Type

As I have progressed through my design life I seem to have become drawn to typography. As my ideas develop and change the typographic solutions seem to be more dominant and become, what I feel, are my strongest designs. Because of this I am constantly looking at type and the way copy is positioned. I am forever learning and hopefully this will continue allowing my technique to develop and improve.

Below are a selection of typographic posters and imagery that I have come across recently that I found particularly appealing.

Posterscope

Since looking at copy writing for one of my projects it has become something that I notice a lot more, good copy stands out to me and has become something that I enjoy reading. One agency that I visited in London was Dye Holloway and Murray and I often look at their website to see new updates and hopefully stumble across some great copy.

While browsing today I came across a selection of posters done for Posterscope. I really like these posters and they work really well as a set. The type and layout is kept simple, which has become something I seem to be drawn towards, and the colour is also kept to a minimum.

www.dhmlondon.com

Jonathan May

While looking through some blogs today I came across the photographer Jonathan May. His work immediately caught my eye as I noticed his use of colour and composition, his images are thought provoking and make you want to know more about the subject. After viewing his imagery I visited Jonathans website to find out more about his work.

"Recognised as one of Sydney's most exciting emerging photographic talents, Jonathan imbues his subjects with humour and poignancy. His instinctual ability to take a concept and tell a fascinating visual story is both innovative and compelling.

Starting early, Jonathan won awards for Photography at school, but fell into a career in publishing print production, followed by advertising production. However, his night forays seeking interesting subjects to photograph, became more frequent and he realised that he could no longer ignore his desire to shoot. Jonathan enrolled in the Australian Centre of Photography and now indulges his love for the art.

Jonathan has two exhibitions under his belt - A Russian photography exhibition, in Moscow's Central House of Artists (the first ever Australian to do so), displaying 35 of his limited edition prints in 2007.

Jonathan also held a successful joint exhibition with Russian photographer Alexey Lyubimkin in Sydney in 2008.

However Jonathan’s great love is the quirky, creative, concept-driven advertising that comes out of true collaboration with art directors.

Jonathan loves to find interesting characters and unconventional locations, using colour and treatments to heighten the visual experience. Always looking for subtle humour, his work visually engages us by drawing us in to share the experience of the subject.

Making the transition from agency producer to freelance photographer, also places Jonathan in the unique position whereby he has worked closely with both Creatives and Account Service within the agency environment. One of Jonathan’s strengths is that he understands the required balance of production and client constraints without compromising the integrity of the creative vision.

Jonathan’s 9 years working in Advertising Agencies has given him wonderful opportunities to collaborate with some of the best creative minds in the world. Now he is working towards making his own mark in the industry with his fun and dynamic imagery. "

I have posted a few of my favourites pieces below.

Text found at www.jonathanmayphotography.com

Book design

As part of my final project I am designing a book. My design so far is turning out to be quite vibrant and colourful so I have done some research into colour within book design and different ways in applying this without using the inside spreads.

Book design: Slip cases

I have been researching different ways of how I want to present my book and have decided on having a slip case. My book is about words and how they have changed and developed from the original meanings. One idea I had was to have the original word for book on the slip case (Bokiz), when the book is taken out of the case the original definition will be printed on the book itself. Below are some different ways of using a slip case.

Shellsuit Zombie

While in London we were asked to attend an event put together by Shellsuit Zombie held at The Cross Kings pub. I was unsure of what to expect of this evening but was pleasantly surprised as it turned out to be a really good night.

Each of the designers of Shellsuit Zombie worked for different companies but came together to talk to students and help them with the transition from education to industry. They spoke to us about their experiences and gave us there stories about what happened once they had graduated.

After they had shared their experiences they gave us a challenge. In groups of five we were asked to come up with a campaign for a certain issue. Ours was to come up with an advertising campaign to promote Peter Stringfellow sponsoring world peace. We had a number of ideas using the strapline 'Peter string mellow' and applying thongs to peace signs etc.

Overall this was a really enjoyable night. The fact that it was informal meant that everyone was more relaxed which made the idea of pitching in front of everyone much less daunting.

Studio Special

Studio Special was one of the agencies I visited during my trip to London. Myself, Michele and Kat took our portfolios to the studio to see the designer David Lovelock. He began by telling us a bit about himself, how he came to London and the creation of Studio Special. He then went on to talk to us about some of the projects he'd worked on.

We each showed David our work. While showing him my editorial work he advised me to talk more about the design decisions I made rather than the brief as this is what a designer would be more interested in. As it stood I was discussing what the brief was about and what the article consisted of but he told me to talk about why I chose to design the identity in the way that I did and why I chose to carry out the identity through the magazine with blocks of colour etc. David liked the way I had done this but wanted me to expand more on why. He then showed me an editorial piece that he had produced.

