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.

        In today's class, we showed our initial drafts of our comps ads. Some classmates did a very good job in their projects. Looks like they did catch Professor's requirement about "abstract". We picked Guylina chocolate as our subject in the ad. But Professor was not quite satisfied with our drafts because our design was not abstract enough. He asked us some questions like what ads message we were going to deliver, what the mood was in our ads. He thought we didn’t understand “artisanal” well about Guylina, which should be the key word of Guylina. After brainstorm with Professor’s advices, we decided to differentiate Guylina by emphasizing Guylina’s artisan.

        I found the following creative picture online. It's very concise structure accompaning with a succinct slogan, "save water, save life". There is no tedious disccusion about how important water will be. As long as we look at the desperate gold fish with the dripping water, all of us will agree that "water is source of our life".

        Our Monday class started with a discussion of Kali Nikitas, a guest speaker who came to talk for GAUGE speaker event last Thursday. Everybody had different opinions about her. Some people liked her easy going personality. Some people liked her website. But Some would think she had promoted her work too much. We preferred to know more about the process how she got her work done, the way she got her creative idea. I believed that would be interesting and inspiring.

        After that, each group brought their revised concept sketches and laid them out on the classroom tables in order to display them to the class and get some feedback from Professor and the classmates. I saw some interesting sketches. Some classmates worked hard on their projects. We got some feedback on our sketches too. Some suggestions like don’t use ocean background, think about something else, and so on. Professor wanted something more abstract that did not show the product at all, BUT, when the people looked at the ad, they would immediately know what you tried to talk about. Wow, it's really challenging. Each group was required to show 3 initial comps ads in the next class. We will have lots of work to do if we would like to get some improvement on Wednesday.

        Since my subject for the second project is Guylina chocolate, I found some interesting chocolate advertisements.



Dairy Milk Billboard: In Downtown Toronto

Kitkat - Bench

        We decided to do the chocolate product advertising for magazine. Finally we chosed the Guylian. Guylian is Belgian chocolate brand. Guylian is a Belgian chocolate brand. The company has a reputation to produce the richest and finest quality chocolates in the world. The Guylian chocolate brand ranks fourth in terms of worldwide popularity and the product is characterized by its unique sea shell design. As for the chocolate quality, the Guylian brand targets the production of a high quality chocolate made from primarily natural ingredients such as cocoa beans, hazelnuts, sugar and milk powders. The company offers eleven (11) different chocolate sea shells produced by multiple mixes of ingredients and delicious chocolate filings. Last but not least, the product design and packaging is an important aspect for the brand. Guylian chocolates are packaged in transparent boxes so that the company can better illustrate the artistic chocolate design and the implied product perfection.

 

        What is the ad objective and the purpose of the ad? The objective of the ad campaign is to communicate the competitive advantages of the Guylian brand and to differentiate the chocolate from other brand options in the industry. If the consumer identifies with the brand attributes of Guylian, then the company is more likely to sell more chocolates and to enjoy a higher customer loyalty. In short, the company will be more successful in its sales strategy and can better defend its market share against competitors as the fourth most popular chocolate brand worldwide. This marketing objective results into clear guidelines for the ad design itself. The main marketing message to be communicated is “The unique artisanal Belgium chocolates”. Therefore, the ad must effectively communicate that the production of the chocolates represents a process of art.

        This process includes the following aspects:

1. Careful selection of chocolate ingredients according to taste, quality level and natural identity (organic versus artificial).
2. The skill to generate different mixes of various ingredients in order to develop multiple flavors.
3. The integrity of the production process itself (semi hand made versus automatic production)
4. The product design in order to create a truly unique chocolate (sea shells versus regular and ordinary chocolate squares).

If the ad can successfully reflect these factors, then the consumer is more likely to identify a higher product value in the Guylian brand and associate image and product brand attributes that secure the successful sales of the Guylian brand versus other chocolate competitors.

