Product Advertising: Initial Comps

 

 During Wednesday's class, each design team brought their 3 product ad spreads to show to the class.  These were our initial designs and first attempt at tackling the concepts we chose.  Our concept in particular was based around communicating a sense of intense flavor options with intense power. We chose this particular concept for our 3 spreads because it was the most effective at portraying our intended powerful mood whilst pointing out our product differentiator, which is more flavor options.

After some consideration of our intended audience, we decided to change the magazine these ads are to be shown in from Details to Maxim magazine. Side by side it was clear that Maxim targeted those who would most likely pay attention to our ads and purchase an energy drink product. Maxim seemed to be a better overall fit because it is an overall more loud publication image wise which matched up to Rockstar energy drink's powerful attitude. Details magazine just seemed too metro sexual for the product we are advertising and wouldn't be an effective publication to target our audience of 15-39 year old American males who are into extreme sports and pop culture.  Let's just say most Rockstar drinkers aren't very heavy into fashion.

After getting feedback from our professor as well as our fellow students, it was clear to Oliver and I that we chose the right publication for our ads. They fit seamlessly within the context of Maxim magazine when the professor folded placed them to look like they were in the magazine.  The vivid colors and bold, loud typography worked well for both the publication and our product.  The ads obviously portrayed the powerful mood we were going for, but there was one problem.  There was nothing besides the copy that indicated that there were a variety of flavors.  We definitely need to fix this key part of our advertising campaign because it is vital that our product's differentiator is clearly communicated. 

Product Advertising: Revised Concept Sketches

On Monday's class I brought in 40 revised concept sketches for our Rockstar energy drink ad campaign spreads that Oliver and I had worked on over the weekend.  Each group laid out their concept sketches on the classroom tables in order to display them to the rest of the class and get ample feedback from a variety of people in the room, not just our professor. This seemed to be very helpful to every group. Our team in particular found it useful to see which concepts got the most reaction (negative and positive) and why they were getting such reactions. Mostly, this helped us weed out the concepts that received no attention and begin to narrow down to what direction exactly our concept and 3 spreads were heading towards. 

Towards the end of the class our professor made his rounds and gave his feedback to each team as to which concepts were the most effective so far and which ones should be left behind.  Our professor's feedback helped Oliver and I realize that whichever direction we decide to go in concept wise, we must not lose track of our specified audience as well as the differentiator/message, and mood that we intend to comminicate.

Audience: 15-39 Year old American males
Mood: Powerful
Differentiator/Message: 16 flavors (more flavors than competing energy drink brands)

Next class we are showing our initial comps of our spreads, so it's time to get shooting and designing ASAP!

GAUGE Speaker Event: Kali Nikitas

 

This past Thursday evening a graphic designer by the name of Kali Nikitas came to California State University, Los Angeles to do a speaking for students. In short, Kali Nikitas is the current Department Chair of Communication Arts and Graduate Graphic Design at Otis College of Art and Design and also has a MFA (Graphic Design) from Cal Arts.  To my surprise, the lecture hall it was held in had more people in attendance than previous speakers in the GAUGE speaker series, so the night was off to a great start.

Kali Nikitas started off the speaking by giving each attendee 4 small note cards and 3 envelopes. She had us write 1 thing on each envelope, which were: Global, Professional, and Personal. She then asked us to all write down our goals on a global scale, professional scale, and personal (life goals & relationships) on each note card with a drawing that we felt embodied our goals on the other side of each card.  She emphasized that no goal was too out of the box or silly, so we need not be hesitant to write it down or feel any sense of self judgment whilst jotting down our goals.  She then had us seal each card in their accompanying envelope and seal them.  She then told us that they were ours to keep and open after a few years time.  She said that we would be surprised that no matter how big or small our goals were, that most if not all of them would be achieved by the time we eventually opened them and looked back.  This was an interesting exercise and very effective because it made everyone in the room think about their goals in life without having to feel obligated to share them and be embarrassed by them.  It was pleasant to feel involved in a guest speaker event and not have it all be about the guest speaker. I didn’t necessarily learn more about graphic design from this activity, but I did learn more about myself and what I actually want to achieve, which will be helpful from this day forward in all aspects of my life.

