Welcome to my “The medium is the message” project post.

In this project, we assigned the question “How does what we hear, to read, and see influence us”. This project was mainly based on creating an advertisement for a business we chose in one of our 4 groups that were in the cove. This project was also about distinguishing different advertising techniques and the best ways to create an ad that will make people want to buy the product.

LAUNCH PHASE: For the launch phase the first thing we did was establish some need to know at the start of the project to help us find out what makes a good ad and what really captures and keeps attention. Then the second part of the launch phase was learning how to analyze text and advertisement. In order to make an advertisement, we needed to learn how to analyze and understand text and message. to do this we watched and took notes on an advertisement by Apple called “welcome home” it was made to advertise their new HomePod mini. Afterwards we used our notes to write a paragraph on what the message was, how Apple sent the message, and what the target audience was and how they established that.

BUILDING KNOWLEDGE: In building knowledge, we learned and practiced a lot of things to do with media and design principles and how to apply them to our ad. We also learned about different ways to take photos (worm’s eye view, birds eyes view, etc) and how to use different perspectives to send a message. We then went on to learn about a lot of things we started something called an “advertising photo journal” which is where we take photos of ads we see around the neighborhood weekly and put them in the journal and then talk about them (message, target audience, etc). Another thing we learned about was the five key questions of media literacy and where and how you can see them in an ad.

DEVELOP AND CRITIQUE: In develop and critique we worked on our first second and third solo ads for our businesses. In my first ad I ended up using the photos we took when we went to discuss our ad ideas and priorities at the location but I just couldn’t get the text colour right and also the other prospect of the ad that we had to include was the fact that our ad was supposed to tell a story to some extent and my first draft jut didn’t work in that way so I got my feedback and then went on to my second draft. For my second draft, it was basically the same problems aside from the text colour issue I fixed that one but it still just didn’t tell a story. Then the third draft came around and I did really well I told a story and made the colours contrast very well and what made it into the final ad was the font (Oxford) and some of the extra design ideas.

PRESENT: For this section, there is not much to talk about. We were tasked with sending an email with our drafts to our business. Our business was very detailed about the fonts and what fonts to use on what groups of text (Header, Sentences, etc). I was extremely happy when our business got back to us because they actually said what they wanted from us, and they didn’t hold back with their font. But they loved our actual layout ideas and design ideas.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Our business was Arms Reach Bistro and they were a great choice because they were very open to working with us and they were generally direct with their ideas which was a giant help. I felt like this was a great project I got to know a ton of my classmates way better. Also was really nice to learn how to use Canva it is a great tool to use in the future. I am 100 percent more knowledgeable when it comes to seeing ads and what the message of the ad is. Even though this project is not over I really enjoy the fundamentals and the main part of this project.