Final song choice

"Tell me and i'll forget; show me and I may remember, involve me and I'll understand"
-Chinese Proverb 

The stress is mounting

So last Friday me Tash and Loki saw Jo and she really didn't want us to ditch the rock band idea. Today she wanted us to make a storyboard for our video idea and just get on with it in her words. We're really feeling the pressure now, especially as we found out that we only have one week to get everything together as the videos have to be ready by Monday 3rd not Friday 7th as we originally thought.

So we made a story board, which I drew out. It was pretty basic but I thought it looked quite good.

We bought some blow up guitars as getting real ones just wouldn't have been possible and actually the blow up ones will add to the fact that we don't take ourselves seriously and are a bit silly.

Amazingly we managed to hire out a brilliant venue for shooting our video. Its a club in London called Cafe de Paris and is like an old theatre. It's perfect for us! They let us have an hour from 11.30 to 12.30 on Friday. It'll look amazing!!!!

Cafe de Paris

A sad morning

Today was our first ISHE lesson without Peter, and a sad one at that. I felt especially sad because it would of been the lesson in which i showed him this blog and I was looking forward to seeing what he thought of it. Instead we had a tutor called Steve who seems like a cool guy and he gave us all advice about our blogs. Only one week until I have to hand it in now. 
On the left are the graphics we had to create for Peter. Last week we looked at sport pictograms i.e. from the Olympics and our homework was to create ones for school ground games. I hope mine are pretty obvious as hula hoop and yo yo. I created them on illustrator and at first was trying to make them so that they looked like conventional pictograms but then I thought about it. As these are ones for childhood sports, why not make them as though a child had drawn them. So drew them like this, in quite a childish naive style and am really pleased with them

Today we had a fun lecture with Jo where she showed us loads of good ads. We discussed entertainment vs. information and emotion vs. intellect

"Commercials are not posters on wheels." 
John Hegarty

This Sony Bravia ad is a great example of how entertainment is better for certain situations and certain audiences. It uses the traditional structure of an advert, i.e. building to a climax and then falling again, however it does it in an unconventional way. I think it's just brilliant and so fun

For a moment just forget that Jimmy Saville was a paedophile and rapist, because this is a really good ad and shows how information ads can be effective without being boring. 

Later in our seminar we all presented our ideas for launch. We presented our music video idea and Bruno said that although it would look great and be entertaining, we are at the end of the day a performance group and we present ourselves as not being afraid to put ourselves out there. So why not just perform for launch? Do a song and a dance and make the judges remember us. If we could do it, I think it would be so good, even if the performacne itself wasn't great.  

One Club Bootcamp: Final day- Presentations

Today we had the presentations for the bootcamp. Ours went well I felt and the judges obviously liked our idea because we got an honourable mention. Not a win, but I was happy none the less! And the group that won had a really clever, conceptual idea so well done to them!

So this bootcamp has been really good! It was great to work with new people and work on a real life brief. It gave me an idea of the intense pressure we will have when in the future we work on real briefs but also the satisfaction you get when you finally get everything together and get told that actually your idea was pretty good. We got a memento in the form of a dog tag and the fact that I got a honourable mention (sort of unoffical fourth place) on a One Club Bootcamp will look great on my CV and in my portfolio. Looking forward to my second year when I get to go to New York and go to the One Club convention- can't wait!

One Club Bootcamp: Day 3

Today we spent the whole day developing our idea, and it got so overcomplicated! It became a kind of treasure hunt, in which people walked around the embassies collecting CD's from each of them. On these CD's would be music from artists from the countries. The CD's would be made up from the countries' flag colours, for example Great Britain would have a red, blue and white CD, and the music on the CD's would relate to the colour, i.e. red would be passionate, blue would be mellow, white would be angellic. In addition to this, the CD's would contain limited edition secret tracks be famous artists. On receiving your CD you would also receive a white slip which you could sign and post in a white post box outside of the embassy and would be sent to that embassy. For those who can't be in London for the walk, they could go online and take part in a digital walk in which they could download the tracks by emailing the embassies....

