Our 2nd project of the year was all about media and its message. Our driving question for this project was; “How does what we hear, read, and see influence us”? 

It influences us by making us more aware of products and services that are available. It also may influence our opinions on things as well as your personal beliefs.

This post will focus on the milestones that helped me answer the question most, as well as my final group advertisement drafts.

Looking back, I think that all of the Milestones and Stepping stones helped me to answer the question, however these are the ones that helped the most. 

Milestone 2 was about finding a piece of media, and finding the message, as well as the target audience. This Milestone really helped me understand more because it included more practice on dissecting texts. Because for Milestone 1 we did something similar and I thought I did a poor job analyzing the text we were assigned. So it was good to get another assignment similar to the first, and I thought I grew a lot from this milestone. The circular competency in this assignment was Comprehending Texts.

Milestone 5 was about using examples from both Marshall McLuhan’s text, as well as examples from the book we recently read, “The Gospel according to Larry”, to answer the question: “How does the Medium influence the Message”?  The text we read by Marshall McLuhan was all about why “ The Medium is the Message”, and explained thoroughly how the medium influences the message. The book we read, “The Gospel according to Larry”, was related to the McLuhan text because both text’s demonstrated how powerful the media can be. It helped me a lot because it challenged me to find out why the medium is the message, as well as finding the connections between the book and the text. In addition, it was important because the McLuhan text that we read answered plenty on how the media grabs our attention and how it changes us. The circular competency in this assignment was “Use evidence from various sources”. 

My project group in this project got Arms Reach Bistro as our Deep Cove buiseness to create an ad for. In this project, we included our drafts, questions, and information in a Team Launch journal. We started the process in the “Ask” folder of our journal by brainstorming questions for our buiseness, as we were getting ready to interview them. For our interview, the owner of  our buiseness requested an in-person interview at his restaurant. During our interview, we asked general questions about what he wanted advertised, as well as who our ad should be targeted at. The owner wanted us to focus on the younger audience, as his restaurant seemed to be tagged as a “date” night restaurant. After receiving those recommendations, we eventually chose to focus on their Alfredo pasta, one of their kid menu dishes. 

 After all putting work into the first group draft, here’s what we created:

 We thought it would make the ad more attractive to have a kid themed border, as well as the heart hovering over the Alfredo pasta. 

We later received some feedback on the draft from the owner and he had thought that it looked good. He also said that he wanted us to incorporate the “Pharmacy” font and possibly the “Candara” font, as those our the fonts that his buiseness uses regularly. 

So we took that into consideration and created a 2nd draft: 

 In this draft we included the fonts the owner wanted us to use and also played around with the addresses font.

We had thought that it looked better with the “Pharmacy font” as opposed to the first font we used.

Later in the project, we got Derek Hepburn, an expert in advertising, to look at our drafts and give feedback.

He really liked how we used the kid-themed border, and liked the heart. He recommended that we get rid of the “at” and make the “Kids love Alfredo pasta” bigger. He also wanted us to incorporate more colour in the “Arms reach bistro” text.

We took Derek’s advice and created this:

 We had made the text bigger, and tried to find a good colour for the “Arms Reach Bistro”, however nothing worked well so we stocked with black. Also, we followed up on him saying in the meeting, to try to stick with 1 font, in an effort to keep things simple.

In conclusion, I really enjoyed working with other people on one task, and I also enjoyed creating our individual ads, as well as our group ones. Milestone 5 helped me answer the driving question the most because it challenged me to figure out why the Medium is the Message. I also found it really interesting to get advice and feedback from a real pro in what we were doing. In all, I loved this project and enjoyed collaborating with a buiseness that I love.

Here’s the links to my group members blogs: http://www.blog44.ca/aliciah/    http://www.blog44.ca/davidp/    http://www.blog44.ca/caleg/   http://www.blog44.ca/sepausd/   

http://www.blog44.ca/gwenl/

Here’s a link to my recent formative post:   

Reflections on Medium is the Message so far

As our 2nd project of the year, we were assigned a project called “The Medium is the Message”. The main focus of this project was for each group to be assigned a Deep Cove buiseness, and creating an advertisement for them. This project also included learning about advertising, graphic design, and comprehending and analyzing different forms of text. In this project we were each in 4 different groups, our North Groups: Project Groups, our East Groups: Design/Photo Groups, our South Groups:  Analysis Groups, and our West Groups: our Advertising Groups. This was also our first group project experience in PLP. 

