Evaluation

For Units 5 and 6, the tasks we had to complete were focused around creating both a print advertisement and radio advertisement. We had to carry out research into both of these, produce reports, gather inspiration, plan out scripts and use appropriate equipment and programmes to create each of these.

The first thing I had to think about was how I would approach this task. Would I base it around my previous work from Unit 2 and 7, or come up with something entirely new? I decided I would choose something else to base my new project on, as I wanted to challenge myself to begin from scratch and start with a new, fresh idea. After looking for inspiration on Pinterest and past projects from other students, I decided to go with a music festival. I enjoy music festivals a lot, and love all the unique designs that go into making festival posters. Plus, I knew I could use music tracks based on the theme of my festival in my radio advert. I decided that I would do a music festival based around 60's and 70's bands, such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. It was for this reason that I chose to name it Festival in the Sky with Diamonds, as it is a play on words based on the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. This would make it evident to people from the beginning that the theme was the 60's, and would make it more appealing to fans of that music genre.

After deciding on the base of my advertisements, I had to do research into how to create a good radio adverts. This included research into advertising models, which are AIDA, DAGMAR, Ehrenberg and DRIP. These four models describe different ways in which an advertisement can be structured to interest consumers, and they also link in with Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric. In this, Aristotle discussed the three things included in advertisements that are used to persuade customers. These were pathos, logos and ethos. Pathos is the way in which advertisements play on people's emotions to make them desire a product or service, by creating a positive or negative emotion in their audience. Logos is the way in which advertisements use logic and reason to persuade an audience, and similarly, ethos is the use of celebrity endorsement and trustworthy language to make their brand seem reliable.

I then did research into what makes a good print advert. There are several things to take into account, such as the needs and interests of your target audience. My target audience was fans of the 60's music genre, so I made sure to design my print advert in a way that would interest those people. I used hippie fonts, added in bands that are from that genre, and used rainbow colours in my designs. Plus, another important factor is that the headline should be the most visible and noticeable, which is why I made it larger than the rest of the text and used especially bright colours. A good print advert also has to be simplistic and not too cluttered, which is why I did not overcrowd the background with too much activity. After learning about the codes and conventions used in print adverts, I began to plan out how I would create my own.

I started by choosing three different print adverts online. I chose a car advertisement, a Nivea skin cream advertisement and a cake advert. After selecting the ones that I liked, I reviewed them on Word, picking out all the codes and conventions that I could see and analysing all the good features of the ads.