This class was probably one of the best classes I've taken in a long while. Honestly I was a bit wary at first because of the supposed difficulty of the course, also since I was a graphic design minor (major in broadcasting), I was about shoulder high in water I could only swim stomach deep in. It was a bit intimidating. But since I am more of a hands on learner I started getting into the swing of things shortly after. The things we practiced in this class started spilling over into my other classes, I took majority graphic classes this semester to finish off my degree (3 days!) and this class helped a ton. I was making sure all my files were in the correct format and color scheme. I started learning the strengths and weakness of the creative suite (which lead to an increase of workflow, despite the fact I was doing more thorough work) and how to do a better job of managing files within a project. I feel like I was actually challenged in this class which was something I've felt like I've been lacking the past year or so. I felt like I was both intellectually and creatively stimulated at the same time. In hindsight it's a great thing and a great feeling. Walking away, I feel way more confident in my graphic design abilities now that I've found a balance between technical and creative proficiency.
Also I wish I utilized the printing center a long time ago. With all the thing we've made through them I could have had so many custom designed things. And with all my printable board games too?! I could have gotten a professional quality game, on the same kind of paper and card stock for probably around 1/3rd of the retail price. Keep in mind these manufactured games cost ~$60 on average. But in conclusion, if I wasn't graduating and could take this class again. I probably would. No, definitely.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Final Project
For our final project we were told we could do whatever we wanted. I decided to make something that pertained to my hobby and personality. I wanted to make a piece that could be both a display of talents, aesthetic tastes and to a degree personality. What I decided to do was make a professional looking instruction manual for a "print and play" board game called Zombie Plague.
Real quickly, for those who aren't familiar, print and play board games are just what they sound like. You download the files, print them out, glue them to thicker paper or poster board then play. The thing about these games is that while they're cheap and fun to play, they aren't really graphically pleasing to the eye. For the more popular games like Zombie Plague there are people who took the time to make very nice redesigns of things like game pieces and the cards used in the game. Using this as my inspiration I decided to make a proper looking instruction manual that would look just like the manuals that come with board games now. The instructional manual that comes with the game is just a PDF with text on it. Easy to read but with a board game like this it doesn't really help you get in the "mood" for being chased by zombies.
Below is my example/template/folding dummy/manual I'm emulating. It's for a great game called "Arkham Horror", based of the Cthulhu Mythos started by H. P. Lovecraft.
As you can see, the manual has a three column layout, with a half inch margin and about an eighth of an inch gutter. It's dimensions are 11" x 11". Replicating that in InDesign shouldn't be too much of a bother. The biggest thing I noticed while studying the manual was that it used a lot of picture. A whole lot. But this game is also the size of your dining room table (literally) so it's somewhat understandable. My manual doesn't have a million little pieces that I can pepper through the document so I had to get a bit more creative with my pictures.
I decided to follow basic newspaper-like rules when figuring out where the text would go. The Arkham manual followed similar principles and it looks good. Also note, this manual is 24 pages long, which is ridiculous for a board game. It's not uncommon for more advanced games, but it's a pain trying to figure out how to play that first game. My manual should be around eight pages long and with larger text, maybe 14 or 16 points so it should be it a decently quick read front to back. I talked to the print at printing services and we decided on Mowhawk #30 paper (the same kind used in the Arkham Horror manual) and I'd be using 4 color cmyk for my art and anything in InDesign would have to be pantome process.
The vectors and textures that I ended up using came from quite a few sources, the cover and pages came from the Lost & Taken blog. Things like the people, splatters, weapons, zombies, scribbles, and the hand prints on the cover are from the GoMedia freebie blog and a $10 pack pack I ended up buying cause I like them. The screaming man came from http://www.all-free-download.com/ and the man with the gun came from http://www.freevector.com/. There are also pictures that are used as examples of the game board itself and some of the cards used in the game. These were made by a user named 'Flytrap' on the website Boardgamegeek.com. He released it as part of his redesigned Zombie Plague: 10th Anniversary Edition.
Here is the first version. I tried to make something that was like a manual or a journal. The page textures had some random scribbles on them so I thought it'd be good as like someone slowly going crazy while these zombies took over. The cover is suppose to be something that immediately grabs your attention and sets the mood for the game. I initially wanted to have a little story in the background by making each page have a journal entry of a man slowly going crazy before he kills himself but due to time constraints and the fact it'd look too crowded, I decided to just condense it into two pages and use it as a 'notes' page. That way I can kind of display it as art. I followed the Arkham Horror template and made an 11" x 11" manual that had three columns with a half inch margin all around, eighth inch gutter and an eighth inch bleed. All my background art is CMYK, as is most of my vectors, some are grayscale.
