Advertising Principles & Practice // Week 5

30.09.2016 // Week 5
Chia Yee Hsean (0322352)
Advertising Principles & Practice
Exercise: Idea Sketches, and 
Project 1: Insight. (PlaySafe Condoms)

Lecture: Roles and Responsibilities of An Advertising Art Director 

This week's lecture slides were, as the title suggests, about the roles and responsibilities of an advertising art director. An advertising art director is someone who comes up with innovative ideas for the visual elements of an advertising campaign in all kinds of media; cinema and television, internet (digital/viral marketing), posters, press and radio. As for art direction, it is the visceral resonance of how a piece of work feels. In other words, what you feel in your gut when you look at a website, app, or any piece of design work. 

The art director is able to determine and set the stylistic look of the particular design work. Thus, he/she keeps close contact with the designers, photographers, and typesetters to ensure the client's brief is fulfilled. They are also knowledgeable in the production stages of a design project, such as printing and filming.

• In advertising, the art director simply ‘borrows’ from the world around us, and recreates new things out of it.
• Art directors use what people already know, and just modify it a little, so people can make sense out of our propositions.
• The art director merges what he wants to say with what people already know he makes it easy for them to understand and internalize the message. 

Essentially, the art director has to have a meticulous eye for detail on many different aspects such as typeface, layout, and copywriting, among others to create a design work that will resonate with its intended audience.

From the lecture, I understood:

• the roles and responsibilities of the advertising art director
• specific job scope of the art director
• the borrowing of sources from the outside world for the ideation process 

In-class Challenge

Instructions: A online news photographer was tasked to capture images of the mass demonstration known as BERSIH, which champions clean and fair elections. The movements signature colour is yellow. In one of the images posted online, a massive number of protestor is seen nearby a Digi Telecommunications retail outlet. Seeing that the colour yellow also happens to be corporate brand identity colour for Digi, the opportunistic marketing team at Digi has decided to leverage this scene to their benefit.

Your task is to come up with a slew of twisted headlines for the image attached.

This week, I was paired up with Zizi and Yana. We started off with some mindmaps of the Bersih rally and Digi before trying to make connections between the two maps. We tried to give the photo some humorous context and also approached this from a family/unity aspect. We came up with the following headlines:

• Paint the town yellow.
• When you mess with one, you mess with all.
• When someone says they hate Digi.
• Not RM2.6 billion. Just RM58/month.
• The Digi Yellow Man auditions.
• Yellow fever.
• Your voice matters.
• Hear our voices.

Then, each of us proceeded to make the posters. Mr Vinod helped us out by suggesting minor changes in typeface, composition, and the headline.

Figure 1: Quick mindmap during the brainstorming session.

Figure 2: Ad poster by Sam 1/3

Figure 3: Ad poster by Sam 2/3

Figure 4: Ad poster by Sam 3/3

Figure 5: Ad poster by Nurjanna 1/3

Figure 6: Ad poster by Nurjanna 2/3

Figure 7: Ad poster by Nurjanna 3/3

Figure 8: Ad poster by Zizi 1/2

Figure 9: Ad poster by Zizi 2/2

Times Weekly Forum

Is there a difference between a creative director and an Art Director? Do both occupations share any similarities?

Yes, the roles of a creative director do vary from those of an art director. I like to think of the creative director as the visionary; the person who upholds the studio’s design philosophy; the person who has a strong grasp of the fundamentals and mechanics of advertising/marketing as well as the knowledge and intuition of art and design. The creative director is able to come up with a vision/concept or an end goal for the creative team to aspire to when creating/designing; turns that vision into something tangible for the designers to refer to when creating work. This job also requires he/she to be a mentor and good leader to the staff. Ultimately, the creative director sets the standard for the work by the creative team and decides what gets delivered to the client.

Meanwhile, the art director is equipped with the knowledge and skillets to execute the concepts and visions set by the creative director. The art director works with the graphic designers, typesetters, and photographers to ensure the stylistic look of the design work is fulfilled according to the concept. He/she could also provide inspiration and direction to the staff when executing the concept.

I personally believe that there aren’t much similarities between the two. Perhaps the roles are interchangeable, and the art director could go on to become the creative director, and vice versa. But these two jobs are working towards separate goals, each with a different set of skills and mindset. These two occupations are different, and that’s why they complement each other.

Instructions: 

Exercise: Idea Sketches

Project 1: Insight (PlaySafe Condoms)

Project 1: Insight (PlaySafe Condoms)

Primary Research:

One last update on the primary research: I use a free calendar from Caring pharmacy and just the other day, I was looking at the ads featured on the calendar when I wondered if they have condom ads. So I flipped through the entire calendar and sure enough, an Okamoto ad on the February section that I had never notice before. You wouldn't think it was a condom ad at first glance. To sum it up, the ad is ineffective in both grabbing my attention and also telling people what their product is. 

Figure 10: Okamoto condom ad featured on a fee calendar by Caring pharmacy.

Exercise: Idea Sketches
Drafts:

Figure 11: Drafts 1/2 

Figure 12: Drafts 2/2

Sketches:

Figure 13: Sketches 1/3

Figure 14: Sketches 2/3

Figure 15: Sketches 3/3

Reflection

Experience: This week's classes were quite productive, although we didn't manage to finish the lecture slides and open discussion of the sketches. We also tried bringing Tuesday's class forward to the afternoon, in the hopes that we would be more awake and able to better retain the information.

Observation: As a class, I noticed we've become much more comfortable in class when expressing our opinions and comments about each other idea sketches. The in-class challenge felt more fun this time around! We still felt sleepy and tired when we brought the class forward to the afternoon. 

Findings: I've took what I learnt from last week's in-class challenge and became more easygoing and fun when playing around with ideas for the headline. So I suppose that helped in the team dynamics as well as for generating more ideas.

Book of The Week

Figure 16: Basic Advertising: Art Direction by Nik Mahon

After listening to Mr Vinod’s lecture about the roles of an art director, I decided to look further into that and borrow “Basic Advertising: Art Direction” by Nik Mahon. The book talks about the responsibilities, tools, and process that comes with art direction in the context of advertising. I focused more on the tools of art direction, as I figured it would be useful and applicable to all aspects of my course. 

The author listed the following tools (or techniques):

- seeing things differently

- doing things differently

- give the audience something to discover

- using ambiguous imagery

- establishing a visual hierarchy

- creating visual impact

- simplicity and understatement

- creating a distinct look for the brand

I particularly agree with the author about giving the audience something to discover in your ads. An ad that involves a double meaning or hidden symbolism are great ways for companies/brands to engage with the minds of the audience. Back then, audiences were generally passive consumers of the media, but today’s media-literate society tend to relate on a more interactive level with the ads they come across. Ads should credit its audience with intelligence and/or curiosity by allowing the audience to make connections within the ad on their own. This can leave a longer-lasting impression, since a joke is always funnier if you have to think about it for a while. 

We can also see how the twisted headline/twisted visual formula comes into play with some of the aforementioned tools.

The book gives very concise advice with clear examples for each section (the author is particularly fond of the Economist ads), and also breaks down the process of art direction, making it easy to digest.

Picture credits

Figure 1-15: Personal documentation
Figure 16: Basic Advertising: Art Direction