Following that, the adverts in the 50’and 60’s all have their own evolved style and are easily identified to that era, stereotypically images of glamorous housewives doing the housework.
Adverts today are all very bold bright and clear. Often humorous, they are trying to capture the attention of the ‘computer generation’ with enhanced and modern images. In the following section I have researched into popular advertisement campaigns and produced some of my own advertising images.
APPLE
Apple is a hugely successful computer software company that has a clear style that is shown in all of their products and their advertisement campaigns. The images below are from one of the most recent campaigns advertising iPods, they are bold fun and clear.
In a photoshop tutorial magazine that I had been reading I stumbled across an iPod style tutorial. This inspired me to replicate and recreated my own set of adverts.
This was originally a photograph of my brother shouting at the camera, his exaggerated pose suits the style of the iPod adverts perfectly. My brother listens to a varied selection of music, including metal and drum and base, which are both very loud and aggressive, which is reflected here in his confrontational stance. To soften this I chose to use a bright pink background. Wanting to create my own version of the adverts I loosely followed the tutorial I mentioned earlier, and used some of my own editing techniques. I selected and created 2 new layers for the figure, one retaining the same detail and one I rasterized. To the normal layer I adjusted the levels and contrasts. To the rasterized layer I applied a blue colour overlay with a burn blend mode set to 90% opacity, I also applied a gradient overlay which creates the difference in colour from the lighter blue head to the darker torso. To the background I created a layer with a pink fill and another layer with blue texture that had a soft light blend mode applied. From found iPod adverts I copied and pasted the iPod logo, iPod and headphones, adjusting them to fit the figure correctly. I also had to adjust the figures hand in order for it to look like he was holding the iPod. I did this by erasing finger shapes from the iPod, which revealed the figure layer below. I am very pleased with this image, I think I have created a very similar image to the iPod adverts but still retaining some of my own style. I added this image to my flickr photostream and within a week was contacted by an online magazine which asked to feature my image along side an article about iPods.
Following on with creating my own adverts for existing products I photographed a trainer and created this Nike advert. Because Nike have a whole range of produce and I wanted to just advertise this particular model of trainer I decided not to include a subject and just have a photo of the trainer itself. To create a bold and eye catching advert I created a bright blue background with a slight gradient going from the bottom left corner to the top right. I also added a texture layer and the white splash layer that draws further attention to the focus of the image the trainer. To the trainer I selected it and created its own layer, I used the sketch filter and used a slight gradient from left to right creating the small amount of shadow at the back of the trainer. I also copied the Nike logo and slogan from an advert that I found online. I am pleased with this image, as an advert I think it works well. With a company as successful as Nike I think a bold yet plain advert like this works, the company, the slogan and the trainers are very well known and an advert like this serves to just keep the company in the public eye. I imagine it could be used in magazines or on the advert spaces in tube stations.
Choosing to advertise another globally known brand and product, this image is advertising coca cola, or more specifically diet coke. Diet coke’s target audience is women. Women over men are most often portrayed as being concerned with their weight and as normal coke is very high in sugar, diet coke was brought out as an equivalent for weight watching women. For this reason I choose to use a female model for both of my diet coke adverts. Coca cola have had lots of very successful advertising campaigns, including the Father Christmas adverts for children at Christmas and the diet coke breaks for working women. This advert and the following one are aimed at my age group. I achieved this by using a model aged 19 and creating bright and bold images. Knowing when photographing this image that I would block colour the figure I asked the model to stand and drink in such a way that didn’t hide any of her body and her pose would lend easily to becoming a silhouette. I used very similar editing techniques to the last two images, with bright textured backgrounds and a colour fill on the figure. This time however I kept the product being advertised, in this case the diet coke can, looking real. In fact I did modify the colours and slightly posterize the can layer but against the rest of the image the can looks unedited. I again got the coca-cola logo from an advert off the internet.