Target audience: 30-40 years old male and female

Competitors: Lindt Nestle Ghirardelli

        The final presentation was over. Some classmates did very good on their projects. Our topic is Euthanasia. My partner introduced the topic and presented the con side and I presented the pro side for what our concept was, why we chose the headline and the image. When I started the research with my partner about this project, I saw a lot of sick people from the pictures online. Most of them were suffering because of endless pain with them days and nights. When I put myself into their situation, I believed that these people must constantly think about their life,  whether it is still worthy to live, or it is better to die. I chose that headline "dignity at last" because people who are very sick often feel that their life is no longer worth living. In other words they feel they are losing their dignity. The image of our ad shows such a sick man deeply in thoughts watching the sunset. Life is beautiful, but they can not enjoy their life because of the sickness. They are only suffering. Nobody wants to die, but sometimes it is better to go. I believed our presentation was good, except that the font we used for the headline was too hard at the back, was not good with the background.

        Our next assignment is doing market product advertising. We are required to create 3 magazine spreads for the product with our new partners. By next Monday, we have to write a brief about the product we want to advertise. Well, it's a complete new topic about the ad, which turns from charitable into commercial. I like it.

        Yesterday, we reviewed our final comps together in the class. Each group put up their 2 ads on the wall for the professor and classmates to critique our works. There were some great works, but some were not. I liked the one using superman to stand for pro while apple pie to stand for con regarding the topic of US Citizenship. It's very creative to link up superman with illegal immigrants. I did learn something new from our classmates' works.

        For our own project, although we did good at sketches, we got lots of comments on the work we just did via computer. Professor even said the feeling was different from the sketches. Some classmates said it's too flat and too dark, the professor said there were too much content on the ads. I believed generally our illustration needs more live and more emotional. Although we tried to use deep black color to express the death, it seemed not working that way. There are many things my partner and I have to fix, and lots of work to do before Wednesday presentation.

        Advertising is what insinuate you to the product. A different and creative advertisement is sure to stir the monotony and add the buzz about the product. Advertising industry is always beaming with fresh and innovative ideas and we can say that only “change” is a constant trend here. Check out few examples of truly innovative and out of box advertising campaigns both in print and outdoor advertising.

Coca-Cola / WWF: Plant Billboard

        The highlight in this billboard is "green". Since more and more people concern about their health in today's date, Coca-Cola has a chance to be labeled as "unhealthy". The designer uses the trees to outline the shape of coke's traditional bottle, which deliver a strong message, the traditional bottle will have new content, it will be healthy.

        Because customers are so familiar with coke, it won't have too much surprise for the customers if designer just uses the traditional selling points like tasty, happy, cool, and so on. But with such empty bottle, I believe it will catch customers' curiosity.

Clear Channel Singapore: Mosquito

        The reason I picked this ad because it used a mosquito statue to differentiate the billboard with all the others. There are so many advertisements around the city people, who already get numb. How to catch people's attention is challenging designers everyday. This billboard was not only use statue to catch eyeballs, but also linked up the statue with the picture. The statue didn’t stay alone; it’s communicating the character inside the pictures. Therefore, the whole design is very live and emotional.

COA’s HIP Program (Having Involved Parents): Sign swing
   

        This is another creative outdoor ad. At a first glance, I didn’t quite catch the message it tried to deliver. But after I looked at the selling product, HIP Program (Having Involved Parents), I started appreciating the idea. The highlight in this ad was the swing, which brought people into the picture and became part of the ad. Parents should get involved into their kids education, rather than just rely on school. If Parents made an effort on assisting their kids’ growth, they would receive good return. Just like the swing, if you pushed your kids high, you would receive high return.

        On Wednesday class we started to work with partner on the ads. Our group was working on the topic of Euthanasia Legalization. The pro side will be legalized solutions for death. The con side is stop euthanasia. We need to show our 20 pro and 20 con sketches.

Arguments For Euthanasia:
• It provides a way to relieve extreme pain
• It provides a way of relief when a person's quality of life is low
• Frees up medical funds to help other people
• It is another case of freedom of choice

Arguments Against Euthanasia:
• Euthanasia devalues human life
• Euthanasia can become a means of health care cost containment
• Physicians and other medical care people should not be involved in directly causing death
• There is a "slippery slope" effect that has occurred where euthanasia has been first been legalized for only the terminally ill and later laws are changed to allow it for other people or to be done non-voluntarily.

