos and don'ts that include: making it and invisible "=" sign, to use rhyming very sparingly if at all as it becomes cheesy, not to use question taglines or putting. periods. in. the. middle. of. words. for taglines (I'm done now, I had my fun), and also how sometimes reducing the words of a tagline can help to narrow down the scope of the tagline to the essence of what you are trying to say. Aside from the logistics of creating a tagline, I think an important aspect of the chapter is that he explains how taglines may come (thought of) before headlines or after, and even that taglines can change throughout the campaign project. This makes it easier to create a starting point when working on a campaign without out feeling married to it forever.

Readings: Chapter 2 and 3

Chapter 2: The Strategy

Chapter 2 explores the topic of how to go about creating a strategy in order to create an ad. Barry highlights aspects such as: how to form a creative brief and the eleven categories that make up the brief, the importance of researching the client and its product/service, and how to create an effective logo. These points were explained through the use of examples that helped to understand how to effectively think about was goes into the concept of an advertisement. One thing that stuck out to me was how important the tone of an ad is, and how important it is that the image and the copy, use the same tone.

Chapter 3: Print

This chapter details the different forms of print ads as well as the "rules" behind print advertising. Beyond explaining the differences between posters, press, and prosters, Barry walks the reader through how to reduce elements in an ad and how to effectively call attention to the right part of the ad. He also explains what to do and what not to do when creating headlines and visuals, as well as how visuals and headlines should play off each other and create a kind of tension that draws the viewer in. Even though the section on what kinds of questions to use in a headline was a bit lengthy, I found it interesting as to how easily a bad headline could surface. However, many of these same rules (don't use straight puns) apply when writing for general purposes as well.

Readings: Introduction and Chapter 1

Introduction

The introduction to The Advertising Concept Book gives the reader an overview to the setup of the book as well as a brief description of the advertising business. Pete Barry explains different selling techniques, such as hard sell vs. soft sell as well as why so many bad advertisements exist today. Barry also talked on how to work in the advertisement business i.e. on a team with other creative people. Exploring the way in which we think of ideas, as well as how we block creativity help the reader to understand what will be covered in the book. One thing I realized as I read the intro, was that every great ad does have some truth that the ad is based upon, and that bad ads either do not have a truth, or they had highlighted the wrong truth for the product

Chapter 1

Chapter one highlights the basic mindset and, for lack of a better word, tools that one may need to begin to create great ads.  Included in this overview are the ideas of KISS (keep it simple stupid) and SLIP IT (smile, laugh, informs, provokes, involves, think). These ideas can help a designer to not go too overboard or too bland when creating an ad. Barry also advises on how to create many sketches or ideas before settling on one idea. He says how getting attached to one idea in particular may hinder a designer from realizing the mediocrity of an idea, when a better one is out there. The idea of turning ideas on their heads really stuck out to me as a good way to really explore the breadth of a challenge. It seems that when we go in a completely opposite direction, new avenues can be opened that would go undiscovered if the original idea was not questioned.

Movie Posters

      The final project for Vis Comm 1 consisted of creating three movie posters (a thriller, a romance, and a comedy) using the same title for each. We had to create a tagline that informed slightly about the pretend movie. This project challenged me to examine how type can convey different ideas or emotions, as well as examine how type can interact with imagery.
     To begin this project, I researched different movie posters. Some were from previously released movies, and others were from future releases. Three of my favorites were the posters for Beastly, Kung Fu Panda 2, and Red State. These posters combined typeface and imagery effectively and worked really well as posters.

      From there, I began to play around with layout on paper and then tried some on the computer. Not happy with the results, I did a typographic study hoping that this would help ignite some ideas based upon the type. I had to go beyond the given fonts in Illustrator and search online for fonts that would work best with my designs. Once I had the fonts mostly figured out, I searched through my personal image library to see if I had any photographs of my own that I could use for the project. Luckily, I had two that would work for the romance and the thriller poster. For the comedy, I took a photograph of a friends car. As I gathered images, I began to play around with different ideas and layouts.

Each poster changed completely at least once, but most often two or three times. If I would feel stuck at any point, I would start over on a new layout and come back to that one later to see if there was something from the old design that I could salvage. I finally settled with these three designs: