Skin Colour In Advertising

Lebron James – Prepare for Combat Issue

Over the last couple of weeks I have been looking at the different types of companies that use a mix of races in their advertisements. One of the biggest areas in the world of advertisement that consist of black and white human beings is the sporting world. With Nike and Adidas dominating the advertising world recently with the up and coming Olympics in London, they themselves include those black and those white. After researching into Nike, people say they could be seen as going over the top and therefore committing a racial offence.

The prime example, basketball star Lebron James, who was advertising basketball, but to others the appearance of the star was deemed to be aggressive and was seen as stereotyping black people. A city-design review said, “James’ grim visage and hardened stance play to a stereotype of young, urban black men as menacing and aggressive”.

I think that this could be seen in both ways, but personally speaking, if you have a character who is represented and seen for his skills and class of the Basketball game, he can only be seen in this stereotypical way by those who are not willing to perhaps accept the role of a black person in advertisements.

With most sports in today’s world consisting of all races to a very high quality of play, for advertising agencies and big corporations to just use white people is wrong, and that is that.

More recently than ever, there have been a lot of problems with racism in sports. The media in the world today will pick the smallest incident up and make it into a huge deal, therefore creating a negative outlook towards that sort of person. Football can be seen as one of the most racist games out of the sporting world. But the new ‘Kick Racism Out of Football’ scheme has worked amazingly and has been moved into other sports in order to try and help tighten the boot of racism out of sports in general. And as there are more black people who are topping the sports of today it gives the media and the minority of people who cant accept it an opportunity to make a negative story out of someone’s success.

As an advertising student I see advertising with a new set of eyes. I look at it and ask myself what could be the reason they used that person for this advert or what is the message they are trying to give across to me as the viewer. Now I have seen that there are people of mixed ethnicity, white and black in adverts. For those corporations willing to do it and personally speaking they are the advertisers who are the most successful as they are able to touch on what people are either thinking or feeling as it can be more related to someone personally.

Quotes

Advertising degrades the people it appeals to; it deprives them of their will to choose.

Carrie P. Snow

Advertising says to people, ‘Here’s what we’ve got. Here’s what it will do for you. Here’s how to get it.’

Leo Burnette

‘The caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity’

George Carlin

‘In our factory, we make lipstick. In our Advertising, we sell hope’

Charles Revson

These are some quotes that I have enjoyed reading. As I have been doing research around the Internet on different sorts of media advertising I have come across these quotes by famous people. Out of the 5 my personal favourite has to be the one by George Carlin, “The Caterpillar does all the work but the butterfly gets all the publicity” I can really see how this quote works and its relates heavily to a lot of different organisations and agencies in the advertising world. Reason being, I have been working at Cadburys in Bournville for the last 3 weeks and you could say that the design group and I have been the ‘Caterpillars’ towards the advertising as you don’t see the beauty of the unravel. But as soon as the product hits the shelf in the shop this can been see as the ‘Butterfly’ as this is the product/item that is going to be receiving the publicity.

Photos

These are some photos that i took at Cadburys over the weeks i was there:

1000 Word Write Up

1000 Word Reflection:

For my placement I decided that I would go for a traditional placement. Even though I went to Cadburys as my main placement I still have an ongoing project which I continue each time I find something I like about advertising, or even if its just a piece of work that I have done relating to it. The reason that I went for a traditional placement was the fact of the amount of opportunities that I would be able to take advantage of. The moment I arrived in Cadburys I knew exactly what I wanted to do and get out the experience and I took advantage of the opportunities that were given to me in many ways. From this I have been able to gain valuable information that has given me a different insight into how tasks are approached and how they are finished. With Cadburys being such a massive business in the world today not only for its chocolate but for its all round advertising it was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up as I knew it wasn’t an opportunity that comes around everyday. In terms of my own industry context, the overall layout and way of working is exactly what I expected and therefore I would love to work in those conditions but the only difference in the sort of industry is that the main element was package design, and this is not really my route. The route that I am looking to head down is the more motion advertising such as creating the ideas or working on television advertisement.