For part of the Launch phase in this project we were introduced to our driving question; “How does what we hear, read, and see influence us? At first, I didn’t  quite understand what direction the question was pointed at. Now, I feel that I have a better understanding of it because of the different components we learned about throughout this project. 

Another part of the Launch phase in this project was Milestone 1. For this Milestone we analyzed the 2018 Apple “Welcome Home” ad. Our goal was to explain the message of this ad, to identify the target audience, and to explain how Apple used the message to reach the target audience. I think that I struggled at first in analyzing this text, and it took work for me to learn how to better analyze different texts. 

The Building Knowledge phase in this project was about Graphic Design and Photo Practice, as well as understanding Media and it’s Message.  The “What is Media” folder included an activity about Media definitions, which was about finding definitions about one of the many terms in media from different sources. Then, combining all of the definitions we found into one, then  creating  a poster describing our definition.

This folder also included an activity where each group was assigned either a Commercial, Movie trailer, Tv Show teaser, Print ad, or an Internet Pop-Up ad. In this activity, the goal was to examine the ad we were given and answer the 5 key questions of Media Literacy. For this activity, my group and I were assigned a TV Show trailer called “The Stand”. The thing I found most challenging about this activity was finding the values and the points of view shown in the Trailer.

One thing I learned from this Media phase was how to better examine and analyze text. Because at first when we started examining texts I didn’t have the right mindset, I was thinking too specific.

We also went over Historical Perspective and how drastic the changes in Media have been in the past 30 years. As part of this section, we read an article by the New York Times about how in the 20s to 50s Media topics such as smoking was a normality. And how Doctors, and people of high credibility endorsed smoking for companies. We also watched a video on how the company “Juul” made nicotine go viral, and how their main target was teens and young adults.

This section was an overall gateway to Milestone 2 in this project.

Our task in Milestone 2 was to select a piece of Historical media (still or moving image), and explain the message of it, identify the target audience, and explain how it sends that message. We also answered the 5 key questions of Media literacy in this assignment.

For this assignment, I chose a Skip the Dishes ad made in November of 2019. The ad described  the main actor at his house watching a hockey game and eating wings from Skip the Dishes. I found that the message of the ad was that when you order Skip the Dishes, you’ll almost feel you’re at the game. The Target audience of the ad was younger people, who maybe don’t have any cooking skills. I thought that this assignment was pretty fun, because the Skip the Dishes ad that I watched was hilarious. However, the thing I found most challenging about this assignment was answering some of the 5 key questions of media literacy.

Another important part of this project was creating our individual Deep Cove advertisements.

My Project group was given “Arms Reach Bistro” as our Deep Cove buiseness. We later interviewed the owner and asked questions about their buiseness and what components we should focus on in our advertisements. He wanted us to focus on the younger audience as well as promoting their most popular dishes. With that info in mind, all of us individually created several ad drafts for our buiseness. Here’s my drafts:

Draft 1 of Advertisement Draft 2 of Advertisement Draft 3 of Advertisement Draft 4 of Advertisement

Draft #1: 

In this first draft, I incorporated a kids menu dish in an effort to attract the younger audience.

I thought it was decent, except the image was off-centred and I didn’t like that the photo showed too much of the table.

My group liked how I made the title font the same colour as the pasta.

So here’s what I did for draft 2:

Draft #2: 

I decided for this draft to go with a completely different message. After our first draft share I had seen that most of my group members had gone for the same idea, so I mixed things up.

I liked the Deep Cove drone shot that I found, I also liked the message that I used. However, I thought that the background was too plain and that the images and text could be organized better.

My group also liked the drone shot of the view of Deep Cove. They said that the title should be on one line so it looks more organized.

Here’s what I brought for draft 3:

 Draft #3:

I was satisfied with the font selection, I thought that the text was better organized. I feel that the background I chose was better than the one from draft 2, however I think I could’ve done better.

The thoughts on my draft from my group were mixed, some really liked it, some thought it needed more work and improvement.

Here’s draft 4:

Draft #4: 

I thought the colour mixed well, that the fonts looked even better, and that the images were more organized. I liked the Blue as I thought it worked well with the whole “by the water” vibe you get at Arms Reach.

In conclusion, I thought that exploring the world of media and learning how to make ads was really fun. I liked how we got Arms Reach as a business because I’ve had a lot of special memories there. As my first group project in PLP, it was really cool to get to know my peers better and to experience my first of many interviews in PLP.