Wednesday, 16 January 2013

OUGD401- Creative Advertising and New Media Lecture notes

Creative Advertising and New Media

What is new media?
'media that works, not works through persuasions'

The advertising strategy:

  • Required speaking to the masses
  • Global print campaigns
  • High feeling/ emotive strategy - make the audience feel good - charm them/ pull at their heartstrings


Old and New communication models:
Old: transmission

  • transmit ideas to an audience

New: cybernetic

  • engage with an audience
  • via computer (mediated communication) CMC

New Media model

  • advertising and new media (Spurgeon, 2008)
  • Shift from mass to my media
  • More targeted via mobile to specific audiences
  • More personal distribution
  • Audience involvement:
a) voluntarily passing viewing adverts (virals)
b) creating spoofs, filming etc

Viral: Unpaid advertising 

  • Virals (adverts) becoming part of our conversations
  • Send it to your friends digitally
  • From talk about to talk with


the 'Remember Reach' campaign for Halo, 2010 consisted of;

  • Launching a film 'Birth of a Spartan' which announces Reach Beta
  • 3 films released prior to this, the fourth film being released after the website launch
  • Teasers to advertise the game
  • Sad/ dramatic story in the films provoking emotions
  • Dots of light added on the website on a world map for every person who visits the site and their location to involve and emote the audience

Kaiser Chiefs album 'The future is Medieval' campaign:

  • Customer chooses 10 tracks out of 20
  • create their own album cover online
  • advertise it on facebook to facebook friends
  • the person who sells the most albums name appears on the skin of the image of a drum on the site
  • customer earns £1 for every album they sell
The three little pigs viral video - the guardian online:
  • Recession and riots
  • Celebration of new media itself
  • the idea: to transform a newspaper into a global news 'hub' 
  • Modern news is dynamic, participative with open dialogue welcome from the viewer.
Invisible Children Campaign
  • R4 ICC Congo Warlord Lubanga guilty 30 years
  • March 5th released
  • in 3 days, it received 26million views
Beattie the big creative idea
  • Internet - the biggest thing since the wheel
  • enables even small ideas to circulate
  • most interesting form of communication
Viewer generated content
  • Coke & Mentos
  • Viewer generated advertising worth US $10m to Mentos 'more than half its annual advertising budget' (Spurgeon, 2008)
Levi's 'Go Forth' campaign:
  • beautifully crafted photography
  • Walt Whitman poetry - ultimate American poetry
  • Patriotism
  • Lifestyle
Wrangler Jeans' interactive site

Future Nike:
  • Give people tools through apps - life enhancing qualities by means of advertising or enhancing a products' appeal
  • Nike plus - how far run record.
  • Nike grid - training aid made fun by a race/ game
  • London map record your time and route, then try to beat others on the database.

Creating a dialog 
  • Paul Burns (TBWA) 'talking with audience'
  • 40mil Old Spice
  • Responding to a tweet
  • The making of Old Spice: copywriter and art director Craig Allen and Erik Kallman

Reasons why this is the best time to be in advertising:
  • Agencies can innovate e.g., NYC tourism campaign. The idea: NYC street culture, street musicians lined to campaign in 1 'Dig out your soul' unreleased album.
  • The third screen- the mobile phone is a whole new and more intimate medium of getting to your market. Putting brands in people's hands.
  • The Kairos factor: the principle of presenting the desired message at the opportune moment.
  • No medium is dying. IE, print.
  • Each different medium has a different role in narrating the 'story'
  • traditional style 'announcements' still have their place.
  • Big ideas and craft remain important.
What is the impact of 'New Media' on advertising agencies?
'Advertising is such a limiting role now', Andy Fowler, Brothers & Sisters impact NM a third layer communication.

The New model of creativity:
  • larger teams
  • Collaborative Creativity
  • ebrainstorming
  • collaborative online creativity : IE, Estudio
  • Omnium project
  • Hegarty & Beattie

Conversations lead to flow, and flow leads to creativity.

Wednesday, 9 January 2013

OUGD401 - Fashion as Photograph Lecture

There are different types of fashion photography such as product / catalogue photography for online documentation for stores such as ASOS. Within this, you also get the technique of the 'ghost mannequin' where you can only see the clothing and no person wearing it. But in this lecture we are going to focus on the artistic aspect and the emergence of fashion photography.

