Advertising: Evaluation

Advertising cutlery:
The outcome for this project was one A4 advertisement. I decided to go with my first idea of having a 'silver service' cutlery layout.  The layout of the cutlery I had imagined wasn't the full set up with all the forks, knives and drinking glasses, I wanted two forks, two knives and two spoons in my photograph and a plate to be placed in the middle.  
As silver service layout includes forks on one side of the plate with knives on the other but I had decided to lay them out differently. I placed the ribbons on the cutlery to make bows and then placed fork with the knife and did the same with the other set so the were symmetrical of each side and then I placed the spoon above the plate and below the plate.
When I was looking back on my photographs I noticed reflections from the light on the spoons and I had burnt out the edges of the cutlery so I had to reshoot my cutlery but I tried it without the spoons so that there was no reflections and moved my lights further back. 
Without the spoons I didn't think my photograph was as good so when I was editing I had made a bow from the ribbon on the spoon from a previous photograph. I then placed the bows above the plate and below and cropped them into square and oblong format.

I had also decided to keep this photograph for an advertisement because when I was in the studio and packing away my cutlery I placed them onto the plate to put them away easier and decided that I wanted to photograph it as the composition was simple but elegant.
When I was preparing my shot by tying the ribbon onto the cutlery I hadn't made sure all the bows were perfect and this affected my photographs as it would have been nicer if they were so they projected the idea of elegance. 
When I was designing my template in Indesign I had planned the text before taking the picture so when I went to insert my image it didn't fit the whole A4 size due to my cropping. I thought this was better for my advertisements because I had chosen a grey background to match the colour of the cutlery as well as the text, at the time it was unintentional but looking back on my advertisements all the colours work together.
Overall I think my advertisements are effective because they portray my idea which was elegant cutlery for fine dining.

Advertising biscuits:

When we had to come up with ideas for a Mcvities biscuit advertisement I had many ideas that I didn't know which one to choose. I had an idea to show how they are the number one choice by having a trophy in the photograph or another idea with maybe an animal with the biscuits showing how not only people like them.  

I decided not to go ahead with these ideas as there would have been a lot of post production work included and it might have looked fake.

I went ahead with my idea of showing how the Mcvities is the best. I wanted to do this by having different branded biscuits laid out and the Mcvities biscuit elevated on top of something to show that it is bigger and better. 

When I was shooting my idea I found that there was so many layouts for the other biscuits. At first I pictured just 4 other biscuits around the digestive but the shot looked awkward in composition, so I tried more biscuits within my shot to see how that worked and it looked better. Then the issue was the layout of those biscuits surrounding the digestive as the bourbon biscuit was prominent in colour and shape (being a rectangle). I had put all the biscuits onto a white card in the studio as this helped to keep the biscuits in place without them moving and so that the background was clean and white. 

When I was editing my image to add the slogan and was unhappy with the other branded biscuits taking the focus away from the Mcvities so with help from a teacher I managed to separate the other biscuits from the digestive and change the opacity of the layer so that the focus was the Mcvities.

I was very pleased with the outcome of this advertisement as it looks professional due to the lighting and the shot as well as the editing technique.

Advertising plastic cups:

When I was given the options of which products to advertise I immediately wanted to choose plastic cups as they seemed like the most fun option. We had to come up with 3 different media outcomes. I had decided to have a magazine page, a billboard and a web banner. 

When it came to brainstorming I wanted to show how versatile plastic cups are. I came up with an idea to have various drinks inside the cups to show that for any drink you can use plastic cups but I felt this idea was too serious and boring so I wanted to come up with a more fun and interesting idea. 

After examining the appearance of the cup from different angles, for fun I put the cup on top of my head and thought of having the plastic cup as a party hat. Following my brainstorm I started thinking of games that could include plastic cups such as ball and cup, 3 cups and one ball and cup phones. 

I decided to go ahead with photographing my ideas and for my first shoot I wasn't focusing on the background or having a white background. I was pleased with how my images had turned out but for the next photo shoot I would have to think more about my lighting and the background. 

We all had to critique our work and from the critique my work was suggested that it would work better if it was aimed at children and relate to take them back to childhood games. 

When I went to reshoot all my idea's the quality of the images wasn't acceptable and I was miserable with what I had photographed so I wanted to get into the studio as quick as I could and reshoot. When I had re shot my photographs I was pleased that they had finally gone as planned but I had so much trouble trying to light my background so it was white with no hotspots that I decided to keep a grey background. 

The next stage was to plan my text and logo. Deciding on a font was very easy as I had picked a test font called 'kiddish'. As I had quite a grey/ black scheme to my work I decided to have my font in white colour but it wasn't well visible to the grey background so I then tried a black text and although it was visible I couldn't decided which colour worked best. I then decided to copy the text and have a layer for white and black and merge them and have the white text as the shadow to the black text. I think this made the text more fun and more childlike because it's similar to children drawing letters such as bubble writing. 

I am very pleased with the advertising outcomes because it was fun to have different media outcomes and choosing an unbranded product of our own to photograph. 

I think my adverts do communicate 'fun' and are aimed at children to relate to the classic childhood games, because now children's games are electrical, but also to mothers because they buy toys for their children.