My project aim was to increase consumer awareness into advertising in the mass media. To help give an understanding into how much the consumer experiences to persuade them to consume. After doing my research I found that advertising is effectively £200 billion industry that is perpetually telling you the way to happiness is through products and consuming. Most of research was secondary using the internet, television and books to help me, Primary research I used was questionnaires and attending a interview. I used this research to help curve my final outcomes with a few changes along the way.
My project started out looking at government information posters and creating some modernist/minimal style posters that used the transport for london styled poster to create a parody about advertising. Based on that I felt that these were aimed at a limited target audience and did not convey the message out to consumers.
From reading the book ‘mail-order Mysteries’ my projects started to turn towards 50′ and 60′s retro illustration. The book showed me the power of advertising as a simple comic book advert had the design to sell these products, which was usually never to the customers satisfaction. From this I looked at creating my own comic book style adverts but for products that helps to stop you from experiencing advertising.
Creating the illustrations for these adverts was hard as it was hard to draw retro styled illustration to the same quality as they once drew them, which took the a lot of the time. But creating the adverts was relativity easy after that with knowledge of illustrator and photoshop helping. Going back i would have started the drawing a lot earlier as drawing isn’t my strongest. Other than that i feel they communicate the message well and give a clear message on what is being sold with a little irony.
After the adverts I created a series of packaging designs for a few of the products that reflected back to the style that i was going for. The four designs came out better than I hoped with only a few errors on size and measurements which is clean for the free speech packaging but these could be easily changed. But other than that I think aesthetically they work well and maybe should have created more.
Overall I feel the Project has created an impact on advertising that informs consumers that there should be a choice as it makes you think ‘where does it stop’. To me I have felt i have learnt a clear understanding into the advertising industry from how it started to techniques and tactics. I’m hoping to get lots of feedback with there own opinions on this subject when I take it to the exhibitions.