I tried to keep everything decently uniform, blocking off awkwardly lengths columns and putting them in a box or adding a piece of art to keep things balanced. The roll chart was made in illustrator as is where most of the vectors were altered. I also tried to keep the pictures relevant to the text that it was surrounded by which I think went pretty well. During the peer review the class had very few criticisms, just thinks like too empty space on one side or something that could be with a simple design change.
So, here it is, this is the version that is going to be printed out.
UPDATE:
Over the weekend I got a call from the printer. There were a couple things I wasn't aware of while reviewing and submitting the file. I wasn't told that saddle stitching required the document to be in multiples of four (because of the way the fold and the document (usually) works, having anything less would basically cause a random extra or blank page). Also, the machine they do these types of jobs with can only print out in 9" x 9", so I would have to scale everything down. Since I had a deadline I asked what could be done to keep the book in its current form. I was told I could do a coil bind and keep it 11" x 11". That sounded good to me so the job went through. This is what it looked like when I picked it up.
I think it still looks good with the coil binding. The colors turned out well. As did all the graphics and text. There was just one problem I didn't take into consideration....
I never thought to redo the file to take into account the gutter of a coil bind. Because of this my text was way to close to the inside of the page. This was on all of the pages. Also, on paper some of my margins looked like they could have been a little tighter.
Game art page
Graphic
Notes page with the "mini-story" of someone using the manual and going crazy. This part turned out really well and is probably my favorite thing of the whole book.
The class like it as well, everyone thought it looked cool and agreed that the textures I used for the cover and pages helped add to the feel of the game. The biggest suggestions (aside from the text margins) was to see how it would look in a smaller or more "book-like" spread. Or if I had the time and money, make it like a fake journal or manual. It's something I might have to consider.
This project was a blast, despite the pressures of it being our last final project. Everything we've done led up until this point and all my teachings shown while doing this project, the image quality, my workflow, my creative suites skills in general, have all noticeably increased since this class. To finish off this blog, I want to talk about my overall thought of this class, briefly.
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Magazine Ad
Our next project is to make a full page ad for a magazine. This is a pretty simple project for us, we have to pick a magazine, do a little research on their ad specs and make the ad. The main element that we have to put in this layout is a photograph and it has to pertain to the demographic that would be reading the magazine.
Before we start, while the designs were made by me, my magazine and store being advertised are properties of their respective owners. GQ is owned by Conde Nast and JC Penneys is owned by itself.
So as you can guess, the magazine that I chose is GQ. I kind of have a thing for male fashion this magazine is right up my alley. Combine that with an ad from JC Penney's (where I currently work), and you have a nice, fashionable publication on your hands. My target audience are younger males (18-25) who want to dress professional and stylish yet still have enough money left over to eat. In terms of a call to action I guess it would be the want of wanting to go and get a good set of clothes at a good price.
As you may or may not have noticed, no two magazines are alike. Besides obvious things like content, most magazines vary in size. Because of this, when working with a magazine its detrimental to follow their ad specs exactly. Most ad space in magazines cost huge amounts of money.
Here is a screen shot from the Conde Nast website that explains the rates for running an ad in GQ Magazine. As you can see, for one full page ad, for one issue, the starting rate is $161,437. Because of this price, you want to make that when you design your ad you exactly follow the specs of your magazine.
Before we start, while the designs were made by me, my magazine and store being advertised are properties of their respective owners. GQ is owned by Conde Nast and JC Penneys is owned by itself.
So as you can guess, the magazine that I chose is GQ. I kind of have a thing for male fashion this magazine is right up my alley. Combine that with an ad from JC Penney's (where I currently work), and you have a nice, fashionable publication on your hands. My target audience are younger males (18-25) who want to dress professional and stylish yet still have enough money left over to eat. In terms of a call to action I guess it would be the want of wanting to go and get a good set of clothes at a good price.
As you may or may not have noticed, no two magazines are alike. Besides obvious things like content, most magazines vary in size. Because of this, when working with a magazine its detrimental to follow their ad specs exactly. Most ad space in magazines cost huge amounts of money.
The picture above are the required specs for running an ad for GQ. The four columns correspond to a different part of the layout and the measures that are needed for it. This also requires a little bit of maths since you have to figure out the differences between different sections then find out what the distance is across the element. Bleed refers to the intensional spillover in a document or layout, this is done to make sure that the picture will cover the full spread and wont leave a sliver of white space on the very edge of the page. Non-bleed is how big our document has to be without the bleed. This is mainly useful for things like illustrations or anything you want to keep contained within the live space. The trim means how big the document will be after it is cut and printed. For lack of a better term, the trim is basically the document size. The last column, live, means live area. This is the area where your extra elements like vectors and text are guaranteed to print. You have to keep your elements contained within the live area or you once again risk having some part of your ad cut off or messed up. I feel like something like that is better explained in a diagram.