As you can see that was all just too complicated. There were even more ideas than this, and I really wasn't feeling comfortable with it. Luckily the two main guys from the Peace Flag came to talk to our group and said that it was too over complicated. And now...

...Our idea has been simplified to an app. This app will take national flags and will drain the colour from them. Each tone of colour corresponds to a musical note. Therefore every different flag will have it's own sound. Our concept in three words- Music through Colour.

So tonight Tom will make the App and Jenny with make the presentation and we will be all ready for tomorrow! Getting nervous...

One Club Bootcamp: Day 2

I'm going to begin this post with the sad news from today. My lovely lectuerer Peter Cannings died today on campus. It was such a shock and I am so so sad that the Uni has lost such a great, enthusastic tutor before I got the chance to know him properly. RIP Peter.

So after a think about the brief last night we were put into our groups. I was lucky to be put with 4 enthuastic people, who all seem willing to commit and put 100% effort in, as am I. Two of them are from Newport (Tom and Jenny), one is in the second year of my course at LCC (Jess) and the fourth is in my year (Umar). Together we spent the day developing our ideas and brainstorming, eventually coming upon the conclusion that we want to use music as a driving force for our idea. Music is an international language, an emotional tool and is an interest that everyone, but most importantly our target market of 18-35 year olds have in common.

We've had lots of thoughts including, limited edition white vinyls, cd's, books and games; a mustic festival, using music artists as supporters of the campaign etc. We've got lots and lots of ideas, its just down to finalising them all.

One Club begins!

Today we were introduced to the One Club! I've been looking forward to this for weeks and have been itching to know what the brief would be. We found out that it was for 'The Peace Flag' campaign; a organisation which aims to create equality through colourlessness. Their aim is to get the embassies of the World to raise white flags on the 21st September (National Peace Day) to show peace throughout the World. Our aim is to make them more well known, and appeal more to the youths of today...

So in my opinion- great brief! It's different. We're not trying to advertise a commidity or product, we're trying to promote a belief. This of course makes the whole thing more difficult, but at the same time a whole lot more interesting.

Graphics

Today we had our lecture with Peter and he told us all about graphics. It was a really interesting lecture as he showed us how graphics had evolved throughout time and was actually the most prehistoric form of communication as all ancient civilisations had some kind of graphic communication, i.e cave drawings, hieroglyphics etc.

And even now today, we still use graphic communication to inform, instruct, describe and connotate. Graphics work so well because they are universal. No matter what language you speak you will know what this sign means.....

What was also interesting was how different cultures develop and alter these symbols to show their way of life and style of art. For example the games signs for the Munich 1972 games were really uniform clean cut and slightly harsh looking...

Whereas the ones from the commonwealth games in India in 2012 were a lot more expressive, free flowing and artistic....

 

 

 

Supermonday

So today we had a lecture with Grant about making a mark, i.e your logo. He encouraged us not to think about traditional logos, but more about just conveying who we are visually- through colour, shape, typeface or even physically by painting or making a logo. It gave us some good ideas and again was really useful.

We also discussed our video and our lack of progress. The problem is that two of us still don't have outfits so we can't start filming until they get them. We're thinking about simplifying the video slightly so we will actually be able to put it together before the 7th December.

Later we had a seminar in which the other tutors came around and we showed them our ideas. We managed to talk to Grant and Jason and it was really useful to be able to get another opinion on everything.

Also today we have decided to do a cake sale next week in our Marie outfits as a kind of social promotional event. Looking forward to that!

Photoshoot!

On Saturday I got all dressed up, did my hair and makeup and did a Marie Antoinette inspired photoshoot. The photos were taken by my lovely boyfriend. I tried to set a bit of a scene, using a flamboyant red table cloth to go with our colour scheme. I also scattered the table with cakes and sweets. After the photo shoot, I played around on Photoshop with them and I am so happy with the results. I think they look really professional and I hoped that Bruno doesn't still think we look like a bad pantomime. I also used a filter on Photoshop to create a punky look to some of the photos and put some rock band posters together. Today we had a talk with some of the lecturers and we showed them what we had. They all really liked the photos which is a great result!  

