This week, we needed to work on an advertisement and a public service announcement. Honestly, this has been one of my favorite parts so far regarding my design process.
First, I'll converse about the advertisement…
For the ad, I proposed working with KIND Healthy Snacks® for its major relevance to my targeted audience and its recent popularity. Specifically, it's advertising the company's PLUS bars, which are 'a premium product' of their Fruit and Nut bars' with greater nutritional content! I'm an avid fan of this product, so I thought utilizing the brand would generate several fun and unique possibilities. The first thing you'll notice in the ad is the tag line, "Some KIND of Wonderful!". I felt that the reader would immediately perceive the bar as KIND as it's the namesake of the product and appears rather large. Listening to Some Kind of Wonderful by Grand Funk Railroad provided me some charismatic possibilities for the ad. I used the tag line for the readers to feel 'rewarded and enlightened' for using the product!
The greatest challenge for this ad was editing the applied image of the product and configuring the placement of the tag line along with the image! For the image, I captured an image of one of my KIND Plus bars, and placed it on a light box I own back in my dorm. I utilized my DSLR to take the images along with an external flash. The benefit of applying my own image is that 'I own it', but also guarantees versatility for its high resolution (300 ppi.)! Editing the image required serious time as I tried to make the transparency of the package feel 'believable' in the background! The reason for using the right side of the product is not only to emphasize the word KIND, but also to stay away from the expiration date. Overall, I had a lot of fun working with this one as it provided some serious problem-solving, using imagery!
And now, the Public Service Announcement…
I did my PSA on diabetes for The American Diabetes Association! I chose to work with this matter because my targeted audience is 'mostly' college students who are looking to eat better with their time! In fact, that's the central message of the ad, which is NOT to use time as a good excuse for eating poorly. For someone who personally lost relatives from type 2 diabetes, I wanted to convey this message in a dark, illustrative tone! The image depicts a fat chef, with the face of a clock, offering the reader a donut, but also what appears to be a knife, indicating that something terrible will happen if you consume it! The central message of the PSA is to take full consideration of your time management while planning your meals so that you're likely to eat healthy! Building the imagery for the PSA was an exciting part of the design process, and especially to help me visually convey why I'm utilizing my targeted audience in the first place!
I like what you did with the kind bar. My issue would be that I did not initially read it as 'some kind of wonderful'. After a second glance I got it but that first look is important. You may want to try making the 'kind' whiter to match the main text or left aligning it with the text. Overall a cool concept, your image looks great as well.
ReplyDeleteTobias, I made the text brighter on the KIND in the updated version; check that out! I may still consider doing it through the pen tool in Photoshop, but that would also apply to the borders as well to look harmonized - it would be too much personally!
DeleteMatt, I have to say first that your PSA illustration is quite wonderful, and the layout looks done to me. Nice work, and it clearly talks to a young audience with a cheeky style.
ReplyDeleteAd - the headline isn't as unified as it could be... and so it took me awhile to read the whole thing. Try vertically aligning the words above and below "Kind" (as if they sat FL to a guide) and then we might read it. That might still not do it - so your next moves with this need to be about making this more readable... it's important. So, headline unity unity unity!
Good work.
Thank you so much for the feedback! I do agree with Tobias that it's definitely a great idea to make the 'KIND' text whiter, but I'll also try the FL for the headline, which can still work by moving the body on the right of the poster! I'll give it a shot.
DeleteP.S. I just updated it too! :)
DeleteA great start. The ideas are there. Both of these do need modifications especially when it comes to legibility, unification and visual hierarchy. This is mainly geared toward the KIND ad. There are so many colors and textures to play with. You can go so much further with this. Only minor things need to be tweaked on the PSA. The illustration, however, is very beautiful and I would not change that or the colors.
ReplyDelete