Here is a visual example.
The picture above is the requirements for a digital submission for an ad. The file has to be exported as a PDF-x1a for must have things like CMYK only colors and embedded text. Requirements like these are more-or-less the exact kind of grading criteria that is used in our class. We have to make sure our colors are only CMYK or Pantone, and that our fonts are packaged within the final folder. Since you wouldn't want to mess this up in real life and cost your company over $150k, you'd want to make sure you follow these instructions to the t (at least I think that's how it goes).
Before I can start brain storming I need to figure out exactly how much space I have to work with. Time to start the maths. The publication trim is 8" x 10 7/8" which is what my main document size will be. In the first column is says that bleed is 8 1/4" x 11 1/8". This means that a quarter of an inch is added to all sides, but instead of adding a 1/4" to one side I have to divide the quarter inch by two (1/8") and add it to all four sides. For live area, I have to subtract the live area (7 1/2" x 10 3/8) from the trim (8" x 10 7/8"). In the mechanical requirements picture you can see an area where it says "SAFETY:All live matter must be 1/4 inch from trim on all sides." This means that your margin will be a quarter inch all the way around. So now that we have our document all set up we can start brainstorming.
I'm basing my ad around the phrase "Clothes make the man". It's a personal mantra of mine and I think every man who dresses up nice will have a noticeable gain in self-confidence. You dress like a boss, you'll feel like a boss. It's a pretty easy theme to visualize and it'll give a chance to be my own fashion model. I wanted to do something that would compare and contrast a "regular guy" and a "man" so a picture with a two-shot (two people in the frame) would be pretty good for this ad. For my thumbnails I have two people standing side by side, one man split in half vertically, one split horizontally, the man in the mirror, and a man with some girls while the regular guy is standing alone. I decided to go with the man in the mirror because that would be the easiest to shoot and edit.
Here is the draft I presented for the on-screen critique. What I did was set up a camera on a tripod and took two pics from the same spot. Me and regular clothes and me all dressed up. I went into photoshop and laid the mirror on-top of the one below it. I also did some color correcting to both pictures to make it blend a bit better, but left things like the mouthwash and sticker because I wanted to make sure people liked my concept first.. I ended up leaving my elements outside the live area because I thought it looked weird having the logos and text "float". After talking about it with my teacher and classmates I decided to put it in the right spot as opposed to resizing the whole document or something like that. My class liked the photo and the idea of the ad so it was time to do just a little bit of touch ups. Also, I'm a fan of minimalist designs because it's a talent to be able to convey an almost philosophical idea or premise with only one picture or a few words. That's just my opinion at least.
This is the proof and graphic of the final version. I went into photoshop again and removed the sticker (clone brush and spot healing), cleaned up my dirty mirror, edited, then covered the mouthwash logo, and moved my elements back into the live area. I corrected the colors again and I desaturated the "regular" pic while making the colors in the mirror a bit more vibrant. I was suppose to be a subtle non-verbal about how things could be a bit more boring with just regular clothes and a bit more colorful with nice ones. This was a quick and fun project to do.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Newspaper ad
Our next project is to make a black and white news paper ad for our school newspaper the “Collegio”. The first, obvious step was to figure out our dimensions, news paper measurements works differently than just a design you make and print. Instead of measuring width by inches you measure it by columns and just about every newspaper has different sizes for their columns. So that means if you have a 2x4” ad (.5" margin, and .125" bleed), its two columns by four inches. Not two inches by four inches. These are the numbers we got for the Collegio newspaper.
1 column = 1.83
2 column= 3.79
3 column= 5.75
4 column= 7.71
5 column= 9.67
6 column= 11.63
1 column = 1.83
2 column= 3.79
3 column= 5.75
4 column= 7.71
5 column= 9.67
6 column= 11.63
We were given a budget of $197. Since running a color ad in the Collegio costs $200 by itself, we are forced to do a black and white ad. The other requirement was to figure out a demographic to sell to. Since the Collegio is only delivered within Pittsburg, it has to be a local business. I decided to do my ad for a fictional pizza shoppe called “Samurai Dog Pizza”. My last step was to figure out how big I wanted to make the ad. So, my teachers were right. All that “useless” math I thought I didn’t need. Well, I need it now. Here are the numbers and formulas I (and the rest of the class) came up with.
z columns (width) by z inches (height) = P
P x $4.00 = Cost
So since I decided on a 3 by 4” ad, this should be the cost of running it.