I was able to get this placement from a university lecturer from my uni, getting information about upcoming placements landed me this opportunity. For prior knowledge and skills, I had been speaking to a few advertising agencies about what standard of work is required to get into the market. When I was in London I went into Fallon to speak to the design manager and she showed me some work that is produced around the studio, and the quality was exceptional. Not in terms of graphical quality and detail but the way different things are placed on the advertisement to make it what it is. My skills prior to my experience were lacking in areas that agencies need to achieve a good level. I think I can say that after my experience the different people I had the chance to work with and how they gave me advice in my work have most defiantly improved these attributes. I am now able to work on programs that I hadn’t even heard of before such as Cinema 4d which is the most advanced media program I have seen so far, to be able to get a chance to work on it was a pleasure as 

The experience that I have gained over the time at Cadburys has been priceless in terms of what I have learnt and it has changed my view of certain aspects of advertising. In some ways the experience haven’t really change my career path as such it, it has slightly moved it in a different direction. Before I would have solely stuck to one direction within the advertising world but now in my career path, I would like to work within possible packaging sector whereas before I would have brushed it aside. Before I went on the experience my intentions were to gain experience in the advertising and how you get to the final design that you see upon the shelves in the shops. And I can say for sure that my intentions have been surpassed by what I gained out of the experience. From the different activities that we went through, such as sitting in on a conference with other design managers from places such as Switzerland, France, Germany and Spain. Some of my intentions were far smaller than what we actually went through. From this it has shown me the level of commitment you need to have in order to gain the approval of other mangers as each person will have their own opinion on a packet design. In terms of my plans actually changing from what I have experienced, I would say they have become more realistic. Reason being, I thought it would be possible to go into a massive advertising agency and get my knowledge of the market like that, but my plans now have taken a more realistic route by possibly going into a number of different agencies and working on more than one style of advertising to find my so called perfect ‘Slice of bread’.

For my future plans, the experience I have gained will help me direct myself in a slightly different way and has given me a new way of thinking about it. Before I went on the placement I thought that my skill level was at a good level, but when I showed my work that I had been doing in my portfolio I was hit pretty hard by what they said. even though it was all constructive criticism I quickly realised I had skill that were fundamental in the business but there was a lot of room for improvement. Like starting anything new there is going to be a lack of skills to start off. After speaking to the different staff who worked in the design studio, they told me what sort of skills I need to improve on to get people to understand my work better when I go for a job interview. One skill, which is the most important, is the element of meaning. Each piece of work that is produced has to have a real sense of meaning to it, if it doesn’t then its just another photo that someone has done in Photoshop. As I didn’t really have to have any meaning behind the work that I created on Photoshop, the design leaders could see that I was just doing it out of pleasure. Then having to work on a project, which has a whole brief, and therefore a purpose behind it, I created the Cadbury Chino poster, and the lead design marketer, Martin Simpson said he really enjoyed it as it had a purpose behind it. To fill my other skill gaps I am going to apply for different types of placement work. The reason for this I now have skills in packaging advertising, therefore if people wanted to ask me about what skills are required for this market I am able to tell them. More importantly I want to go into motion advertising. After doing research to gain these potential skills I have looked at Fallon as an advertising agency. Cadburys have strong a strong relationship with these as they have created adverts for them in the past. So if I end up getting the opportunity I will try and take these opportunities to enhance my portfolio and knowledge of the advertising market.

To sum it all up in one word.. Fantastic has to be it. Most of the experience went really smoothly but in particular one of the best things that came out of it was seeing a near complete design of my idea that went through for production. Personally this is one of my biggest achievements that I have received. Especially as it was for a massive company such as Cadburys. For my future, it has shown me how a lot of dedication will pay off, and pay off very sweetly as well. Even though there were a lot of positives with this, there were the ugly moments in term of idea rejection and even though it was hard to accept hard criticism, I took it in a positive way to narrow down what was needed for my work for it to be acceptable. Personally I played a big role in the success of the placement. The reason for this is that my design was one of the chosen ideas to go through into potential production. I would always put in suggestions into different ideas, and I created a lot of work that I was able to get printed off such as the cinema 4d work and the Cadbury Chino poster. The only real negative that came from the experience was the comments from some of the directors from other countries on the idea that I came up with. Even though the majority of the marketing directors liked it, the Milka clients said that it could be see as being to rude for their product. As Milka are a family orientated company it was too much of a risk, therefore Cadburys took it on bored as their own.