With this image I again used bright red colours as this is the colour most associated with the brand coca-cola. I also kept the can looking real, again using colour modification and posterizing it slightly. Graffiti is hugely popular with people my age group, the age group that I am aiming my adverts at, because of this I decided to create an image that looked as if it had been spray painted on a wall. The figure I created most closely resembles a stencilled graffiti figure, which mimics the work of one of the most popular graffiti artists at the moment, Banksy. (Research on Banksy can be seen below). To create this image I photographed the model presenting the can with a low aperture to create a very strong depth of field, with the focus on the can. This was not only to draw the attention of the viewer to the product but also because an out of focus figure most easily lends it self to this editing technique. I also used a wide-angle lens which helped to distort the image slightly, making the can look larger than it would do with a standard lens. To create this image I selected the figure as a separate layer, the can as a separate layer and then created a red filled background layer. I rasterized the figure layer and used the colour dodge tool setting the fuzziness to 100. This picked out the shadows of the figure and allowed the highlights such as the forehead and left cheek to fade to the background, enhancing the feeling that the image is a spray-painted stencil. I also darkened the layer significantly. The four fingers on the left of the can had to be edited separately and darkened a lot more, also heightening the contrasts, as they were fading into the background too much. I then added a layer with the image of the bricks (which again I got from the ‘free textures website’) above the background and figure layer. I applied a soft light blend mode to the layer which allowed the red background to show through and allowed most of the figure to come through, I then erased areas of the brick layer that covered up too much of the figure. I placed the bricks below the can layer so that the can was not covered up and the attention was not distracted from the product. I again added the coca-cola logo from the last image in the top right hand corner.
BANKSY
Banksy is a well-known pseudo-anonymous English graffiti artist. He is believed to be from Yate, South Gloucestershire, near Bristol and born in 1974, but there is substantial public uncertainty about his identity and personal and biographical details. Banksy's stencils feature striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. The message is usually anti-war, anti-capitalist and/or anti-establishment. Subjects include animals such as monkeys and rats, policemen, soldiers, children, and the elderly. On the Banksy website the following article was written under the heading ‘Graffiti Heroes’
In 1974 a 33 year old man named George Davis was convicted of robbing the payroll of the London Electricity Board in Ilford. He was nailed on the evidence of cops who were outside the bank at the time of the robbery and was sent to prison for 20 years. However, his friend Peter Chappell was convinced Davis was innocent and inspired by discrepancies in the police statements and the fact that none of the bloodstains at the scene matched with the defendant, started calling for Davis' release. Chappall enrolled some friends and embarked on one of the largest sustained grafitti campaigns Britain has ever seen. Over the following months 'G DAVIS IS INNOCENT' appeared on walls, bridges and tunnels from one side of London to the other, some of which are still visible today. The vandalism culminated in Chappell and four others breaking into Headingley cricket ground in August 1975 the night before a test match between England and Australia. Using plastic cutlery from a service station they dug holes in the pitch, filled them with oil and painted 'Sorry it had to be done, but George Davis is innocent' in large white letters on the wall as they left. The match was postponed and Chappell got 18 months for criminal damage. The campaign brought the case to the attention of the Home Secretary who after a police inquiry released Davis two years into his sentence using the highly exceptional and controversial Royal Prerogative of Mercy. The fight to free George Davis was one of the most spetacular campaigns ever fought against injustice, an achievement only slightly marred when a year after his release Davis was found guilty of robbing the Bank of Cyprus for which he served six years, and three years after which he was caught red-handed robbing a mail train. George Davis is now a free man and happily married to the daughter of a North London Chief Inspector of Police.
This article really demonstrates the power behind graffiti campaigns and gives us a real insight into Banksy, his thoughts and his reasons behind his work. Given that his work is so politically based and so widely spread, one can only assume that Banksy hopes for similar powerful accomplishments and persuasive achievements.
Banksy’s work is some of the most recognisable and popular graffiti today and is very often mimicked and faked. With my coca-cola advert I have played on the success of his images and promoted an ethically questionable company, which would undoubtedly upset the very morally concerned Banksy. However I feel this reflects a large proportion of the advertisement industry. Popular ideas and work are often exploited in order to promote something entirely different.
For example I was walking through town last week when I spotted this poster in a Christian bookshop.
This advertisement is unashamedly using the success of the TV show ‘lost’ to catch people’s eyes and promote bible sales. I can’t help but feel that this sort of copycatting, if used to promote something that was less of a political soft spot, would be chased up on under licensing laws. For example, between 1978 and 2006 there have been a number of legal disputes between Apple Corps (owned by The Beatles) and the computer manufacturer Apple Inc over competing trademark rights. Millions of dollars have been exchanged simply over choosing to use the same word. These copyright issues are often very relevant to photographers who might be taken advantage of before they become successful and fully knowledgeable about the industry and how to protect their own work.
Here I have used Photoshop to replace adverts on a billboard and on a bus stop with two of my own. This demonstrates yet another use of Photoshop and helps my images to be presented as they might be if they were to be used commercially.
Final Images.
I have chosen to use my 4 advertising images as my final images. I feel that everything I have learnt through out the module has been put into practice when editing these images.
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