David liked my NYC Bowling Championship identity work and said that I should apply more ambient ideas to it by maybe using a birds eye view of New York and highlighting buildings in white to look like pins. Again he advised me to speak about why I had chosen the colours for the logo (one black and one pink) as the designer wants to know the reasoning behind the decision.

He also gave me some advise about my Kitchen of Meaning work telling me to maybe add a strapline to the poster so that the viewer 'get's it' quicker. He also suggested maybe placing it in a magazine or newspaper to show it in situ rather than in a bus stop ad shell as it has more relevance.

Overall this visit was very helpful and I received some really useful feedback and advise not only on how to improve my work but on how to present it to a design. David was really helpful and even took the time to advise us on where to eat!

Red Brick Road

Before visiting the Red Brick Road I had looked into some of there Tesco campaigns with Michele as we had been researching copywriting for a brief that we collaborated on. We really like the simplicity and how they got the message across without over complicating things. I couple of these ads can be seen below.

I visited Red Brick Road while in London with my classmates Michele and Kat. The visit itself was quite a quick one as the designer that we were originally meant to be seeing was unable to speak to us. We saw a copywriter, Dan, and he spoke to us a bit about getting into the design industry and placements and showed us a portfolio that belonged to a guy who had previously had a placement there. He said to us that unusual and more daring ideas were often what got people placements as these were the things that stood out and grabbed a designers attention.

We then went through a few of our designs and Dan gave us some advise on how we could improve these. Throughout the visit he mentioned strategy and how this could benifit our ideas. This came up in our other visits too so I plan to research more into advertising strategies. One project that this could be applied to was a Bacardi brief that myself and Michele had been working on. As it stood the project was unfinished so it was really helpful to get some advise on how to improve it. One thing that Dan suggested was shortening the scenarios as they were quite long and another was to add a strapline. He also suggested maybe using different media for advertising rather than just print, i.e. the internet using web banners and maybe printing on stickers and placing these on the back of nightclub toilet doors to appeal more to our target audience.

Since returning from this visit we took Dans advice and added a strapline to our posters, hopefully we will get he change to apply more of his suggestions to our work.

Dye Holloway Murray

Dhm was another agency that I visited when in London. I had been emailing Fran, a designer at Dhm, regarding one of my projects and she had suggested taking in my portfolio while I was in London. I visited the studio with my classmates Michele and Kat, we got some great feedback and Fran seemed really keen to see our work. One of her colleagues also joined us.

The feedback I got about my work was really helpful, Fran liked my Kitchen of Meaning exhibition posters but felt they were quite long and could possibly be shortened. By doing this it could also help the viewer get the idea quicker.

I also showed Fran and her colleague my Cumberland Pencil Museum exhibition poster, she liked the idea and thought it was simple yet effective. One piece of advise given here was that maybe I could of used a variety of pencils to represent the mountains rather than just one photograph repeated.

She also gave some great advice to me and Michele on the Bacardi brief we are currently working on. She liked our idea and told us that it reminded her of some 18-30's ads she had seen a few years back. Fran suggested that to make our posters better we could make the language that we used more casual and up to date, using more slang words etc and she also suggested adding a strapline to link the text to the rum itself. Another thing that came up was that our work lacked advertising strategy, this was mentioned on several occasions. Fran explained to us what this was and how it may be useful to us if we looked into it further.

We left Dhm feeling positive about our work as they were extremely helpful and really enthusiastic when looking at our designs. This was a great end to our visits in London.

Magpie

Recently I visited London with uni. While there I visited a number of design agencies, this was really helpful and allowed me to get an insight into how agencies worked in London. One Studio that I visited was Magpie. I visited this studio in a group with some of my classmates to talk to the designer Ben about the company and the work they had done.

Ben began by telling us about the company and how it started. Magpie had been around for 2 years with some of the designers joining from Hatrick. He then went on to talk about the industry and show us a portfolio of work that they had produced as a company. One piece that stood out to me was the Action on Addiction book they produced as I am designing a book for my final major project. I think this idea was simple but effective which I feel is essential in book design.

As well as showing us work Ben asked us about our final major projects and told us to feel free to email him if we were struggling and needed any advice. He also advised us to make cards that we could leave behind for the designers so that they can contact us if they were impressed by our work etc. I feel this was good advise so I plan to produce something along these lines in the near future.

Advertising Strategy

While in London we visited a couple of agencies that were advertising based. When the designers were going through my work they mentioned Advertising Strategy and how it was lacking in this. One designer, Fran explained to me that Strategy was crucial in Advertising as this is the starting point, the rest of the ad is built around this. Below is an essay that goes in-depth about Advertising Strategies.