3 columns x 4 inches = 12
12 x $4.00 = $48.00
$197.00 - $48.00 = $149 that are left over.
With $149.00 left over, I could run my ad for three more issues of the Collegio.
TL;DR (Too long, didn’t read): A 3 x 4” advertisement with a four issue run would cost $48 per week, and with a budget of $197 dollars you can run your ad for four issues and grab yourself some lunch for doing a job well done.
*Note: all the images were made by me, font sources are given a bit later.
My target audience was anyone really. I guess the picture and name of the pizza shoppe would appeal to younger people. But there's nothing really saying that only "20-somethings" are allowed to eat there. The call is action is your atypical "call now" but the coupons add extra incentive to come into the restaurant.
There are the sketches I drew, the different mascot and logo ideas along with a couple basic layouts I could do, I tried to stay within the 'Asian Pizza" theme. I (obviously) went with the samurai dog, and I used the japanese frame as part of the logo. So both pictures can be eye-catching and recognizable.
Since we had to have one element be hand drawn and turned into a bitmap, I had to retrace then ink-over my samurai dog. Here's what it looked like after I scanned it. Keep in mind, since I wanted to have the highest picture quality possible I had to scan the image at 600 dpi. That way I could resize it however I want for future use and it wont look all pixelated.
This is the inked version fresh from the scanner. As you can tell its a little rough and I sketched a bit too close to the eyes. Since I'm working in photoshop to convert it to a bitmap I can touch it up a little bit and it looks better after conversion. Thank goodness for the clone tool.
This is what it looked like touched up. I used the clone brush to add a bit more white space where it was needed. Used the paint brush to make some lines darker so they were more pronounced after the conversion. Sharpies can only do so much.
Finally, this is the bitmap that will go into the advertisement. In my on-screen critique version (which will be the next picture) I used a vector from the scanned picture so that's why it looks different.
This is my first draft, the classed like it for the most part. The biggest suggestions were to try it with a vertical spread as opposed to horizontal, and make the coupons have a dashed line, to imply (cut here). The font from the logo and phone number is called "Karate" and its from dafont.com, the one with the address and date/time is called Herulanum and its from urbanfonts.com.
*Note: all the images were made by me, font sources are given a bit later.
My target audience was anyone really. I guess the picture and name of the pizza shoppe would appeal to younger people. But there's nothing really saying that only "20-somethings" are allowed to eat there. The call is action is your atypical "call now" but the coupons add extra incentive to come into the restaurant.
There are the sketches I drew, the different mascot and logo ideas along with a couple basic layouts I could do, I tried to stay within the 'Asian Pizza" theme. I (obviously) went with the samurai dog, and I used the japanese frame as part of the logo. So both pictures can be eye-catching and recognizable.
Since we had to have one element be hand drawn and turned into a bitmap, I had to retrace then ink-over my samurai dog. Here's what it looked like after I scanned it. Keep in mind, since I wanted to have the highest picture quality possible I had to scan the image at 600 dpi. That way I could resize it however I want for future use and it wont look all pixelated.
This is my first draft, the classed like it for the most part. The biggest suggestions were to try it with a vertical spread as opposed to horizontal, and make the coupons have a dashed line, to imply (cut here). The font from the logo and phone number is called "Karate" and its from dafont.com, the one with the address and date/time is called Herulanum and its from urbanfonts.com.
This is the final version. I decided to go with the vertical look and dashed lines. I think my classmates were right in that it looks better. And I don't have to worry about people cutting up my art to get to the coupon. Since I went with a different layout that means a different ad size which means more math. Which breaks down like this;
The new image is 2 columns by 5.75 inches (3.79" x 5.75").
z columns (width) by z inches (height) = P
P x $4.00 = Cost
So since I decided on a 2 x 5.75” ad, this should be the cost of running it.
2 columns x 5.75 inches = 11.50 column inches
11.50 x $4.00 = $46.00
$197.00 - $46.00 = $151 that are left over.
$184 dollars spend with $13 bucks left over.
So I can still run the ad for four issues, and buy lunch AND dinner. Awesome.
The last thing I need is a printed proof to see how it looks in person. This project wasn't bad at all. Since I'm taking a class that is purely newspaper layouts, that helped me a bit more than I thought it would. I like knowing I have the ability to take my drawing and put it into a document without having the task of vectoring. I prefer a vector because I don't think I'm a good artist but if my skills improve I might use this technique more.
$184 dollars spend with $13 bucks left over.
So I can still run the ad for four issues, and buy lunch AND dinner. Awesome.