The rest of the time Kali Nikitas mostly talked about her current creative endeavors by showing us her website and information on Otis’ Graduate Graphic Design program. This was the downfall of the speaking for me at least.  It came off as her just talking about herself and being a commercial for Otis’ Graphic Design program. The program impressed me more so than herself.  I wanted to know more about her creative process and not just what she has done. I already researched that prior to this event!  From my point of view she was highly unrelateable since she had gone to highly expensive art schools and works at Otis which is a place that has much better facilities and resources than Cal State LA’s graphic design department.  To be honest, seeing all the videos and info about Otis’ program made me not to proud of our own program here at Cal State LA.  It only made me realize that there are better schools out there, which I can’t necessarily afford and I could be getting a better educational experience.  Maybe I will consider graduate school at Otis eventually since it seems like even though it may cost more, I’ll get what seems like a great, quality experience out of it.  All in all I guess she did really sell me on the school, but not herself as a graphic designer in the field.

This is not to say I didn’t enjoy the speaking, I just thought it could’ve been approached more effectively by being more geared towards design, experiences in the design world, and the creative process. 

Product Advertising: Initial Sketches

Oliver and I sketched our initial ideas/concepts and brought them with us to Wednesday's class. Each group presented their sketches to our professor to get feedback. After over hearing what our professor said to the other groups, I think we all pretty much got the same feedback.

Every group pretty much needed to get a better idea of what differentiates their product from other like products and how to best display that. Our professor also mentioned that effective and clever advertising isn't so literal (i.e. just showing the product with a tagline.) Since most of our sketches in particular simply showcased the product itself, this seemed to be our main issue. It was clear we had to fully address these particular issues before we went any further with our concepts:
What are we trying to communicate about our product to our audience?
What differentiates our product from it's competition?
Who are we targeting and what catches their attention?

Oliver and I plan to meet at school on Saturday to do further research of Rockstar energy drink in order to answer these questions and then use the information we obtain to refine our concepts in 40 new composition sketches to show in class on Monday. Time to get to work!

Physically researching & experiencing Rockstar energy drink

Product Advertising

Now that the first advertising project is finished, it's on to the next one! For Monday's class each new team of 2 had to come up with a creative brief based around how they planned to advertise a now poorly advertised, yet recognizable every day consumer product utilizing 3 separate spreads targeted to a specific audience in a particular magazine. I am working with Oliver Oh on this particular project. 

After a late night trip to 7-Eleven I noticed that there were many energy drinks to choose from in the beverage section. As I tried to make the difficult choice as to which energy liquid I should consume whilst in my groggy haze, I noticed something: Besides Redbull and Monster, there weren't any other brands of the energy drink variety that had advertising campaigns or tactics that stuck in my brain. I then looked over and noticed Rockstar energy drink, which is a widely known and successful product but not to par selling wise as Redbull and Monster. Maybe this is because Rockstar needs to better market and advertise their product. I explained my experience to Oliver and we decided this was the product and direction we wanted to go with for our product advertisements.

On Monday we came prepared with our creative brief in hand and as much research information and knowledge of our product and it's competitors as we could fit in our minds. Each group then presented their ideas and rational for choosing their product along with how they planned to effectively execute the task of creating a new advertising campaign for their selected product. Oliver and I were very pleased that our product seemed to be a good choice, given the positive feedback and how it initiated a conversation about how it is vital to be knowledgeable about the competing products in the area in which you are advertising. In our case Rockstar energy drink is a competitor with energy drink heavyweights, Redbull and Monster. We still plan to tweak and improve our creative brief for next class to be more specific and get a clearer idea of what exactly differentiates our product and who our audience is.

At the end of class we were informed that for next class we were to show up with 40 separate initial sketches of our concepts for advertising our product. I'm excited about this project and can't wait to get my ideas down on paper!

Issue Advertisements: Presentations

Wednesday all the groups showed up in spiffy attire to present their completed ads to the class for critique. Some of it was admittedly harsh, yet understandable. It was all of our first projects and presentations in this course so we all didn't know what to fully expect but the class as a whole all presented their work in a very professional manner concerning their tone and knowledge of their topics.

