When it come to thinking about concepts, I have come to the conclusion that coming up with ideas for a product is not the actual problem.  Coming up with good ideas that goes with that product is a way harder task (at least for me). I know that it's important to know your product and what it does but for an ad, it's more important to know exactly who you are intending this product to be for. Who do you want to buy this? Your ad won't work if you can't even figure that out.

GAUGE Speaker Event: Kali Nikitas

On Thursday February 16, 2012 at 7:00pm in King Hall Lecture Hall 1, I attend the GAUGE event for Kali Nikitas, graphic designer and educator for Otis College of Arts and Design in Los Angeles, CA.  The evening proved to be an interesting and entertaining as Kali Nikitas presented herself as very witty, funny, smart and knowledgeable person who loves arts and who loves to design. Some of the things that I enjoyed about that evening were the interactive part which started at the beginning of the lecture.  All the students were given cards and envelopes to write down words or/and sentences to what we wanted globally, professionally and personally and send a message through twitter and Facebook.  It was an insightful way for Nikitas to interact with the students.  I have attend these GAUGE events before and most speakers don't really interact with people in the beginning of the lecture.  That time is reserved toward the end for questions and comments.  I was most interesting in some of the responses for sending a message across twitter and Facebook.  One of the sentiments was funny: seeing first lesbian president.  I kind wish we sent that across or something funnier like "panda for president." (Although, great success for  panda habitat preservation was still pretty good.)

Another part I liked was when she show us her website at www.kalinikitas.com.  I really like the way this website was made.  For starters, the little rectangles boxes can be moved anywhere around the site by clicking and dragging the content tabs. I think I like that more than anything else because that one little thing makes this site so different from others because somebody sought to think outside the realm of how a site should operated. It impressed me. The site also feature work by Nikitas and students. All the design work display is truly incredible, amazing and very creative.  It speaks volumes about the tremendous talent both Nikitas and students at Otis College seem to have in order to create such fantastic works.

All in all, I thought Kali Nikitas was a great lady who presented herself well.  I really enjoyed her presentation.

Today I learned in class a couple of things that hopefully will help me in my product advertising project.

• really know your product. 
• the demographic for your campaign ads doesn't have to be for the usual audience.  It can be but it needs to appeal to that group in a different way. 
• You can appeal to a different demographic altogether. (It will probably be harder.)
• For demo, the more specific the group you are aiming for, the better your focus will be.
• Find out about competition, see where your product stands with others.

Final Presentation & New Assignment

The final presentation had turn out much better than I could have hope for.  When Jung and I presented I was really nervous.  I explained the con side pretty good although in some places I felt I could have worded things better or probably not repeated myself so much.  The feedback we got from others was good.  Everyone seemed to have like it.  The only thing that the headline on the con could have been better, maybe fitted the picture more accurately.  All in all, this assignment was pretty good for start with.

The next assignment is going to be a challenge.

Our next assignment is find a poorly marketed product and created 3 magazine spreads for it. First up is research the product which is proving to be hard considering it has to be something people are familiar with but from what I'm seeing the poorly marketed products are usually products that no one has ever heard of.  We then have a write a brief for it explaining what it is, who is the audience target for this product and what magazine will it be printed for.  Already I feel overwhelm by this task.  The upcoming days will be hard.

Final Comps Review

On Monday Feb.6, we reviewed final comps for our ads.  Almost immediately from the last Wednesday there were a significant amount of changes that everyone did for their comps.  However, it didn't necessary mean they were in any way perfect or even done for that matter.  As we review and comment on each and every comp there was still room for improvement on several items like:

• spacing (lettering and around the ad space). 
• leading. 
• grammar in headline and body copy. 
• what exactly is their issue about?  It wasn't explain clearly or had enough information.
• images: no stock pictures (original pics) and illustrations need to be better improve.

Reviewing Initial Comps

On Wednesday Feb. 1, the class presents their initial comps with complete graphics in 10 x 21.5 size.  Everyone looked over every one's work and then reviewed what was working and what was wrong with these comps. With our work (Airport Body Scans) the con comp (the man in the radiation suit with the women saying "have a great day at work, honey") had some problems:

• image: too big for the frame.  It needs to be smaller. 
• image (woman): too odd-looking.  The hair need to be fixed in way that isn't see through.
• Headline: the leading is too heavy, the position is awkward.

The pro comp (Rows and rows of eggs that stop with one egg cracked open with the york spilled out) was alright.  The main problem was the headline: only takes one to spoil the trip. That needs to be reworked (either rephrased or come up with a different headline).  The body copy seemed to be fine in both comps although they are kind of long.  Some editing should possibly be done to make them shorter (just have the most necessary points to the issue should be discussion).  A lot of work is ahead for us.

All in all, the critique didn't go as bad as I thought.  I always feel uncomfortable during these kinds of discussion (even when it's not my work people are looking at) but it is a necessary part of critiquing work.  If someone doesn't view it or have absolute anything to say about it, that can't be good, right?  The whole purpose of reviewing is to point out mistakes or items that could be better in order to have your work be presented completely done with everything it needs to say.