Link to Original SWOT Analysis & Blog + Improved CV and SWOT Analysis

This is a link to my original blog with my original SWOT analysis and CV on:

http://alexripa.blogspot.com/

SWOT Analysis

Strengths:
I feel that I am an academic student who makes the most out of opportunities that are given. I can focus myself to achieve a goal when it is set before the deadline is set through good time management and organisation. One of my main strengths is that I can work well on my own if there has been an individual assignment assigned to me or if there is group work I am able to share and take ideas from people. I can give ideas across to people and can listen to others well and take their criticism and points of view of different aspects about the task that we have at hand.
When it comes to problem solving I work best when I am with people as I perform better when people are helping one another and sharing ideas what we can reflect upon and make better to optimise the task set. Through working with a group of people at work it is essential that I am able to work with people, therefore this has given me a lot of experience and hopefully I can use my experience on others.
I am good with using different programmes on computers whether it be the Microsoft office programmes or design work within Photoshop. From my architecture course I passed in my A-levels I have come to terms with more of the Adobe design programmes, therefore increasing my design and creative capabilities.
I am able to use different programmes on the computer such as the Microsoft programmes; also I am able to use design and editing programmes such as Adobe Photoshop etc. and After Effects etc.

Weaknesses:
the lack of portfolio work. Having a lack of work means that I am unable to properly show what I am capable of to the agency. Also being in full-time education means I am unable to get part-time work for extra work experience due to little spear time available to me.

Opportunities:
for my opportunities I will look at doing research within the advertising market, I will do this by sending off CV’s to companies explaining what I tend to get out of the experience I have with them and why I want to work for their business. The opportunities it will do for me will be the increase in the knowledge of how an advertising agency works and how they go about making and producing their productions.

Threats:
the threats to me are the lack of jobs available at the moment. From this it is harder for me to get into the advertising sector. Also one of the biggest problems is the lack of experience that I have, not having experience is a downfall even though there are a lot of people in the same position. Plus the amount of other students that are going for the same jobs at the same time is a big threat to me as the level of competition is ever increasing. – So far through my degree I have had to overcome problems along the way. We had to design a new humus product in our first term and there were a number of different problems along the way. My group and I had to come up with a new eco-friendly packaging that would be suitable to all consumers. Having to take into account a lot of different aspects of the product, it’s helped me improve my problem solving skills and also helped me know how to identify a problem. I am experience in using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the Internet. I have had to use these lots in my first year with presentations. Gaining experience with these programs has helped my gain skills in setting up different sorts of media presentations when asked in my degree so far. For the advertising side of my course I have gained skills in Adobe Photoshop CS3 and CS4 and other editing programs such as Sony Vegas, Avid, Premier Pro and After Effects. – From being at university for last year and few months I have had to use my teamwork skills as most of work that is given to the students is group work. Also I have been the group leader of an assignment that we were given. This involved me speaking to the group and setting work to each member and to help if there are any struggles. This has been help by the use of having to work with people as well through Waitrose.

This is my current SWOT analysis, I have added to my current one to show the levels of experience I have gained over the last 3 weeks at Cadbury’s and how it has giving me more opportunities in the advertising world.

My improved skills:

Strengths:

I have had experience in an advertising studio and worked with a highly media based company within this studio. One piece of my work has gone forward into a shortlist of packaging to go into production. Have acquired the knowledge of the quality of the work that is needed for a piece of work to actually hit the shelves in the store.

Have gained skills in different editing programmes such as Cinema 4d and more Adobe based programmes.

Opportunities:

Improved knowledge of the industry, therefore more opportunities for future placement work. Gained improved skills in exactly what I need to gain a potential opportunity

 C.V

Alex Ripa

86 Richmond Street, Stoke, Coventry, CV2 4HY

Date of Birth: 16th January 1991

Marital Status: Single

Mobile: 07767724457 Home Telephone: 01638601904

Email: alessandro1650@hotmail.com

Full UK Drivers License

A Little About Me

University student in my second year and achieved first year with a 2:1 in Advertising and Media. Work in the supermarket retail at Waitrose and have completed successful advertising works experience in Cadburys, Bourneville.

