Assignment 2: Brainstorming and Concept Development

By Thursday, January 21, 2010, complete the following design exercise and post to this Discussion Area.

1. Decide what your client will be advertising this week, a product or service.
   
2. Who is the target market? Give a specific age range and economic status. What information do they need to have in order to make a decision to make a purchase? What images appeal to this demographic?
   
3. Find three ads in the real world created by “competitors” of your client for a similar product or service. Describe what you like and do not like in each one.
   
4. Make a list of 20 words that describe how the product or service will be seen by the target market. For example, if my client is a travel agent who provides luxury tours to the Caribbean, my list might look like this: luxury, warmth, adventure, safe, pampered, sun, fine dining, shopping, relaxing. The words can be nouns, adjectives or verbs. The point is to begin by actually describing the message your finished piece will communicate.
   
5. Prepare at least 40-50 pencil or marker thumbnails of standard and unique newspaper ads. Be certain to use the information in the Washington Post’s recommended Web pages.
   
6. Select three distinctly different ads and ad sizes among the 40-50 thumbnails. Redraw them as Rough Layouts in InDesign or Illustrator to scale with the SAU chart. Layouts can be a mixture of design and styles. They can be centered or not. They can be headline-heavy, image-heavy, logo-heavy, or body copy-heavy. Their look can be solid (heavily filled with information) or open (lots of white space). Their tone can be light hearted or quite serious. Save a working file in InDesign or Illustrator. (You will come back to these documents in a future assignment.) Then save a copy of the file as a PDF or .eps.
   
7. This ad will be printed in black and white. Show your work in black and white to the class. You may use images in this ad, but take into consideration the thin, porous nature of newsprint, and how photos look when printed in black and white on newsprint. Focus on typography.

Sheri Gruver Week2 Assignment 2

Service: Baby Shower and Engagement Cakes

Target Market:

• Ages 20’s through 40’s
• Middle to higher class

Images that appeal to this market:

• Champagne
• Flowers
• Cakes
• Designer dresses/accessories

Information needed on ad:

• Average price per slice
• Contact info

20 Terms:

1. Delicious
2. Butter cream
3. Wedding
4. Light
5. Fluffy
6. Engagement
7. Sugar
8. Extravagant
9. Party
10. Icing
11. Elegant
12. Love
13. Cake
14. Diamonds
15. Couples
16. Ring
17. Champagne
18. Celebration
19. Beauty
20. Presents
21. Save the date
22. Baby
23. Fun
24. Laugh

Competitor’s advertisements:

For all of these ads I can tell that having a picture to showcase my cake skills is probably the number one priority.  It needs to be something to immediately tell my clients what skill set I have available for their specific needs.  I also like how the first add lists the cake flavors that are holiday specific.  I love the elegant font of the second add.  I also like how simple and clean it is.  I really like the layout of the last add, but wouldn’t choose the same font for the body of the text.

http://www.ddcakes.com/images/Advertisement/christmas.jpg

http://www.weddingshow.com/images/2010_Magazine_Ads/Morfeys-Cakes.jpg

http://www.weddingshow.com/images/2010_Magazine_Ads/Safeway.jpg

FINAL DESIGN: