The final is getting closer. Each group has the initial video done and shows it in class on Wednesday. For our video, professor said we video the typeface, color not good and we did't get right direction. So my partner and me need to discussed how to make better. I want to base on our video to make better, but my partner want to do different. We try to use the better typeface. We want to make more interesting and vitality. We did work hard to make the boring introduction fun. The factors we add in are music and dancing water color ball. Even though our video still focuses on straight introduction about the Design Program, it is more active after we insert the new factors. The water color ball dances with music, and also serves conjunction for different sections. The ball’s changing color and changing shape give some abstract feeling on the video. for the new video I don't like the first shot and all those shots of the city, but my partner said the city shots were to emphasize life not too far from the campus, also the last shot I don't think the image has to do with graphic design program. But my partner has different opinion, he want to show the design is everywhere and part of a team. Overall the video and the music is good. Right now, we need to fine tune the video, like adjusting the speed of the pictures, adjusting the color, and so on, to make our final product ready for the presentation on next Monday.

       We brought what we did so far for the video project to the class for Professor's feedback. After considering the comments on our story boards in last class, we made our video more informational, rather than emphasizing the prosperous future or careers success in the field of graphic designs.

        However, compared to the videos made by other teams, our video seemed too traditional, too formal, lack of creativity. It's really not easy for me to have extraordinary idea after couple decades traditional education. I agreed that a good ad should sell concepts rather than information. That’s how to impress the target audience. Just like one of the videos made by our classmates, it shows a girl tasting different favor in an ice cream store, and the slogan is “know your favor”. Even though it’s not very clear about the message being delivered in the video, but it’s really creative and impressive. I like such creativity, I think I need to bring more abstract factors into my video.

 

        The orange color I used in the postcard is new for me. People normally like to combine black with red for the extreme contrast. But I would like to make the postcard in the same tone with Cal State LA's traditional yellow. That’s why I pick orange and customize it more close to yellow. The effect comes out good :)

Interesting advertisement

        There is pretty straight forward message in this interesting postcard, "Don't Drink and Drive". The artist links up a car with alcohol by simply picturing a car on the cap. You get to see how your car is going to look like before and after.

"Plastic surgery" Created by DDB in Toronto, Canada.

        This postcard employs sight effect on the girl's profile. It's simple but highlights the plastic surgery is for nose. It's very creative and funny.

Video Story Board

Video Story Board:

        Eventually, we have the draft story board done. We will use various good graphic designs to catch our audience's attention at the beginning. Our audience will be motivated to find out how those amazing artworks come from. Then we will show them the work behind, the sources Cal State LA's Graphic Design Program has. We also try to emphasize the prosperous future of a designer, such as good job opportunities, and income potential.

        However, after we presented this idea to the professor in the class, we failed to obtain his agreement about the prosperous future. The professor pointed out that not each designer can make good money. He ever knows someone can not find the job. Actually it's long way to go if your target is a top designer. You should have lots of factors to become successful rather than just have a diploma. The professor also told us that the reason why we did not do good in this story board was because we didn't understand the Cal State LA's Graphic Design Program well. We didn't figure out the selling point of the Program. He was right. I think we do need more research about the Program. We also want to alter our direction to make the video more close to our life. In our new version, we will insert some interviews from the graduated students in the video. Hopefully it works better this time.

Discussed Video

        In order to get some ideas about how to complete our third project, a promotional video for Cal State LA Graphic Design Program, we were required to show the project outlines in the class. My outlines covered message to be delivered, targeted audience, general tone of the video. The professor also showed us sample video from the website and let us discuss freely about the benefits or shortcomings of our Graphic Design Program. Some opinions were rather pertinent, such as short of stuffs, insufficient computers in labs, lack of student community, and so on. However, such negative aspects about the Program would stop our potential students. I didn’t think I would include those negative aspects in my video.

        Compared to other program in Cal State LA, the spotlight of Graphic Design is creation. So, I will emphasize “Creativity” and “Fun” in my video. No doubt about that this was only my initial thought, I would need more research and work to make it true within two weeks. I believed all my classmates would have same stress as mine because two weeks were really not enough to produce a video from ground zero to a final product.

Project 2 Final Presentation

        On Wednesday, it's our final presentation for the second project, magazine product advertisement work. Some of our classmates were very creative, did a good job. I can see they had worked very hard on this project. My group picked Guylian chocolate as our subject in this project. I started our presentation from a brief introduction about Guylian chocolate background. Guylian is a Belgian chocolate brand. The company is famous in producing high quality chocolate. Guylian chocolate brand ranks the fourth in terms of worldwide popularity and the product is characterized by its unique sea shell design. The company offers 11 different chocolate sea shells. Guylian chocolate is packaged in transparent boxes so that the artistic chocolate design is well shown to the customers. The objective of the ad campaign is to market the competitive advantages of the Guylian brand and to differentiate the brand from its competitors.

        Since Guylian emphasizes its artistic design on chocolate, the main marketing message in our project is “The unique artisanal Belgium chocolates”. This marketing objective serves clear guidelines for our ad design. Therefore, our commercial uses three steps in art, sketch, painting and statue to express that each Guylian chocolate also goes through a very detailed process.

        After each group finished their presentation, we had been assigned for a new project. It's about making 2 to 3 minutes advertising Video accompanying printed piece that both promote the graphic design programs at CSU LA. We need to come up with our project briefs on next Monday.

Final Comps

        Our professor was sick today so the class had to do critique on our final comps by ourselves. Each team was given 5 minutes to present their work. The classmates spoke up about what they liked and what they didn’t like.  Through such group discussion and feedback, we got some idea how to improve our work. It was very helpful for me because different people would see something that I ignored. Per our classmates' recommendation, we should change the ones not quite close to our marketing objectives. Now we need more work to make our project better for final presentation on Wednesday.