The last thing I need is a printed proof to see how it looks in person. This project wasn't bad at all. Since I'm taking a class that is purely newspaper layouts, that helped me a bit more than I thought it would. I like knowing I have the ability to take my drawing and put it into a document without having the task of vectoring. I prefer a vector because I don't think I'm a good artist but if my skills improve I might use this technique more.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Inspiration
So we are suppose to talking about our surroundings and environment and how they inspire us. In order to do that we will have to take a quick tour of my house.
This is my living room, a noticeable feature is that we have no TV, my two roommates and I decided to opt out of cable because we don't even watch it that much and we have the whole internet at our disposal. I have a netflix account and that's basically all the TV I need. So we use this room to hang out, play board games (my hobby is collection them), or do homework. It's nice and cozy and very relaxed.
This is my bedroom, it's what you call an organized mess. I have my certain spots for everything but it's all in a pile. I have posters from movies that dot my walls. I'm a big movie fan and I'm actually applying to film school out in California for my masters degree (fingers crossed). This posters not only remind me of my favorite movies but they also remind of my goal. Where I want to be in four years time. My HDTV is used mainly in conjunction with my laptop. I have an adapter that lets my hookup my Macbook Pro to my TV via HDMI, then you throw a small set of computer speakers on each side and you have a nice setup (and HDMI doesn't do audio out).
The wallpaper on my computer is from Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes". I snagged the wallpaper from here and all credit goes to the creator(s) of the wallpaper. The wallpaper reminds me to never fully grow up and keep using my imagination to make sure I never take life too seriously.
I think a better source of inspiration that I have, probably the most influential, are the video games I play and the TV shows I watch. I'm a huge fan of the Cartoon Network show "Adventure Time with Finn and Jake". I love the art style and the sense of humor the show has, and it's pretty awesome. That's one of the reaosns I love cartoons so much, sometimes you have to create a whole universe using a certain art style, it's hard to be more creative than that. The same goes for the video games I play. Games like TF2 with it's "Incredibles-esque" mixed with 1950's impressionist art. It's hard to explain unless you see it in motion but it is quite (objectively) beautiful.
This is my living room, a noticeable feature is that we have no TV, my two roommates and I decided to opt out of cable because we don't even watch it that much and we have the whole internet at our disposal. I have a netflix account and that's basically all the TV I need. So we use this room to hang out, play board games (my hobby is collection them), or do homework. It's nice and cozy and very relaxed.
This is my bedroom, it's what you call an organized mess. I have my certain spots for everything but it's all in a pile. I have posters from movies that dot my walls. I'm a big movie fan and I'm actually applying to film school out in California for my masters degree (fingers crossed). This posters not only remind me of my favorite movies but they also remind of my goal. Where I want to be in four years time. My HDTV is used mainly in conjunction with my laptop. I have an adapter that lets my hookup my Macbook Pro to my TV via HDMI, then you throw a small set of computer speakers on each side and you have a nice setup (and HDMI doesn't do audio out).
The wallpaper on my computer is from Bill Watterson's "Calvin and Hobbes". I snagged the wallpaper from here and all credit goes to the creator(s) of the wallpaper. The wallpaper reminds me to never fully grow up and keep using my imagination to make sure I never take life too seriously.
I think a better source of inspiration that I have, probably the most influential, are the video games I play and the TV shows I watch. I'm a huge fan of the Cartoon Network show "Adventure Time with Finn and Jake". I love the art style and the sense of humor the show has, and it's pretty awesome. That's one of the reaosns I love cartoons so much, sometimes you have to create a whole universe using a certain art style, it's hard to be more creative than that. The same goes for the video games I play. Games like TF2 with it's "Incredibles-esque" mixed with 1950's impressionist art. It's hard to explain unless you see it in motion but it is quite (objectively) beautiful.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Direct Mail
So for our next project we have to do a direct mail piece aimed at our fellow classmates. For those who don't know, direct mail marketing is more or less targeted marketing. It makes no sense for a company to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to print out an ad campaign that'll only resonate with 25% of their receivers. So what they do instead is send their pieces to a select group or demographic. This could be region, income level, age or education level.
The company I had my internship with, Plattform Advertising, was a fully in-house agency that specialized in direct mail marketing for many online and on site education institutions. They did all the commercials (where I spent my summer), all the designing, all the research and all the data entry within the same building. It was really quite fascinating to observer and in hindsight I probably would have appreciated it way more if I did my internship as opposed to the summer of my freshman year. Anyways, for our project we had to design a postcard flier for our fictional business/event and it had to be aimed to our peers.