I am an extremely dedicated and motivated young individual who thrives on being creative and playful with ideas. When ideas are thrown at me I always try and be as creative and if possible make the idea as playful as possible so more than just one sort of person can relate to it. The experience that I gained at Cadbury’s about the advertising world surpassed anything that I was expecting the emotion/emotions that I had to put into different pieces of work is unbelievable. In my spare time I try and add as much to my blog, I now see this as a bit of a hobby. (Call me a geek)

Future Aims:

My future aims are to exercise and bring out my full potential in the skills I have. I thrive to do well in either a media or advertising organisation as I feel I have a lot to show. I am able to show my ideas and be playful with other people’s ideas, whether working as an individual or working in a creative group, both I am suited for.

Employment:

Cadburys

April 2011 – May 2011

Description: to gain experience within the advertising world in packaging and the workplace.

Responsibilities: Create a design for a new packet of mini chocolate bites for women aged 25-35 years of ago.

Skills Gained: How to create a creative piece of work that is suitable for a big age range. Learnt how to examine the small differences between what makes a good advertisement and one which is not.

Waitrose Supermarket

2007 – Present: Shop Assistant

Description: to help fill and make the shop floor looks as presentable as possible to customers.

Responsibilities: to ensure that customer service it at its very best and to make sure every query that is asked is dealt in the best possible manor.

Skills:

Microsoft Office: Excellent Understanding and knowledge in PowerPoint, Excel, Word and Publisher.

Adobe CS3/CS4/CS5: Excellent understanding and knowledge.

Internet: excellent understand and knowledge

Other Qualifications/Skills:

Trained Meat and Fish trainee. Am able to do advanced skills involving handling of meat and fish.

Education:

Coventry University

Advertising and Media in 2^{nd year}

^{(September 2009 – Present)}

Long Road Sixth Form College

(2007- 2009) 3 A-Levels 1 As Level

Business Studies – C

Economics – C

Architecture – C

Chemistry – E (As Level)

Bottisham Village College

(2002 – 2007)

Math’s – B

Double Science – B/B

English Literature – C

English Language – C

Catering – B/B

Art – B

Geography – B

German – D

Contact List and Professionals

Dave Dolman

Cinema 4D Specialist:

Dave Dolman is one of the executive artwork leaders in terms of all the 4d work. Dave is the guy who helped me create my 4d Chino chocolate bar. He is a very experienced guy as has been working in Cadbury’s for a number of years. He is one of the guys who creates the shapes of the packaging for Cadbury Easter eggs and has worked on the design for a lot of the Christmas and summer lines as well for Cadbury’s over the years. He has worked in other businesses as well and has acquired a lot of different contacts along the way.

Dave is a very approachable person and he was more that willing to spend some of his personal time in helping me create my chocolate bar, and for that I couldn’t thank him enough as I had my own personal piece of work. Some of his ways of working are similar to mine but he can express them in a much quicker and effective way as he has been working with these programs for a numerous amount of years compared to me.

Martin Simpson

Artwork and Design manager:

You could say that martin is one of the guys that are the main cog in the machine at Cadbury’s over the last 3 weeks has been our personal mentor and a very supportive one indeed. His skills are much different to that of the designers and artwork crew. His skills lay in being a successful artwork/design manager, this involves going through current work that is being process within the area and organising conferences with other mangers from other design bases around Europe!

Martin is the sort of guy that if you need help or some advice on an art pieces then he is the perfect guy to speak to. As he has been an artwork and design manager for the last 15 years his experience is unquestionable. We had a great relationship between us and he was very proud of the work that the group and I produced.

Dave Pegg

Communications Manager

Dave role was to do with communication; he was the one who set the whole experience up for us. He wasn’t around for much of the experience, as he had to travel to Columbia for a project that Cadbury’s were working on.

For the time that he was around he was very helpful in giving us all the essentials we need to help us with the weeks ahead. Especially introducing us to everyone around the site.