An advertising strategy is a campaign developed to communicate ideas about products and services to potential consumers in the hopes of convincing them to buy those products and services. This strategy, when built in a rational and intelligent manner, will reflect other business considerations (overall budget, brand recognition efforts) and objectives (public image enhancement, market share growth) as well. As Portable MBA in Marketing authors Alexander Hiam and Charles D. Schewe stated, a business's advertising strategy "determines the character of the company's public face." Even though a small business has limited capital and is unable to devote as much money to advertising as a large corporation, it can still develop a highly effective advertising campaign. The key is creative and flexible planning, based on an indepth knowledge of the target consumer and the avenues that can be utilized to reach that consumer.

Today, most advertising strategies focus on achieving three general goals, as the Small Business Administration indicated in Advertising Your Business: 1) promote awareness of a business and its product or services; 2) stimulate sales directly and "attract competitors' customers"; and 3) establish or modify a business' image. In other words, advertising seeks to inform, persuade, and remind the consumer. With these aims in mind, most businesses follow a general process which ties advertising into the other promotional efforts and overall marketing objectives of the business.

STAGES OF ADVERTISING STRATEGY

As a business begins, one of the major goals of advertising must be to generate awareness of the business and its products. Once the business' reputation is established and its products are positioned within the market, the amount of resources used for advertising will decrease as the consumer develops a kind of loyalty to the product. Ideally, this established and ever-growing consumer base will eventually aid the company in its efforts to carry their advertising message out into the market, both through its purchasing actions and its testimonials on behalf of the product or service.

Essential to this rather abstract process is the development of a "positioning statement," as defined by Gerald E. Hills in "Marketing Option and Marketing" in The Portable MBA in Entrepreneurship: "A 'positioning statement' explains how a company's product (or service) is differentiated from those of key competitors." With this statement, the business owner turns intellectual objectives into concrete plans. In addition, this statement acts as the foundation for the development of a selling proposal, which is composed of the elements that will make up the advertising message's "copy platform." This platform delineates the images, copy, and art work that the business owner believes will sell the product.

With these concrete objectives, the following elements of the advertising strategy need to be considered: target audience, product concept, communication media, and advertising message. These elements are at the core of an advertising strategy, and are often referred to as the "creative mix." Again, what most advertisers stress from the beginning is clear planning and flexibility. And key to these aims is creativity, and the ability to adapt to new market trends. A rigid advertising strategy often leads to a loss of market share. Therefore, the core elements of the advertising strategy need to mix in a way that allows the message to envelope the target consumer, providing ample opportunity for this consumer to become acquainted with the advertising message.

TARGET CONSUMER The target consumer is a complex combination of persons. It includes the person who ultimately buys the product, as well as those who decide what product will be bought (but don't physically buy it), and those who influence product purchases, such as children, spouse, and friends. In order to identify the target consumer, and the forces acting upon any purchasing decision, it is important to define three general criteria in relation to that consumer, as discussed by the Small Business Administration:

1. Demographics—Age, gender, job, income, ethnicity, and hobbies.
2. Behaviors—When considering the consumers' behavior an advertiser needs to examine the consumers' awareness of the business and its competition, the type of vendors and services the consumer currently uses, and the types of appeals that are likely to convince the consumer to give the advertiser's product or service a chance.
3. Needs and Desires—Here an advertiser must determine the consumer needs—both in practical terms and in terms of self-image, etc.—and the kind of pitch/message that will convince the consumer that the advertiser's services or products can fulfill those needs.

PRODUCT CONCEPT The product concept grows out of the guidelines established in the "positioning statement." How the product is positioned within the market will dictate the kind of values the product represents, and thus how the target consumer will receive that product. Therefore, it is important to remember that no product is just itself, but, as Courtland L. Bovee and William F. Arens stated in Contemporary Advertising, a "bundle of values" that the consumer needs to be able to identify with. Whether couched in presentations that emphasize sex, humor, romance, science, masculinity, or femininity, the consumer must be able to believe in the product's representation.

COMMUNICATION MEDIA The communication media is the means by which the advertising message is transmitted to the consumer. In addition to marketing objectives and budgetary restraints, the characteristics of the target consumer need to be considered as an advertiser decides what media to use. The types of media categories from which advertisers can choose include the following:

• Print—Primarily newspapers (both weekly and daily) and magazines.
• Audio—FM and AM radio.
• Video—Promotional videos, infomercials.
• World Wide Web.
• Direct mail.
• Outdoor advertising—Billboards, advertisements on public transportation (cabs, buses).

