THE END.

Monday was our final class meeting/film festival celebration!  We all showed our final projects and celebrated the journey we took and all we had learned in the ART 445- Advertising Art Direction class at Cal state LA.  As a class, I am very proud of all the work we produced and showed.  We all progressed and grew as graphic deigners so much throughout this course and it is very evident in our work.

This completes this blog as well as the course itself.  Thank you for joining me through my adventures in this class!

Here are the final video & promotional postcard Anna & I created. Enjoy!



CSULA Graphic Design/Visual Communication from Alyssa Moore on Vimeo.

Promotional Advertising: Postcard & Video Comps

Front of Our Promotional Postcard (Comp)

On Wednesday Anna printed the comp of our promotional deliverable postcard to class so we could get feedback on it from our professor as well as our peers in the class.  The feedback we got was mainly about the wording of the copy on the back and the fact that we needed to add some texture to the circles on the front of the card since our promo piece directly connects to our promo video and the video had painted circles, not ones that looked vectored and uniform.  For the final presentation Monday we have to definitely fix our wording and tinker with the visuals on our postcard so that our card effectively communicates about the graphic design/visual communications option at Cal State LA and the connection between our card and the video.

The rest of the class was spent screening each team's video in front of the entire class using the projector.  This definitely felt like a test run for Monday's final presentation and final day of class.  Each group got very brief feedback after their video was complete. Once again, we ran out of time before every group could show their videos but by now this should be no surprise.  I've learned to not be shy to show your work as soon as possible, because it may not be shown at all and you will be left without valuable feedback.

Next class is our last meeting, our final, our film festival!  Every group will dress up in business casual attire, present their videos & promotional advertising pieces, and chow down on some snacks! 

Promotional Advertising: Rough Cut

Screen Shot From Our Promotional Video

Monday in class, each team brought in the videos they have been working on so far to present to the class and get feedback from our professor.  Anna was sick, so I was on my own in class.  I was nervous to show our video to our professor since we had taken a more metaphorical route with our video and the other videos I saw in class mainly showcased our students and facilities. We chose to leave those things out and focus on the sole idea of creativity and the action of making, which was a risk.  Turns out the risk we took turned out to be a successful one and our professor liked that we chose to show the tools of design.

Most of the other groups were told to re-think and re-shoot the videos or part of their videos & we only need to fine tune ours so it is more clean, has better flow and not just a rough cut.  Can't wait to see what ideas people come up with to present to class on Wednesday!  We will be bringing in our video with some slight changes and a comp of our deliverable promotional postcard.

Sometimes I need to stop and remind myself...

Print by Fab.

P.S. I just noticed this poster has a grammar mistake! Oh no! It's "too." not "to."  Proof that a good design can be ruined if every detail isn't paid attention to.

Promotional Advertising: Storyboards

On Wednesday's class Anna and I brought in the storyboards we had made that explained our concept for the 2-3 minute video portion of this project. Once again, we had to go through the routine of waiting for our professor to come around and give us feedback. Unfortunately, we weren't so lucky and got stuck being one of the last groups he talked to about their concepts, which meant we got very little feedback and on top of that our concept was shut down and we were told to think of something else.  Our professor told us to go the metaphorical route instead of being so literal with our video.  This confused the heck out of us since the video Kali Nikitas showed us during her presentation is the basis and inspiration for our own videos and it was extremely literal.  Most of it was just photos taken during her classes as well as photos of her students' work that was poorly edited to be honest.  One of the major downfalls of this class is mixed messages, which is odd since this is a visual communication class. Clear communication (even non-visual) needs to be key first and foremost.  I hope this is improved next time this class is taught.

It bummed me out that we spent time on a concept that I would've loved to do and would've had fun bringing to life and now have a short time to come up with something better visually.  Any who, it's on to shooting our metaphorical promotional advertisement video over the weekend. We don't have any time to waste!  We'll show a rough cut of our video during Monday's class.

Promotional Advertising: Research/Creative Briefs

Stop Talking. Start Making.

Today in class we all came in with our project briefs and research we had done about promotional videos and collateral regarding college level graphic design programs.  It was clear from the get go that all of us in the class were hesitant to tackle this project and make it as professional looking as possible in just under two weeks.  It's not because we're scared of the project itself, but more-so it's us knowing that we could create much better work given more time to fine tune it, but we're in the quarter system, so there's no time to fart around. As the following video our professor showed us after sensing the tension in the room states, we have to stop talking and start making!
http://startmaking.com/yves-behar/

After watching this video it became clear to us that we could make something as simple as that and still make it effective.  I think everyone in class was just stressing themselves out about making a video that was grandiose instead of doing something simple yet effective. 

The rest of the class was spent discussing what differentiates Cal State LA's Graphic Design program from other design programs.  After hearing every one's insight, I think we all took away a better idea as to what we want to communicate about our program through our videos and promotional pieces and feel more prepared and excited about creating our promotional materials for this project in particular.

Product Advertising: Presentations

 

 

On Wednesday's class, all of the teams presented their magazine product advertisement spreads to the class. The spreads above our Oliver & I's final versions of our ads for Rockstar Energy Drink. I think we can all agree that although the basic concept of the ads didn't change from our first comps, we made a great improvement. We decided to show multiple cans to show variety of flavor, since that was the main thing we wanted to communicate about our product and we also fixed the placement and size of the headline as well as the copy. The two problems that were brought up in the final critique of our work was that the typeface we chose for our copy was difficult to read and the white can being opened made it seem like it was empty.  Otherwise, our intended goal to communicate that Rockstar Energy Drink offers greater variety of flavors was achieved. I also felt that we achieved our goal of making the ads have an overall feeling of power.

After each group was finished presenting their work, it was time to find out what our next and final project in this class would be. Our next project consists of a video that is 2-3 minutes long along with an accompanying printed piece that both promote the California State University, Los Angeles Graphic Design program.  This will prove to be difficult since our facilities aren't visually interesting and will probably make our program look bad, so we'll have to get creative and show our program in a different sense. My partner for this project is Anna. We will be working on our research and creative brief for this project over the weekend and discuss it with the rest of the class during Monday's session.

Product Advertising: Final Comps

On Monday morning our professor was ill and could not make it to class to help critique our final comps of our product advertising spreads. This didn't mean we just packed up and went home. Class still ran as usual and we all displayed our work and gave each other feedback.  The fact that our professor wasn't there made us feel more comfortable giving our honest opinions on each other's work rather than worrying about what our professor would have to say about our comments.  All in all I think this class was very beneficial and gave us more confidence since we successfully ran the class on our own by working as a team. The best part was that we made sure everyone got equal critique and feedback time, which had been a problem in previous class critiques.

With out project in particular, it was brought up that we needed to change our copy writing a slight bit so that it would be easier to read and that we needed to re-shoot some of the products so that the whole logo was visible in each photograph.  It was also pointed out that the headline had some line spacing issues, so we need to fix that before next class meeting.  All of the issues with our advertisement spreads that were brought up will be fixed for next class, which is our final presentation of our product advertisement spreads.