Rachel Eaton

Receptionist:

Rachel has to be the most outgoing person I have met. She can chat FOREVER! The 3 weeks we were at Cadbury’s she helped with every problem we had that the other guys at the studio couldn’t deal with. Her skill enabled her to get us a free Cadbury tour and was also able to get us access into and out of the building with out passes that she set up at the start of the experience.

Thanks to her we were able to access all areas which meant we were able to print off all out work that we had done, enter areas of the design studio that other workers of Cadbury’s couldn’t go into etc. over the 3 weeks experience she was very helpful and we couldn’t have asked for anymore from her.

Cadbury Chino Poster

This image is of the poster that I created for the chino chocolate bar. The way I edited the picture was through lots of different layering methods. To optimise the lighting effects I created different layers and masked the bag, chocolate and coffee beans so that I could enhance the lighting around. I made the photo darker around the edges so that I could make the coffee beans and the chocolate the predominate visual in the photo that the viewer was to look at first.

It was really tricky to create the Cadbury’s logo, as it is not the original colours that they normally use. The original photo was a white Cadbury logo, so having to duplicate the layer a number times then giving it a ‘screen’ effect gave it the brown effect :). Personally I am really proud of this photo as it was giving a good review by the design manager Martin Simpson at Cadburys, and when a pro says they like it…well you’ve done something right!!

Cinema 4D

Cinema 4d!

With cinema 4d there are an unlimited amount things that can be done to advertise a chocolate bar and package. This picture clearly represents a Wispa bare but as you can see there are white lines going across the packet. These represent the editable parts. One of the most important part to this picture is the fact that you can move the Wispa design round the packet so you can get it laying perfect. The advantage that this gives you in that you save a lot of time and effort, but more important its save money as you wont have to sit there opening packets and seeing where it should lay on the chocolate bar. With cinema 4d you can rotate, extrude and manipulate the chocolate bar however you want. And the main advantage would be the ‘4D’ aspect you get from it. Dave Dolman who showed us how to use the program mentioned that when you have one basis, for example, Easter eggs you can keep the basic shape and size but you can change the outer packaging by exporting the image into cinema 4d then it will naturally wrap itself round the object in the image.

This is a cropped image from the poster that I created for the brief that we were given at the very start of the placement. As I mentioned before the chocolate bare was made up of coffee and dark chocolate. So I spoke to the advertising guys around the studio and they mentioned how the image should have meaning. Therefore as the are was containing these ingredients I thought it would be more than suitable to include them on the packet. I got the images from an online place that Cadbury’s were members of so that I could download high-resolution imagery. The chocolate that I created was a seperate picture and I had to learn new techniques from what I already knew to get it to have the effect I gave it. One important factor was the trying to get the shadowing correct. As you can see the lighting is coming from the top, therefore the chocolate that I chose had to have a small amount of refection with the light falling in the same way. Doing this wasn’t so hard; it was trying to get all the chocolate a similar colour, as it was a really light shade before hand. 🙂 I spoke to Dave Pegg, the Artwork manager and he showed me a way of achieving this… as you can see the chocolate is now a darker shade.

One other aspect I really like about this photo is that it has really warm and inviting colours. With the different shades of brown and the creamy colour of coffee bean bag. There are no hard colours to the eye and it still stands out to the viewer. Overall I am really pleased with how this came out because it works really effectively.

From the original picture that I made which was the poster for the Cadbury Chino chocolate bar I was able to get my hands on cinema 4d. The way I done this was by putting an image into 4d. (Was getting excited how my work was going to look ha-ha) and then having to render it. The process that rendering does is it makes the image into a very high resolution and puts it round the packet in the same quality in which I uploaded it in. one thing I really like about the final chocolate bar is that it has all the minor detail which would be found on a packet you see in the shop. Once its been wrapped around the bar shape I was able to add in extra features to the image as well. One of them was wrinkles and gloss. Giving it these two features meant that it was possible to give it that extra bit of life.

Another additional part I liked I really like am the elegance and simplicity that comes with the packet. I think that for a chocolate bar that is targeted towards 25-35 year old women it is a very promising design and not much is going on to make it to confusing for the viewer.

Overall I am really pleased with the way my product has come out and I would like to think that I am able to enhance my skills of the Cinema 4d software in the future.