The history of photography

First permanent photographs: A photograph of faint rooftops from a window in France from 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. 
After Niépce's death, Louis Daguerre continued the pursuance of photography's potential with his landscape of 'Boulevard de Temple' in 1838/9. This could be considered as the first photograph of human beings, as a man can be seen having his shoes polished. The subjects were able to be caught on the image despite of the long exposure time, because they were seated for so long. However, there is no traffic or other people on the image because they were not still for long enough to be captured.

The calotype photography process was introduced and invented by William Henry Fox Talbot.

Lady Alice May Kerr produced defined portrait images such as 'Portrait of Wilfrid Scawer Blunt', 1870.

Virginia Oldoni, the Countess di Castiglione was both a subject of early portrait photography and the director of these 'theatrical' style shoots where she would re-enact significant events in her life. Photographed by Adolphe Braun in 1856 and Pierre-Louise Pierson in 1863/66. There are hundreds of photos in these shoots to be explored.

Age of the Fashion Magazine 

First ten years of the 1900's we start to see an emergence of photography to be used in 
magazine culture in particular fashion, replacing the use illustration to exhibit the clothes.

Paul Poiret (1879-1944)
House of worth  (Charles Worth, considered the Father of Haute Couture)
Edward Steichen photographs Paul Poiret's designs for Art et Decoration, 1911.

Adolphe de Meyer - big fashion photographer in the 1920's that explored Romanticism and Mythical beauty in his work. Thoughtful, beautiful.

Martin Munkacsi - sports-style fashion shots with slight blur and movement with active poses and faster shutter speeds. 

The Conde Nast Years, 1923 - 1937 by William A Euring and Todd Brandow - modernism and experimental dramatic portraits. Marian Moorhouse, a celebrity of the time features in their images.

Cover of La Mode Pratique, 1938 uses photography on the cover, and is one of the early examples of this.

Vogue vs. Harpers Bazaar

Both leaders in fashion photography in the 20s/30s. A constant battle of the rival magazines in professionalism and moving forward with photography in particular.

Hoyningen Heune, 1931, Madame Vioumet - Romanticism.

Introduction of surrealism in fashion photography, Horst P Horst  - Costume for Salvador Dali's "Dream of Venus", 1939.

Cecil Beaton (1904-1980)

  • British Vogue and Vanity Fair photographer
  • One of the 'Bright Young Things' of the 1920s/ 1930s.
  • Photographer of British Royals
  • Vivien Leigh for Vogue, mid 1930's showing the glamorous backstage with movie style lighting. A beauty the general public cannot have access to.
  • Stephen Tennant
  • Queen Elizabeth II in 1968

Lee Miller (1907-1977)

  • (photographed by Steichen)
  • American photographer and fashion model aged 19
  • Goes to Paris in 1929 with photographer Mon Ray
  • Grungey fashion shots - first of their kind
  • Became a war correspondant photographer - a vast contrast to the glamorous world of fashion photography.
Louise Dahl Wolfe
  • Spent 1936-58 at Harpers Bazaar
  • 'Night Bathing' 1939 is clever and dramatic in lighting and comparison between statue and girl in image
  • 'Panorama of Paris, Suzy Parker in Jaques fath gown', 1953 - high end and international style.
In 1935 Kodak colour film is introduced but it is not really seen commercially until the 1950's. 

William Klein
  • 1950s
  • Movement in his fashion photography with long telephoto lens capturing peoples reactions.
  • Although looked accidental, is in fact very stage to look natural.

Bailey & Donovan
  • 1960s
  • Self-taught photographers, the emergence of pop culture and the general public having access to photographic equipment.
  • Mick Jagger portraits
Terence Donovan 
  • Spy Drama style photography, almost like a story board put the fashion into context
  • influenced by film

Richard Avedon (1923-2004)
  • At Harpers Bazaar until 1966
  • At Vogue 1966 onwards
  • Tina Turner, 1971
  • Bill Curry, Drifter, Interstate 40, Yukon, Oklahoma from the American West, 1985. (a 5-4 negative image) glamorising the everyday people who aren't models and putting them in a studio setting.
Helmut Newton, (1920-2004)
  • Vogue & Harpers Bazaar
  • wife and models 1981. 
  • Much controversy over subject of his shoots because he was married. So he included his wife in one of the shots proving that it was 'OK'
Guy Bourdin
  • Charles Jourdan Shoes
  • showing only the part of the body that is being advertised
  • rough relationships with on screen models
Jamel Shabazz's book, 'back in the days', published in 2002 showcases the street fashion photography of the 1980s hip-hop scene in New York City.