Below are our final designs for our pro and anti abortion ads. We mainly changed the anti-abortion ad to a more sketch like feel. We took our previous comp of the ad and decided to physically sketch it out, even down to the tag line and call to action, in order to give it a more authentic, emotional feel. It also lends towards the idea of a baby being a creation, much like a sketch is a form of creation. The only changes to the ad on the left (pro-abortion/pro-choice) is that we added more black and contrast into the image and typography in order to fix the problem of the ad appearing washed out. Adding more black to the typography also made a huge improvement by making the tag line pop and make it a bolder statement.

Overall, Candy & I's presentation went well as did everyone else's. I think every team was obviously knowledgeable about both their topic and their design rational even when they were thrown tough questions.

Issue Advertisements: Final Comps

Monday in class, each group displayed their final comps of their pro and con issue ads on the boards in the front of the design studio we have class in. The whole class as well as the professor got to critique each groups ads so that each group knew what to improve in order to have polished, complete ads for the final presentations on Wednesday.

This critique proved to be very helpful for our ads in particular. We had been struggling with our anti-abortion ad design wise. Our concept and sketches were fine but it just wasn't translating through our digital style of design. Our sketches exuded so much emotion, but when we went to design it it just flushed out all the feeling and made it sterile and lifeless looking. After noticing this during the critique, we are somehow going to make the ad look more sketch-like to bring back some of the emotion into the concept that we had lost in the process of designing the ads. Hopefully we can pull this off in time for Wednesday's presentation!

Issue Advertisements: Initial Comps

During Wednesday's class each design team posted their initial comps for their Los Angeles Times issue ads. The class then viewed each ad in their entirety. Our professor then quickly critiqued each advertisement comp individually and brought up design issues to fix in order to improve each ad. Displayed above are the comps for the advertisements Candy & I have been working on for pro-abortion & anti-abortion.

When it was time for our ads to be critiqued, our professor mentioned that the ad on the right (the anti-abortion ad) had poorly done illustration, but good use of typography. At one point it was mentioned that the baby looked more like a cockroach. That's definitely something that we need to fix because that was not our intention. The add on the left got a positive reaction but it was mentioned that the image looked washed out and that the body copy text needs to be arranged so that it is easily readable. It was helpful to get feedback on our ads from our professor as well as the class to get a better feel for how effective are ads are and what should be improved. It is highly important to know how an audience views and reacts to your ad in order for you to create a more effective ad. 

Next class we will present our improved, final comps to the class to see if there are any minor details about the advertisements that we need to fine tune before the final presentation of the completed advertisements. From now until then we will be working on our illustration and image quality as well as readability of the body in our comps.

Issue Advertisements: Revised Concept Sketches

Sketches, sketches, sketches; & yes, more sketches!

Monday in class Candy & I brought in 40 more concept sketches for our pro & anti abortion advertisements. Doing additional sketches after the initial feedback from our first round of sketches gave us a better idea about which concepts worked and should be developed further and which should be dumped all together and replaced with new concepts. This time around our sketches were also more detailed and proportionate. We made it a point to clearly display what size our type and body copy would be in comparison to the image in each ad.

During class Candy & I met up with Professor Jimmy Moss to get feedback on both our concept sketches and our body copy for the ads. This proved to be very beneficial. We learned what was working and what wasn't with the tone of our body copy and that we should change the overall tone of our pro abortion body copy to something less negative and more comfortable and positive. Based on the feedback from the brief meeting with our professor, we narrowed down our sketches to our very best, most effective concepts and finally chose two concepts to work with (1 pro & 1 anti.) From Monday until Wednesday's class we will be working on our initial comps of our ideas! I will post our initial comps for you all to see next time so you can have a look at the progression of our creative process.

What we learned overall from creating more sketches is that it pays to get your bad ideas down on paper and out of the way so you can test out new, possibly more successful ideas. It is highly important to put your ideas physically down on paper so you get a feel for your ideas and if they will exactly work and pan out as you had pictured initially in your mind.