Diary

Day 1: Personal Beating…

Day 1, to sum it up in one word…Eventful. Thinking about getting up early for the 3 weeks ahead wasn’t the best feeling in the world, but realising your waking up to go and work for one of the biggest chocolate companies was a big motivator to get me out of bed. Especially all the FREE chocolate.

The first step into Cadbury’s saw the group meet our admin personal named Rachel Eaton. She took us to get out pictures for our card keys that looked awful! Especially when trying not to laugh when facing the camera ha-ha. After getting the cards, which made us OFFICIAL Cadbury workers :), we passed a Cadburys dentist and doctor…Yes a personal dentist. Rachel mentioned there was one incident where someone pulled a tooth out by a chocolate bar! My first thought. Unbelievable! After getting to grips with there still is a dentist, we had to go for a tour round the design department to show how everything was used. In other words everything in Cadbury’s in done on a massive scale whether it is for design work or making a printed copy of the final design for packaging.

The amount of personal and team research that goes into just starting a product is beyond imaginable. Hundreds of hours are spent going into colours, finding out what people would want in a new product etc. and at the half way point of this the idea could be scraped.

One area which impressed me, but more so took me by surprise was the advert room, this is where they kept all the previous work they had completed whether it went live or not. In total there it must have been pushing about 1000 pieces of work and not even a 1/4 went live whether it was on YouTube or actual television. Martin mentioned how ideas went a funnel like process in order to get to a final design. The I to M (innovative to marketing) process was the method they used to come up with idea, then implementing the funnel effect. We were told to picture a funnel which had 100’s of balls thrown down it, some will hit the wall near the start, some will go a bit further down and hit the wall, and about 5 will go through the funnel into consideration about going live. This is the process in which most projects go down to filter out the problematic ones. After this… the WHOLE research process would happen again so that they are able to home in on what exactly people want. This was done so that Cadbury’s researchers could go up to people in the street and be like “would you consider this a possible product you would buy or consider buying from the outer packaging” and instead of them saying “yeah I would probably would”…. the next step to the research was to get that tentative answer to a “yeah it looks really appealing to me and I would buy this product”. Getting to this stage involves a new process and a lot more time and the main factor…. Money.

Once we were shown round the design studio…. which is the most chilled out place to work to say the least!! We were shown the work brief by Paul Webb; it was to come up with a new chocolate bar for 25-30 year old women.

The idea we came up with was a chocolate bar filled with biscuit, coffee and toffee. We drew up sketches of what the bar could look like. 2 members of the group designed the packaging; another and me designed a poster for it. As the chocolate bar had 3 flavors, we decided that we should incorporate all the flavors into the poster. From working with professionals, who had been working with Photoshop for years I learnt a few new tips on enhanced shadowing and changing the colours of chocolate to lighter and darker. Using these tips I was able to create a poster where the chocolate what was being used in the chocolate bar was sitting in a pool coffee beans.

Before entering the real world of advertising I made a couple of pieces on Photoshop to show what creative skills I had, when I arrived I spoke to a creative designer called Kish. He gave me a personal beating to say the least… lets say the confidence took a bit of a battering :(… the only real criticism he had was that some of the bits of work didn’t involve enough meaning, as in there wasn’t a story behind each piece. For example, the ‘splodges’ that Cadbury’s have on their design work, especially for Cadburys cream eggs resembled the milk they use and to show its fresh milk. So they had a story and a reason behind everything they used even if its small detail.

Day 2: Going Live…

The second day didn’t really consist of a lot of action apart. I came up with a number of poster designs for the new chocolate bar, and the other 2 group members designing the packaging for the chocolate bare it. I didn’t really get much of the poster done as were introduced into a real life project which we took part in. the goal for this was to create a new packaging and design for a new Cadbury’s clusters and raisins. Initially Martin asked us to come up with a new name for the product. After ALOT of research into different ‘powerful’ words, as it was targeting 25-35 year old women we came up with a final name but for legal reasons we are not allowed to say. I will refer to each design as route 1, route 2 and route 3. As you can imagine when these names were finalised seeing martin about it was a bit nerve-racking as we were speaking to the design leader about our new names… and he thought highly of them. For route 1, he really liked the name and thought there was an element of cheekiness.