Saltshaker

These are my images of a common household image. This first one is the dramatic looking one. I took it from a high angle to create a dynamic view and used a bright light against it to create a dark ominous shadow. A comment I got for it was that it looks 'hitchcocky' which was exactly what I was going for.

This second one is the gentle softer more romantic image. I used a piece of pink film to cover the flash of my camera and it gave the image a rose tinted effect, which in my opinion creates this romanticism feel. It is also slightly blurry and out of focus which makes the image softer. In addition, in contrast to the dramatic image which is taken at a vertical angle, this image below is taken at horizontal level, making it more gentle and less harsh...

We had a talk from French graphic Designer Damien Poulain today.

Possible images??

So for Monday our agency has got to present three images with our logo attached to them. I've found two which might work..

I love the above photo and think it could represent the opposite ends of theatre i.e. the comedy and the tragedy, often symbolised with two masks. In this case it is a little less obvious.

I thought the image of a peacock would work because it is an animal which represents our agency really well. It is dramatic, flamboyant, beautiful yet fiesty and likes to put on a show and create an impact. It is a theatrical bird.

Rabbits in Advertising and Society!!

I hope I'm not losing the plot....

Tuesday Lectures

So the lecture with Peter was about image and how the different elements of the image effect it. From the lighting, composition, cropping of the image, the space in which its in, its context, the angle of the image, contrast, and framing etc. He showed us lots of examples of different images and the different ways they can be used for different advertising. He drew upon the fact that images of products and lifestyles are often sexualised to encourage consumers into buying into a 'utopian' lifestyle. The orientation of an image is also important in changing the feel of it. For example rural natural landscapes are often shown in a horizontal format to evoke gentleness whilst urban landscapes are often shown in a vertical format to give a dynamic and dramatic feel the the image. It is something which is pretty obvious but which I'd never thought about before...

For next week I've got to take two photographs of a common household object. One photograph has to projec the image dramatically, whilst the other should be softer and have a more romantic feel about it. I'm thinking of using hairbrush. I don't know why, it just popped into my head.

Later we had contextual studies with Vishua and he explained the basics of our essay which is due in at the end of term. We have to discuss the interpretation of images and texts, and how the context of these images and texts affects their meaning. We also have to discuss how the two elements work seperatley and together. For some reason me and Natasha (we're doing the presentation together which accompanies the essay) thought of using rabbits. I don't know why. We just both like rabbits. It started as a bit of a joke but then we actually started to come up with some good ideas. How the image of a rabbit is used in various ways; from a childhood symbol to something much more adult and sexualised with the playboy bunny. How rabbits are used in film and litereature to give across these different meanings as well as to promote social messages, i.e. in the Novel Watership Down. Later today I was drying my hands and found that the name of the hand dryer company to be 'bunnie hand and face dryer' with a rabbit as its logo. This gave me the idea of the image of a rabbit being used to symbolise efficiency and speed. So what started off as a bit of a joke might actually end up being the focus of our end of term presentation and essay. Vishua did say to be as creative as possible....

Business cards

This morning had a lecture with Peter and we gave in our business cards. I wasn't too happy with mine but gave them in anyway. The first one was just a simple format, using heirarchy to display my information. The second one reversed this heirarchy so that the most important piece of information i.e. my name was at the bottom of the card. I also used a font with this one which played with the spacing of the letters and words. The final card again played with spacing and used a format that went against conventional alignment...

Amy McCraith

BA (Hons) Advertising London College of Communication

amy.mccraith@yahoo.co.uk   

07784305722

01707886856

01707886856

07784305722

amy.mccraith@yahoo.co.uk

BA (Hons) Advertising London College of Communication 

Amy McCraith 

Amy McCraith

BA (Hons) Advertising London College of Communication

                                    amy.mccraith@yahoo.co.uk        

 07784305722

                                          01707886856