After deciding on the medium that is 1) financially in reach, and 2) most likely to reach the target audience, an advertiser needs to schedule the broadcasting of that advertising. The media schedule, as defined by Hills, is "the combination of specific times (for example, by day, week, month) when advertisements are inserted into media vehicles and delivered to target audiences."

ADVERTISING MESSAGE An advertising message is guided by the "advertising or copy platform," which is a combination of the marketing objectives, copy, art, and production values. This combination is best realized after the target consumer has been analyzed, the product concept has been established, and the media and vehicles have been chosen. At this point, the advertising message can be directed at a very concrete audience to achieve very specific goals. Hiam and Schewe listed three major areas that an advertiser should consider when endeavoring to develop an effective "advertising platform":

• What are the product's unique features?
• How do consumers evaluate the product? What is likely to persuade them to purchase the product?
• How do competitors rank in the eyes of the consumer? Are there any weaknesses in their positions? What are their strengths?

Most business consultants recommend employing an advertising agency to create the art work and write the copy. However, many small businesses don't have the up-front capital to hire such an agency, and therefore need to create their own advertising pieces. When doing this a business owner needs to follow a few important guidelines.

COPY When composing advertising copy it is crucial to remember that the primary aim is to communicate information about the business and its products and services. The "selling proposal" can act as a blueprint here, ensuring that the advertising fits the overall marketing objectives. Many companies utilize a theme or a slogan as the centerpiece of such efforts, emphasizing major attributes of the business's products or services in the process. But as Hiam and Schewe caution, while "something must be used to animate the theme …care must be taken not to lose the underlying message in the pursuit of memorable advertising."

When writing the copy, direct language (saying exactly what you mean in a positive, rather than negative manner) has been shown to be the most effective. The theory here is that the less the audience has to interpret, or unravel the message, the easier the message will be to read, understand, and act upon. As Jerry Fisher observed in Entrepreneur, "Two-syllable phrases like 'free book,' 'fast help,' and 'lose weight' are the kind of advertising messages that don't need to be read to be effective. By that I mean they are so easy for the brain to interpret as a whole thought that they're 'read' in an eye blink rather than as linear verbiage. So for an advertiser trying to get attention in a world awash in advertising images, it makes sense to try this message-in-an-eye-blink route to the public consciousness—be it for a sales slogan or even a product name."

The copy content needs to be clearly written, following conventional grammatical guidelines. Of course, effective headings allow the reader to get a sense of the advertisement's central theme without having to read much of the copy. An advertisement that has "50% Off" in bold black letters is not just easy to read, but it is also easy to understand.

ART WORK AND LAYOUT Small business owners also need to consider the visual rhetoric of the advertisement, which simply means that the entire advertisement, including blank space, should have meaning and logic. Most industry experts recommend that advertisers use short paragraphs, lists, and catchy illustrations and graphics to break up and supplement the text and make the document both visually inviting and easy to understand. Remember, an advertisement has to capture the reader's attention quickly.

ADVERTISING BUDGET The advertising budget can be written before or after a business owner has developed the advertising strategy. When to make a budget decision depends on the importance of advertising and the resources available to the business. If, for instance, a business knows that they only have a certain amount of money for advertising then the budget will tend to dictate what advertising is developed and what the overall marketing objectives will be. On the other hand, if a business has the resources available, the advertising strategy can be developed to meet predetermined marketing objectives. For small businesses, it is usually best to put together an advertising budget early in the advertising process.

The following approaches are the most common methods of developing an effective budget. All the methods listed are progressive ones that look to perpetuate growth:

• Percentage of future or past sales
• Competitive approach
• Market share
• All available funds
• The task or objective approach

The easiest approach—and thus the one that is most often used—is the percentage of future or past sales method. Most industry experts recommend basing spending on anticipated sales, in order to ensure growth. But for a small business, where survival may be a bigger concern than growth, basing the advertising budget on past sales is often a more sensible approach to take.

METHODS OF ADVERTISING

Small business owners can choose from two opposite philosophies when preparing their advertising strategy. The first of these, sometimes called the push method, is a stance wherein an advertiser targets retail establishments in order to establish or broaden a market presence. The second option, sometimes called the pull method, targets end-users (consumers), who are expected to ask retailers for the product and thus help "pull" it through the channel of distribution. Of course, many businesses employ some hybrid of the two when putting together their advertising strategy.

PUSH METHOD The aim of the push method is to convince retailers, salespersons, or dealers to carry and promote the advertiser's product. This relationship is achieved by offering inducements, such as providing advertising kits to help the retailer sell the product, offering incentives to carry stock, and developing trade promotions.

PULL METHOD The aim of the pull method is to convince the target consumer to try, purchase, and ultimately repurchase the product. This process is achieved by directly appealing to the target consumer with coupons, in-store displays, and sweepstakes.

www.enotes.com