Project: Advertising Series Intro

The Ad Series project has several parts and will be worked on for the rest of the semester. Choose either a shoe, handbag or skateboard line that you would like to promote. It MUST be an existing line of products. Your campaign will promote one of the products from that line. This project will create advertising for:
- print: magazine
- web: banner ad (interactive optional)
- outdoor advertising: Transit
- print: brochure
- interactive brochure

Examples:
10 Clever and effective Series of Advertisements
Creative Billboard Advertising Designs
Creative Shoe Concepts
High-Fashion Shoe Designs
Crux Art Shoe Fetish
Pumpkin Skateboards
Designer Handbags
Sneaker Freakers

The first objective of any advertisement is to get someone to notice it.
Clearly identifying and then stating your "big idea" and "key message"
before you begin to design are extremely helpful guides for the
conceptual development of your ad series. Creative concepts will make your designs successful. Once the concept has been decided it must be carried out in each of the designed pieces.

The Ad Series project primarily revolves around learning to create concepts
that can be translated into type and visuals with impact.
The success of an Ad Series depends on expressing the design concept through type and image, interesting visualization, and good composition. It is also important to have consistency in each of the ad pieces you are designing. Using the same images (altered to fit the format), tag line, font and color is important to help the viewer recognize the same product that is being promoted.

Interesting composition of the elements will attract attention to the message.
Your final ads should: grab attention; set it apart from other ads; communicate key messages. How you visualize and structure a composition depends on what you want to communicate.

As you begin your ad series, think carefully about your concept.
How will you visually make your concept stand out?
Will the image and information work well together?
Can you create a non-literal image and still get your message across.
Be brave and develop a concept that has the WOW! Effect.

Designers are often hired to develop a series of ads for a specific product.
The designer and client discuss the various media that will best fit the clients needs.
Some choices are:
- print (magazine ads, posters, brochures, point-of-purchase)
- web (static banner ads, animated banner ads)
- outdoor (billboards, transit)

Each of the different media will require the designer to format the SAME concept, images and information to fit each media.

Once the media is chosen, the designer sets to work researching the product and company. With this information, the designer prepares a Design Brief that will define several objectives and help keep the designer focused. The brief also will indicate the overall concept for the advertising series. Many times, a designer will work with an editor and/or the client to develop a slogan or catch phrase that will be used in all the ads. Images will then be chosen to fit the slogan/phrase.

The designer uses creative techniques to develop 3 or 4 concept ideas.
These concept ideas are either written out and/or visually represented and shown to the client. The designer creates thumbnails to show various options for layout. After the thumbnails, several computer roughs are prepared that show not only different layouts, but perhaps different images that work with the concept.

After critiques and many revisions, the final design is submitted to the client.