We looked through different sorts of designs that Cadbury’s were designing at the moment and had to go on the basis of them but with a touch of ‘style’ and ‘simplicity, like Cadbury Peanuts, Raisins and Clusters which have the typical banner across the center of the packet, we had to go down the route of Absolut Vodka. So keeping it simple by just using block text. We were told to design something with this sort of style as it gave it a simple and effective look. And as Cadbury’s had never really done something like this it was the perfect opportunity to do so.

The rest of the day consisted of just drawing… lots and lots of drawing!

Day 3: Finalised Idea…

Day 3 was a big day! A big day indeed! We got our final design settled and assessed by Martin. For route 2 i done a design with 2 pairs of lips and a few love hearts (Image 1) and the exact words Martin used were “this is exactly the same as one of our graphic designers piece”… I was amazed at this and didn’t really know what to say… apart from the fact I had the BIGGEST GRIN on my face to be compared to a professional graphic designer who had been working in the industry for 15 years plus! That was a good day: D. I had done some extra designs the night before for Martin to see, but they didn’t really have much to them in terms of meaning. As I had come up with a final design I didn’t really have much to do, as the others were still finishing. So the priority of my day was to come up with tag lines!

Coming up with tag lines is the hardest thing to do when you have to actually think of one. The final one that I came up with was the one that would go on the packet. This is what would go below the route 1 name. Compared to the other designs that Cadbury’s have done, they way they wanted to wording laid out was by having the main name of the product in the center of the package, then having a ‘story’ effect on the top and bottom. The reason for this is that people will notice the bold writing in the center of the package but to influence the rest of the purchase reading a descriptive and in some case personal message about how the chocolate is desirable and scrumptious to eat.

By the time we created the layout, all what was needed was to come up with the story. And that was the end of day 3!

Day 4/5: European Contacts Aka ‘Porn on a Packet’ / Printing           

Today was just one of those days where anything could happen! Luckily it went well. The day started out with us walking in full of joy and smiling away, but those grins were about to get bigger.

After drawing up the final design for the 3 products, Martin set up a tele-conference with all the current designs that were in the process of going into production with ours added into it as well.

From then on it was all up to Martin and his ways of talking ‘Advertising and marketing’ ;). Marketing directors saw each design that was presented in the conference. IMPORTANT GUYS! Each of them was based in different areas of Europe, Switzerland, France and Spain. So exciting times ahead…

Each director gave his or her opinions on each design to see whether anything needed changing. For the 6 what designs that were presented, each came with a mood board and a mood board that had been adapted from pervious conferences. Everyone agreed on 4 out of the 6 designs but 2 had a bit of controversy over them. Reason being was due to the lack of creativity and a lack of a banner. As Milka (European Cadbury’s in effect) are really strict on what they put on the packaging they were a bit skeptical about not having a banner and suggested a design with more colours and a banner. Martin, the Cadbury’s speaker, suggested just going with the idea but having colours in it first as it will out line a banner effect from the skyline.

As we went through the remainder of the designs, we finally came to our ones! Which was a hot discussion, there was a lot of debate between the different marketers about whether or not they thought it was appropriate for there packet, to risky to put on the shelf and whether taking a product off the shelf would be a good choice as each new product that goes on the shelf has to replace a old one.

Critical is a nice way of expressing the feelings towards my rout 1 packet. As they didn’t have any idea that we were involved in the press conference they went full blooded which in respect to them they have to get to a final choice. As we were speaking to people from different countries in Europe they had to take into consideration about how their design and customers would react, as it is different in each country.

The lady who was from France straight away ruled mine out and classed it as ‘porn on a packet’ :(… even though it was a serious conference everyone was trying so hard not to laugh, even Martin who was holding it. As for the design marketer in Spain, he liked it but as Milka is still very family based it would seem a bit erotic and would be too different from other products that they have in the market. As Milka sit comfortably in the chocolate market in Europe if something could potentially harm the reputation then it is too much of a risk towards the company.

Eventually they worked it down to selecting route 2 as the idea to go ahead. Their main reason for this was due to the simplicity and it is a user-friendly name :), which was pleasing to hear for us amateur advertisers. Each member of the conference agreed that it could work but all that was lacking was a bit of colour and a couple of designs in proper detail of how it could look overall. All was needed apart from that was a story. As Absolut Vodka have only writing on its cover, route 2 is going down that same process.

