Digital Photography

Landscape & Nature

Abstract

Street

Advertisement

The back story for why I chose this type of advertisement is very simple. No I don't have a weird obsession with feet, but coming from the West Coast where cars are our main mode of transportation (not walking) I found that my feet have been much more unhappy since moving out here and require a lot more attention then they used to hence leading me into the world of spa advertising! The slogan at the bottom came into my mind first and I formed the rest of the advertisement around the slogan to make it work together. I stuck to simple and basic for my first advertisement since I have never used photoshop before and found myself a lot more overwhelmed then I had imagined I would be. 

I found this photo through the Google search engine. I wanted a photo with the smiley faces on the feet, but specifically picked this photo because of the way the feet were located because I thought that placing the spa information in that crevice would be a great way to frame the information and make it pop out of the photo. I had a hard time figuring out the type of font and how I wanted the readers to feel when looking at the ad. I ended up using the same font all around, but changed the top information to be in italics in order to have the wording have more a flow with the feet pictured. It still is not the font I exactly wanted as I was looking for something much warmer, but that also would work for the bottom text where I wanted a warm but also abrupt feeling to be portrayed. Needless to say, the font was frustrating! 

Week 2: Advertisements

These are both the same Chaplin ad; however, the one on the right I took myself, but since there was a little lighting issue I found the same ad online to provide as well. 

Two aspects that caught my eye for this Chaplin the Musical ad was the balance of the entire ad as well as the “white space” in the background. This ad is straight up and down your everyday balanced rectangle shape, but the font and photo are even balanced. There is symmetry throughout this entire ad leaving the same amount of extra space on both sides of the billboard. In my opinion, there is a lot of “white space” left over in this ad which could just be caused by the layout and the color chosen for the background. When looking at this billboard in person it feels like there is a lot of left over space sporadically around the billboard. One other aspect is the size of actually a couple different objects that all play in together. The actual title of “Chaplin” is in a medium font with a small full body version of Charlie Chaplin drawn around the “C” and a rather large head shot of Charlie Chaplin placed just below the slogan and just above the title. The large size of the head and the small size of the full person pulls out the medium sized title so it does not get lost in a billboard filled with frankly a lot of wording. 

There is a lot happening in this ad when you take into account the various font types, font sizes, contrasting colors, direction, and size. The main photo in this case is the biggest item on this ad featuring the person who has created the fragrance being advertised. Something that really caught my eye in terms of direction was not just the slanted angle of the color framed wording, but really was the direction and asymmetry of Justin Bieber facing forward at an agle as the main piece of the advertisement, but then the woman in the photo is facing in the direction toward Justin as to not take away from the main person and message. The positioning of the words at the bottom of the advertisement are also important and show a dynamic structure as the words all grouped together almost framing the above portrait in a way.

Throughout the Visit Florida ad it is easy to point out the contrast of yellow font and blue font both against each other and against the background of the actual photo. The contrast can also be seen with the various font types from large, medium, to very small down in the bottom corner where the font is also in another color. The direction of the words going from top to bottom in a type of tight to loose structure also make for a dynamic and contrasting piece. This specific layout directs the eyes to read from top to bottom focusing the words on one side of the page and the photo on the other side of the page. Once the main wording is ¾ down the page the wording become medium spanning across the top of a new photo. This new photo is then sandwiched between two types of wording. This ad is very word focused as a leader down the page leading straight to the website the ad is specifically for.

 The first thing I notice about the Pepsi Ad featuring One Direction is the contrast not only of various colors through the frames, but of the frames being of different nature of each other. Most of the frames resemble a concert atmosphere featuring the band members where the colors are mostly of the same nature; whereas, there are two frames shown in very different, contrasting colors. The “average joe” is shown in a brighter frame and the actual Pepsi product in shown in the brightest frame where the actual can and the frame background color contrast in a vibrant eye catching way. The saying “Live For Now” is contrasting against the frames being shown in a bright white color across all of the frames. Both the contrasting effects and the font are both important, but I want to point out how the font is shown in this ad. MediaPedia would describe this particular font as a display font which is used typically for headlines and headings, such as in this particular ad. These types of display fonts are more apt to draw more of an emotional response from the viewer/reader/consumer. Not only does the ad slogan reach from one side of the ad to the other in dazzling white, but the letters are in all capital letters. The “O” in this case is cleverly transformed into the actual Pepsi logo. Mixing font with branding has created a more eye catching effect.

This is obviously a very old ad, but I thought it would be really interesting to analyze at least one ad from a different decade and see how it stood up to the ads now. Two parts about this ad that I want to focus on particularly is the composition of this ad, as well as the use of repetition to release the message. Looking at the various designs of composition I was tossing between this looking more like a formal structure vs. being a radiation structure. I think I finally settled on the radiation structure because of the repetitive pattern of the opening date and time that can be viewed  all around the edge of the ad leading in to the main point “Disneyland” then in large font reiterating the opening date and time of Disneyland. This repetitive nature brings the reader in to the central home of the meat of the information such as the location, acreage, admission, hours of operation, and even a small article located on the ad.