There was so much to research into with this brief as I regrettably looked into so many adverts in my essay, I wish now that I looked into less. Never the less there was a lot to look at and I came up with various ideas for this brief, including:
- a propaganda book. this would of been a picture book taking you through the history of propaganda. I didn't do this as I feel that it would of been a bit pointless and would of had no purpose.
- a cigarette advertising concertina. this would of been a fold out book as a time line with the history of advertising cigarettes, and how its changed, I also would of mentioned how it has changed between men and women, that in the 50's it was fashionable for women to smoke and then in the 80's it was fashionable for men to smoke. I also would of talked about how the UK never advertise cigarettes anymore due to health risks because of things like lung cancer ect. however fast food chains such as mcdonalds are still allowed to advertise even tho there is a massive health risk with obesity, and how I think it should be consumers choice.
- a channel point of sale. this would of been a high end shiny Chanel point of sale to put on their makeup stands ect to show the history of channel and their advertising, I would of done this to show just how much the brand has developed and how much money they actually spend on their adverts, I much prefer their vintage adverts.
- sex sells. a small zine to show all of the brands that use the 'sex sells' technique and why. I also would of put in here many adverts that have been banned in the UK and why.
The idea that I did go for was the American Apparel controversy one, I chose to go with this idea as I could of created my own adverts in the style of American Apparel to show how well they do advertise, so I could actually do something rather than just pilling together a load of research. Also I feel it links in best with my essay and the opinions raised. I also chose this as I am interested in the brand and I found a great archive of all there adverts from the past which I found great interest in.
I really enjoyed doing my own photo shoots, I did some before and after easter it was a lot more fun than I expected, in total I took just over 200 photographs. I used photoshop to add the American Apparel text, and to alter the brightness and contrast. It surprised me just how good they looked once I started to add the type. While researching for this I found some good articles that I enjoyed reading, finding out things I didn't previously know about the brand.
What I wanted the publication to do is to show people just how well American Apparel advertise, a lot of there adverts get banned but this is all done for a reason to get bigger in the media, my aim with this publication was to showcase just that.
I got all of my content together along with the adverts I made and made the publication on inDesign, each one of my adverts that I had created used a full page as I wanted them to be of high impact. I chose to use Helvetica all through my publication as American Apparel are famous for it, it is their logo font choice, it looks clean and simple. Once I was happy with my page layouts I then went to print.
I knew I wanted the publication to be in a newspaper style as now it seems to be popular for high street brands to have newspapers for the consumer to take home, I have seen brands such as office, topshop and river island do this. I also chose the format of a newspaper for my adverts to be on a large scale for the consumer to notice the difference.
I occurred many problems with printing and it has been a huge learning curve for me. The problems that occurred are:
- zine. when printing copies as a zine I found that the type was too small and it was slightly difficult to read. I wanted to fix this by making it bigger however it would of ruined the layout of each page.
- cropping. cropping the newspaper proved a huge problem, I think the problem was that some of my text was over the bleed, it printed fine but cropping each page and getting it inline was very difficult.
- CMYK & RGB. on some of my images it was either the printer or I didn't turn the images into CMYK before printing them and they may still have been in RGB, in the future I will remember to check.
Overall I have really enjoyed this project, it has been interesting and I have learnt a lot about advertising as a whole. I am happy with the final newspaper and have learnt a lot of lessons along the way. If I was to do this again I think I would of branded American Apparels adverts as something else, such as primark, I think this would of been quite amusing and would of made people realise how well American Apparel advertise. I decided to have American Apparel adverts throughout to keep it consistant, and if it was to be in a American Apparel shop I don't think they would be able to mention/ advertise other high street brands. Making the adverts has been the best part of this brief, I also think this brief has improved my layout skills and the use of white space.
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