Eventually I was able to get my printing done after a lot of hassle organising a time with them. With time we had spare I created a couple of pieces of work on Photoshop, and was determined to print!!

As it was a really busy time of year for Cadbury’s, new releases of different chocolate bars put the print studio under a lot of pressure. I got to speak to the design team about different styles of printing and formats in order to help me print out a top quality piece of work. We done a trial version that was intentionally set at the wrong setting to get a view of the quality difference.. And difference there was!! As it was printed on an A2 piece of printing paper the pixilation was hugely noticeable. But for the correct piece we printed off, we had to set it to a 300 dpi as it gave the colour depth and set the Photoshop piece to a CMYK as it would stop it from either printing incorrectly or pixelating.

Day 6: Route 1,2 and 3 Finalised Design and Cinema 4D!

Day 6 had to be the most successful day in my Cadbury’s works experience. The reason for this is that personally I was able to go on lots of different software which makes basically gives Cadbury’s its image to the consumer when they see Cadbury products in the shops. From my spare time as already mentioned I cam up with a cover for the new Cadbury chocolate bar called ‘Chino’. With this I was able to use a program called Cinema 4d, which is the program used for all design packaging, as it is so flexible with movement and placement of different items, logos and text etc.

I got to the chance to put my design on the Wispa bar template, which personally I thought was the best choice as it was quite a thin design therefore it couldn’t go on something like a big Dairy Milk bar. Using this program gave me the opportunity to render out the image, meaning that I was able to see a life like image of what the product would look like in the shops once it has the creases on and the lighting effects. We did this so that we could make it look as real as possible and to make sure that there was no unnecessary colour or writing on the packaging that wouldn’t be seen.

As a result of using cinema 4d, in effect I came out with my own chocolate bar, and I was really pleased to say the least about it 🙂

As well as creating my own chocolate bar, we had to finish the design for the route 1 and 2 project. Route 2 was the hardest to achieve as it just playing on words. Having to come up with a story that could go on the front of the packaging was really difficult as you had to relate it not only to the chocolate but you have to think in terms of a consumer and how they would picture it. After much trial and error we came up with a worthwhile story that Martin and the other guys in the studio liked. It was a real shame that we wouldn’t see the final work as we weren’t at the placement for that long. 😦

As a massive fan of photography I was really eager to see what the big deal with the photography in Cadbury’s was. I would see people carrying massive cameras and heaters to the photo room. When I was able to get some free time I went to speak to the photographers about how they make the chocolate look SO GOOD! The tip they use like most other agencies advertising for chocolate was, hair dryers…believe it or not these are fundamental in getting a piece of chocolate to look nice. Prior to shooting, I spoke to the photographer about different lighting effect and heating etc. she mentioned that there could potentially be up to 30 cameras angles on a single piece of chocolate to find that perfect angle…Which is a lot of cameras for a cube of chocolate! Whilst all these cameras are in place, the legendary Hair dryer is brought into the scene. Once everything is ready for shoot they start heating up the chocolate. The reason for this is that before hand the chocolate is a boring colour and it doesn’t give much shine as well off of it, therefore heating it up gives it that gloss that give it that ‘perfect’ look!

The shine lasts maximum 4 seconds! So having to shoot 30 cameras angles in that time…TOUGH TASK! But it looks really effective once done.

UCAS

In college today applying to universities is very important. As most of it is done through UCAS, it is very important to get the message across to the soon to be university students. As it’s not a major company that is advertised on television or magazines, there was no need for me to put a lot of detail in the advert. UCAS hasn’t got a great deal of competition in its field, the adverts created don’t have to eye-catching and outgoing towards its target audience. I went for simple colours in this image, blue and black work really well together to bring out the bright colours of the globe in the centre of the page. I used the globe as the central picture as UCAS can be used worldwide. People have been connected with universities all over through UCAS. The two tag lines I came up with were to show students what they can achieve by using UCAS. The font that was used for these were just a standard Arial, but the spacing was reduced so the letters were brought closer together.