The cool little thing about direct marketing in todays society is that you can easily change parts of an ad depending on who the audience is. So that means that I can save time and money by building a layout, putting in the pictures I need, then telling the computer to load "picture x" under "parameter y". The best example of this would be my grand opening flier for my "new" video game bar "Reptar on Ice".
For my mailer I decided to do a grand opening flyer to promote and highlight the bar. I decided to make my two polar demographics "casual" and "hardcore"gamers.
Now most people think a gamer is a gamer is a gamer. This is furthest from the truth. Just like every social culture there are sub-cultures. There are cultures for genres of video games (first person shooter, real time strategy, massive multiplayer online games), for the different major video game systems (Xbox, Wii, Playstation, PC), how often you game and how much dedication you put into it (hardcore vs casual) and even within games themselves (player vs player, player(s) vs environment/computer) so to generalize all us gamers would be a huge oversight.
The above pictures were the notes I wrote down while brainstorming both demographics. As you can see both sides are more or less opposites of each other. Most casual gamers will most likely have a home console like an xbox or wii. These are easy to hook up and they can do a little of everything, steam video, play music and games and connect to the internet. In reality, consoles are pre made PCs specifically for gaming. A hardcore gamer will most likely have a high-end of custom built PC. These things are investments and labors of love. Having hand built a computer myself I can't explain the feeling you get with you build up a whole PC, wire it up, then boot up it for the first time. I knew exactly what parts were going into my computer and I saved my money to buy each and every piece.
Casual people will play more "mainstream" games that everybody and their mother knows, we're talking the Call of Duty and Halo type games. Everyone has heard of Mario and he's almost considered the poster-boy of video games itself. A family friendly plumber that has good times with everyone. Hardcore gamers will more than likely play games that aren't as well know. My two current obsessions are Team Fortress 2 (a first person shooter that's been out since 2007) and League of Legends (a multiplayer online battle arena game). These aren't as well known to the public but the following they have is dedicated and serious, there are people who do stat crunching just to know, down to the decimal, what items do what in a sense of the meta-game.
A hardcore gamer will more often then not play video games a few hours a day while the casual plays a few days a week, in terms of social interaction, most hardcore gamers have a core group of friends and usual associate mainly within their circle. Casual people are casual so they more open to meeting strangers. This is a very important note in the sense of the bar. You're going to have people that come in to hang out with their friends only, you need to cater to them. You also have people that are coming in to play video games and meet new people. You have to cater to them too. I decided that the best way to catch the eye of these two groups is with brand recognition.
Now first off let me get the copyright statement out of the way. The characters depicted are all properties of their respective creators and companies, however the shots I used were altered in a way that certain symbols and logos are distorted and/or gone. They were then redrawn by me and altered accordingly. The photos were either taken in-game by me or part of a press release photo to be used by the public. Since this is for a fictional bar and used for school I think fair use might be ok.
For the casual group I went with some of the most current and recognizable characters within the whole video game industry. I chose a picture of Mario (the most recognizable video game character in the world), Marcus Fenix from the "Gears of War" series, The Mii characters from "Wii Spors", an Elite Convenant from the "Halo" franchise, and a soldier from the "Bad Company 2". Most casual gamers have played all of these games once or twice and can spot out the brand easily because of the amount of exposure and popularity these games have.
For hardcore, I chose more promiment figures of the "underground" gaming culture (I use underground very loosely). Some of the more popular game, like I mentioned earlier are; League of Legends (represented by Heimerdinger), Team Fortress 2 (the engineer), Minecraft (minecraft "Steve"), Street Fighter (M. Bison), and the robots from "Portal 2".Within the more dedicated gaming community, theses characters are just as common as the ones shown in the "casual" flyer.
So with the pictures, I used a method similar to the photoshop technique that Shepard Fariey used when he made the "HOPE" poster for the 2008, Obama presidential campaign. I changed the levels on the pictures then went through each one and turned them into vectors via illustrator. I took a background from the photos that were provided to use via our teacher and juice drops. The background has random white poxes that would perfect as frames. So I took my vectors and masked them into the frames.
The text I used is a video game based font I found online at dafont.com and I decided to highlight different features for the two demographics. For casuals I used different daily specials to bring people in seeing as how it's a common way to advertise a bar, for the slogan, theyre also catered to demographic. Wii bowling is referenced because as a mainstream game almost everyone has play this game once. For the hardccore folks I referenced certain gaming events like raids and marathon nights.
The whole thing was processed via CMYK and pantome colors with a eighth inch bleed. and went through a quick revision before being finalized. I think this project was a good exercise on catering to your audience and doing the appropriate research. It can be hard to try and please two opposite and polarizing groups with the same ad. But I think if you can find the middle ground of what they have in common, then start leaning to the left or the right, you can make something that will bring in two completely different groups for one common goal.