       

        Our first project is about print ads. In order to give us some idea about what should be considered as “good ads”, Professor showed us some examples from magazines, then discussed with us the reason why they were good.  The following ad about Subaru was one of the ads we went over in the class. The structure of this ad is pretty simple; basically there is only an old Subaru car key. However, because it’s old, that means there are lots of stories behind. It also implies that Subaru is a car maker with long history. The message at the bottom, "Tell your story at subaru.com/dearsubaru.", is another key factor in this ad. It calls for an action from the customers. Action is important even just visiting corporate website, which means the customers will have a chance to obtain more information about Subaru. This ad’s object is a key; it also serves as a key to open the gate of Subaru to the customers.

        What are good ads? I think a good ad should catch audience’s attention, stimulate readers’ curiosity, use limited space to deliver unlimited information, serve as a key, a bridge linking up the customers with the products.



       

        We discussed social issues SOPA in Wednesday class. SOPA is the short for “stop online piracy act”. According to wikipedia: The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is a United States bill introduced by U.S. Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) to expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. The law would expand existing criminal laws to include unauthorized streaming of copyright material, imposing a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

        The class started to discuss the matter that the government was trying to pass the law to enforce people to credit the artists whenever someone posts something on you tube or any similar site. If they post something and not credit the artist, they would be fined or punished. I absolutely support intellectual property protection. Each intellectual property is the result combining designers’ hardworking, time and money. It will take long time for them to create an awesome work, but piracy only takes a minute. Without protection, the designers will be lack of motivation for creation. However, if such protection is undue, like the matter we discussed in the class, I believe it will also slow down the popularization of the awesome work. Everybody has to spend more time in searching authors before each post. The fun thing will become a time-consuming duty. We always criticize Chinese government’s control in internet. If the matter we discussed becomes a law, how the US government enforces the law without watching our online behavior? Is it not a different type of control?

        The first project assignment was announced in the class. We will work with one partner to create two full-page print ads for an important or controversial issue. We are free to pick any issue we feel interesting. The print ads should persuasively communicate a -pro and a -con perspective. After the discussion with my partner, we have chosen a Health issue. We need to do some research and develop imagery to support that concept.

What is a good advertising?

        Advertising is a way communications with the consumer. This include advertising via internet banners, magazines, newspapers, radio, TV, billboards, and the multitude of other media available as advertising space. Designing a good advert can mean the difference between success and failure and is worth investing in. Selecting the right image can make a huge difference to the impact of the ad. People will make quick assumptions about your product and brand from the images you use in your adverts. In Wednesday class, each student in the class had to bring in three separate examples of a good advertisements. I found three good examples ads to share in the class.

1.GRAFF is a one page jewelry advertising. This type of advertising uses a monochrome background which is very useful for emphasizing the jewels as they clearly stand out and almost pop into the eyes of the ad viewer. The diamonds are displayed in great detail, which underlines the high quality and value perception, The jewels are positioned on an elegant and beautiful woman which is shown in the monochrome background. The ad impresses with its understatement which only heightens the value and image of the product. The ad simplicity also allow easy product and brand recognition which is important since magazine ads have to be recognized within the turn of the page

2.Retin Ox Night is a skin repair serum. The advertising consists of 2 pages. Left hand side shows a woman’s face with the wording “I am 46”, this is a powerful convincing marketing message as the woman’s face looks much younger. This right page shows in large print “10 years back”, which obviously strongly supports the message of the left hand side. The right hand side also shows the entire product and logo for easy recognition in the retail store. The ad further impresses with a good balance of the various ad elements, such as images, text, logo, colors and font size. The overall look is contemporary, which also is very fitting for a trendy and modern beauty product.

3. The Sally Hansen premier ad is a typical consumer ad. I like it because the purpose and benefit of the product can be successfully recognized within a glance. The ad also shows the entire product with packaging and brand logo which supports the shelf recognition within a retail store. Since the ad features the logo in very big letters and font size, it is conclusive that the company intents to promote its brand value as a major consumer product supplier. The color choices are bright and pleasing to the eyes. The purpose of this product can be determined within a glance.