Blog 7

Today we started by researching into food photography. I found some photos of of pictures of food I liked,  and one I thought didn't look as professional as the others . I analysed them and wrote about the techniques they used, such as getting a relatively clear background so it doesn't distract you from the food and adjusting the light to make the food look more appetising.

After break we got into our group and discussed what we were going to do for the leaflet. We didn't get a huge amount done but we made a practise flyer in note form showing where we might put the title, picture etc.. We also discussed whether the flyer would have a modern feel or rustic feel and decided to compromise between both since this was what the cafe felt like. We also started to design a flyer on photo-shop.

After lunch we photographed some food that another diploma class had prepared for use. The food was sausage rolls and mini quiches. It looked well presented because they garnished  it with tomato and parsley. In most of our photos we took some of the food off the tray and arranged it on a piece of A3 paper. We took about 15 shots most of them were close ups. The digital camera we used we found it could focus quite close up if you put it on the right settings. I found this exercise enjoyable and useful because we will almost certainly be be photographing food from the cafe in the future. When we got back we edited them on photo shop. Only one of them needed cropping but we adjusted the brightness and contrast a bit to make it look less dull. I thought our results we quite good for the first time we photographed food since they were all in focus and they looked professional. Next time we would experiment more and make the photos more interesting. An effect that another group did and one we talked about as a class, was where you have two objects and blur the one in the background. I saw this a lot when I was researching into food photography so this would be a good technique to use.

Blog 6



This picture is the old menu for the cafe.
Its going to be replaced by a white one to
save money on printing. 



Today, before lunch we did some more work on our research project. Then after lunch we found out we would be doing some work for a cafe called 'The Orange Tree Cafe' along Burleigh street opposite Primark. More precisely we had to make an A5 flier promotioning the cafe and telling people it was there. But before we got told what we had to do we went to see the cafe with clipboards to write down notes. I could see why they needed more advertising because even though its in the middle of town its not very obvious and no one in our class knew it was there before. From the outside it looks fairly expensive because its shiny and new compared to most of the other shops down the street. The color scheme is mainly black, white orange and green which you can see in the design of the name. When we went into the cafe thought it was a nice place to be because the orange lighting made it feel cosy. It had grey scale photos of Cambridge on the walls which made it feel arty and relevant to Cambridge. It also had a brick wall effect on the counter wall which matched the orange and white colour scheme. The menus were presented on Black boards like what they typically use in pubs. I thought this made it feel traditional despite the fact it was very new. The cafe is a mix of modern and traditional and very different to fast food cafes. 

After we had written down our notes we headed back to class where we found out the cafe used to be a greasy fast food cafe called Cafe 11 before it had be bought three months ago. We also found out that the target audience was mainly people who shop at primark and people who work in offices and would want to go there for lunch. We then got told the brief which was to design a A5 flier to go around town, telling people the cafe was there. I'm excited to be working for a real business because I think we will learn more about advertising.  I should also be more practical and we will get a taste of what its like to work in the real world.  

   

Blog 5

Today we presented our advertising campaign for a bag of photography equipment. We weren't finished so next time I think we should have worked more efficiently and quicker. What was good about our presentation was that we were the only group that sold the objects in two bundles. This is good because in the real world you would make more money by doing this and If you couldn't afford the more expensive package you could always buy the cheaper one. I am not a natural leader so I didn't take control of the group but I felt able to easily contribute ideas. The picture we put on the poster was of a camera which we edited on photoshop. I thought it looked alot better after we edited it. This was because we made it more bold and contrasting. We also used a tool where you can draw around the picture and move it around. This is sort of like copying and pasting but you can be more precise and its easy since the line locks onto what you are picking up.

After lunch we did some more work on our research project into advertsing. I compared Pepsi's logos and some of their adverts. The Pepsi adverts are quite good because they have to do something to outsell Coca Cola. After lunch we had to design a logo for 'Doggie Yum'. Doggie Yum is a dog food which is very low  quality, but we had to make it more appealing than the Tesco value type products which are very cheap, dull and boring. We had to make it fun, exciting and attractive to children and teenages. In our logo we used colour, font and design. We worked in a group of three but we very much did our own thing which worked quite well. I came up with two ways of writing the brand name (Doggie Yum). They were both in bubble writing and quite comical, because I thought this would look less dull and boring. It would also suit the target audience better, which was around 10-20 years old. I also made a logo which was a cartoon dog wearing a baseball cap backwards and shades. I though this would work because it was simple and easy to remember which is what you want in a logo. It was also funny and fitted the image of cool young kids.

Mr H comment

Some good reflection Liam - keep it up. try to work in more detail.

Last Thursday's session was based on advertising. We learnt that there are three types of advertising campaigns, raising awarness, starting a point of view and advertising a  product or service. We started by looking through a yellow pages book a deciding which pluming service we would use if we came home and the house had flooded. This helped me realise how complicated advertsing is even in the yellow pages. For example you have to pay alot more to put your advert in the top left hand corner because you read from the top and left to right. We then looked at some adverts on the internet to analyse. I liked the Caburys adverts because they are very different and it looks like alot of though has been put into it. My favourite ones are the Cadburys spots vs stripes advert and the Cadburys fair trade advert.


I liked there two adverts because they had good computer animation.

After lunch we got into groups and tried to sell a group of objects. I didn't see the connection between the group of objects we had to advertise and I wasn't sure why we didn't advertise them separately. It was my idea to take pictures of the objects behind a white piece of paper. We would have then  made them more contrating on photoshop so that the white paper was completely white. This would make it look more professional.