The company I had my internship with, Plattform Advertising, was a fully in-house agency that specialized in direct mail marketing for many online and on site education institutions. They did all the commercials (where I spent my summer), all the designing, all the research and all the data entry within the same building. It was really quite fascinating to observer and in hindsight I probably would have appreciated it way more if I did my internship as opposed to the summer of my freshman year. Anyways, for our project we had to design a postcard flier for our fictional business/event and it had to be aimed to our peers.
The cool little thing about direct marketing in todays society is that you can easily change parts of an ad depending on who the audience is. So that means that I can save time and money by building a layout, putting in the pictures I need, then telling the computer to load "picture x" under "parameter y". The best example of this would be my grand opening flier for my "new" video game bar "Reptar on Ice".
For my mailer I decided to do a grand opening flyer to promote and highlight the bar. I decided to make my two polar demographics "casual" and "hardcore"gamers.
Now most people think a gamer is a gamer is a gamer. This is furthest from the truth. Just like every social culture there are sub-cultures. There are cultures for genres of video games (first person shooter, real time strategy, massive multiplayer online games), for the different major video game systems (Xbox, Wii, Playstation, PC), how often you game and how much dedication you put into it (hardcore vs casual) and even within games themselves (player vs player, player(s) vs environment/computer) so to generalize all us gamers would be a huge oversight.
The above pictures were the notes I wrote down while brainstorming both demographics. As you can see both sides are more or less opposites of each other. Most casual gamers will most likely have a home console like an xbox or wii. These are easy to hook up and they can do a little of everything, steam video, play music and games and connect to the internet. In reality, consoles are pre made PCs specifically for gaming. A hardcore gamer will most likely have a high-end of custom built PC. These things are investments and labors of love. Having hand built a computer myself I can't explain the feeling you get with you build up a whole PC, wire it up, then boot up it for the first time. I knew exactly what parts were going into my computer and I saved my money to buy each and every piece.
Casual people will play more "mainstream" games that everybody and their mother knows, we're talking the Call of Duty and Halo type games. Everyone has heard of Mario and he's almost considered the poster-boy of video games itself. A family friendly plumber that has good times with everyone. Hardcore gamers will more than likely play games that aren't as well know. My two current obsessions are Team Fortress 2 (a first person shooter that's been out since 2007) and League of Legends (a multiplayer online battle arena game). These aren't as well known to the public but the following they have is dedicated and serious, there are people who do stat crunching just to know, down to the decimal, what items do what in a sense of the meta-game.
A hardcore gamer will more often then not play video games a few hours a day while the casual plays a few days a week, in terms of social interaction, most hardcore gamers have a core group of friends and usual associate mainly within their circle. Casual people are casual so they more open to meeting strangers. This is a very important note in the sense of the bar. You're going to have people that come in to hang out with their friends only, you need to cater to them. You also have people that are coming in to play video games and meet new people. You have to cater to them too. I decided that the best way to catch the eye of these two groups is with brand recognition.
Now first off let me get the copyright statement out of the way. The characters depicted are all properties of their respective creators and companies, however the shots I used were altered in a way that certain symbols and logos are distorted and/or gone. They were then redrawn by me and altered accordingly. The photos were either taken in-game by me or part of a press release photo to be used by the public. Since this is for a fictional bar and used for school I think fair use might be ok.
(Casual gamer back)
(Casual gamer front)
For the casual group I went with some of the most current and recognizable characters within the whole video game industry. I chose a picture of Mario (the most recognizable video game character in the world), Marcus Fenix from the "Gears of War" series, The Mii characters from "Wii Spors", an Elite Convenant from the "Halo" franchise, and a soldier from the "Bad Company 2". Most casual gamers have played all of these games once or twice and can spot out the brand easily because of the amount of exposure and popularity these games have.
(hardcore gamer front)
(Hardcore Gamer back)
For hardcore, I chose more promiment figures of the "underground" gaming culture (I use underground very loosely). Some of the more popular game, like I mentioned earlier are; League of Legends (represented by Heimerdinger), Team Fortress 2 (the engineer), Minecraft (minecraft "Steve"), Street Fighter (M. Bison), and the robots from "Portal 2".Within the more dedicated gaming community, theses characters are just as common as the ones shown in the "casual" flyer.
So with the pictures, I used a method similar to the photoshop technique that Shepard Fariey used when he made the "HOPE" poster for the 2008, Obama presidential campaign. I changed the levels on the pictures then went through each one and turned them into vectors via illustrator. I took a background from the photos that were provided to use via our teacher and juice drops. The background has random white poxes that would perfect as frames. So I took my vectors and masked them into the frames.