ID Magazine (& face magazine rival)
  • 1980s
  • straight-up photography, documenting in a more informal way, what the people of the street are wearing
  • the new showcasing of street style 
  • ID cover 'wink' 
  • none airbrushed images, all freckles etc included
Jeurgen Teller
1990s
Works with musicians
none airbrushed photography
example - 'Annie Morton' in 1996

Corrine Day (1965-2010)
  • British fashion photography and model
  • worked for 'the face' and 'Vogue'
  • invented the 'waif'/ 'warts and all' photography
  • one of the first people to photograph Kate Moss
  • 'cocaine Chic'
  • 'Tara' documentary project- showing the deterioration of commercial beauty in her friend as she battles with drug addiction
Adobe Photoshop was launched in 2003. Gritty realistic style starts to fade and idealistic bodies and looks become popular imagery for fashion photography in particular.

Terry Richardson
  • 2000s
  • 'Terryworld' 2004
Nick Knight
  • Mercedes Benz campaign 2009 - photoshopped, futuristic body of model and architecture inspired fashion

Introduction of Fashion Blogging

Rawness and realism comes back as photography becomes accessible to everyone. Is this a threat to the fashion photography industry? 
Tari Gevinsons becomes known in the fashion world at the age of 11 because she is a successful blogger.
Poppy Dinsey 2011 - 'What i wore today' - daily documentation of everyday outfits inspires others for their clothes and is more accessible than fashion magazines.
'Streetstyle Copenhagen'

Company magazine releases a 'Superblogger Issue' in Jan 2013.

'Exactitudes' exact/ attitudes by Avi Versluis & Ellie Uyttenbrock documents lots of peoples street style but groups them in similar styles proving that our individual style is not necessarily unique.




Monday, 7 January 2013

OUGD405 - Research, Collect, Communicate : PRODUCT - Further Research

Further research - Pop up designs.


Behind the Paper Curtain: The Magic and Math of Harry Potter, The Pop- Up Book





This video is really helpful because it shows the process of creating mass pop up books for commercial purposes. The process is really long and thorough - will I have enough time to execute something similar?

Paper Engineering: Fold, Pull, Pop & Turn





This video emphasises the plural workforce it takes to execute a pop up book. Again, it says that the time scale is 18 months... I will really have to refine my ideas and produce lots of test pieces to speed up the design process.

In The Beginning: The Art of Genesis Pop-Up Book by Chuck Fischer





A few really nice ideas in this book - how can I apply these techniques? I really like the use of acetate also in these designs.

Sam Ita's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea




The full process to produce just one page of a pop up book. Perhaps I could reduce the design process time by creating just a couple of feature pop up pages and the rest lift-the-flap? 

Research for graphics of book:












This type of cartoon style will appeal to children and the colours are really interesting and suprisingly bright.


This is a really nice example of a western version of a buddhist style. It is really modern, and I really like the way the font is modern, yet whimsical and curved.




I really like the style of this for the cover of the book, because it is cartoon-like and so appeals to children. The rest of the book will be in this style but be inspired by the oriental tradiitonal buddhist artwork.


I really like this particular detail because it is truly beautiful! I want to somehow incorporate this into my cartoon style book.
This simple drawing of a lotus flower is slightly stylised but not 

I really like this book cover because it works in halves and as a whole design. I really like how the detail is on the spine. Because a pop up book would have to be quite thick even with little amount of pages, I would need to consider the spine in my cover design too.

The wheel of Dharma will be a nice feature to include in the book, and this one in particular is interesting to look at.








These images will help me portray an overall eastern feel. I particularly like the cloud images and the lotus flowers.


This page is really good for the inside of the palace page. Because , although it is quite stylised, it doesn't particularly specify a certain location in the world, which is key because the birthplace of the Buddha is often disputed. I want to include a scene similar to this because it reflects the wealth of the prince.
the palace page


the middle way page
I really like this artwork because it it extremely oriental and so true to Buddhist style. I really like the use of gradient lighting, something I want to use in my book.

I need to show this image in a non-gruesome way but still need to show that the Buddha was really hungry. Maybe make him a little thinner and slight shadowing on his chest?

This image is good because it roughly shows the foliage and shrubbery that would have been in the forest with the buddha.


finding enlightenment page:



I looked at these three images for inspiration into the layout of the page, which resulted in the Buddha being in the centre of the image, with the Bodhi tree filling the page in a symmetrical way. The top image of the Bodhi tree was a big help in producing my graphics for the tree.