The text I used is a video game based font I found online at dafont.com and I decided to highlight different features for the two demographics. For casuals I used different daily specials to bring people in seeing as how it's a common way to advertise a bar, for the slogan, theyre also catered to demographic. Wii bowling is referenced because as a mainstream game almost everyone has play this game once. For the hardccore folks I referenced certain gaming events like raids and marathon nights.
The whole thing was processed via CMYK and pantome colors with a eighth inch bleed. and went through a quick revision before being finalized. I think this project was a good exercise on catering to your audience and doing the appropriate research. It can be hard to try and please two opposite and polarizing groups with the same ad. But I think if you can find the middle ground of what they have in common, then start leaning to the left or the right, you can make something that will bring in two completely different groups for one common goal.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Notepad
Our first big assignment is to make a personalized 5 x 7 notepad (with an 1/8th inch bleed) that could be used for personal use, and it gives us a good introduction to the process of a print job from inception to a physical product.
The first part of the process is the brainstorm session. I had to think of a way to more or less show a part of my personality using pictures on a piece of paper. I consider my personality hard to describe, everyone can say they're driven, loyal, and creative, but how does that make you different from the millions of other people that use those same exact words to describe themselves?
So, I guess the kind of personality that I try to emit would be, memorable. I try to act in a (positive) demeanor that if someone brought up my name randomly, you'd say "Oh yeah, I remember him, he's a good kid and he does good work.". I try and use this in my designs so that if someone asked about my work they could have some examples right off the top of their head. So while my ideas are considered "abstract", at least you'll remember them.
The first part of the process is the brainstorm session. I had to think of a way to more or less show a part of my personality using pictures on a piece of paper. I consider my personality hard to describe, everyone can say they're driven, loyal, and creative, but how does that make you different from the millions of other people that use those same exact words to describe themselves?
So, I guess the kind of personality that I try to emit would be, memorable. I try to act in a (positive) demeanor that if someone brought up my name randomly, you'd say "Oh yeah, I remember him, he's a good kid and he does good work.". I try and use this in my designs so that if someone asked about my work they could have some examples right off the top of their head. So while my ideas are considered "abstract", at least you'll remember them.
Above is my initial sketches of ideas I had. As of right now, most of my inspiration is drawn primarily from the gamer/tech/nerd culture. Geek before it was chic. The very top is a dinosaur taking over a city a la Godzilla, below that was a circuitry pattern I was toying with. Both of these designs were made for horizontal use. The third row and the first pictures on the last two rows (video game console and what is suppose to be a pseudo-communist propaganda poster.) were made for vertical use. The last one in the bottom right, with the stick figures, was a quick sketch for what would be a pack of zombies chasing after a man with a gun.
I decided to go with the dinosaur taking over a city because that image (in my mind) is memorable enough that you'd notice it very quickly in a pile of random stationary.
So we (the class) decided to add a QR code that will sent viewers back to this blog. It's a pretty good statement on how much technology and social networking have merged over the past few years. You see a design that you like and you want to meet the artist, snap the QR and you're on their website/blog. That's near instantaneous communication over what could be the globe. I went to http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ to make the QR code, all you have to do is put in your URL and hit ok. Save and you're done. Beyond simple.
Anyways, I decided to go with the dinosaurs over taking a city skyline (ala Godzilla). I decided that vectors would probably be best since I'm not so much a classically trained artist as I am a digital one. Also, it give the picture a kind of grungy, graffiti inspired look. I got the dinosaurs from http://vectorstuff.blogspot.com/, a blog with a new free vector almost every day, and the skyline came from http://www.snap2objects.com/ another blog site that not only shows vectors but just really cool designs to get a little inspiration going.
This is what my final version looks like. My first draft was horizontal with the dinosaurs switched and sized a bit differently. But, thanks to the critiques of my classmates, they convinced me to try out a vertical design and I have to say that it looks much better this way. The crop marks and bleeds are not present but those should be taken into account upon viewing. When it's printed the dinosaur on the right has his tail cut off a little and the trim is quite close to the curvature of the tail on the left. I made the dinos grey so they could pop against the background a bit and tried to scale the buildings so that they look big, but do not take much space.
The dialogue was just for fun, I think it'd be hilarious to see two dinosaurs smashing a city while acting like "gentlemen". I have what they call absurdist humor.
Thank goodness we have the on campus print shop. A printed proof of the design only cost 5 pence and getting a 50 page pad only costs me around $2.47. This includes binding and cutting.
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