Perfume Advert: Result

After several hours Photoshopping, I have produced two different designs for the perfume advert project. I tried to keep my results close to my sketches, changing bits that would not work or did not look good. I went for an angelic, dreamlike effect to best suit the theme and target audience, and to keep an interesting theme to the advert which could be carried through to other parts of the product.

To create this image, I used 2 main layers, the girl in the foreground (a friend of mine) lying in the grass, and the more colourful backdrop, which was created using a photo I took of a sunset mixed with a set of brushes that look like stars. I first changed the colours and made sure to remove all the blemishes in the model's face. Then I dropped the photo on top of the background and used the eraser tool on the foreground to make it show through. I then created the font for the word "dream" using "Century Gothic", which I then edited slightly. The font itself I split into three colours and played with until I found the perfect fit. The colours themselves I will mention later. I took the perfume bottle from a site on the Internet and changed it to better suit this image and mirrored it on the floor. I wrote a sentence to anchor the image, and then ended up with the finished image.

This one would be used as the advert that would appear on magazines and posters as it is the simplest and better follows my original plans. The advert was mainly designed with a A4 magazine advert in mind, which is why it is the right size and is positioned in the right way for it. The positioning of the parts of the advert were all very carefully thought out, and I played with the positioning for a long time before settling with what I have now. The image has been changed in small ways at least two times since posting it on here, as I got some feedback from teachers and friends. The advert is created in a way that makes the viewer follow the "lines" of the advert, for example, look at the top left corner, then notice the hand, then the face, then the other hand, and finally the bottle. This works in starting from the upper right too, but you would instinctively follow the arm along, leading you to the title and the bottle, two central parts of the ad. This further leads you on to the other hand, going to the short piece of writing which explains why you should buy the perfume. This works well, as it shows the perfume, and then explains it. The face is very central, and does not need to be linked to, as it stands out so much due to the editing on it. However, I do fear that the grass makes it harder to link between the "middle", being the face, and the rest of the advert, although the colour of the grass links in well with the other colours used, especially the blue. The ring of colour around the outside is also used to guide the eye, as it moves around in a circle, showing the viewer all the parts of the advert subconsciously.

The second image I created, using the same method. This image would be best in A3, spread across two pages of a magazine, with one face on each page, but it could work in other places too. I based it around the last idea I had sketched out, and changed it to be aimed at women, not men. This change meant that I had to make the woman seem dominant, hence her looking at the camera while the man looks at her. However, if I were to take this photo again, I would reflect this by having her head higher than the mans, so it made her look more important than the man. Overall, I am not sure that I would want to use this advert due to the other design being superior.

The first problems I had with the advert was the lighting, as I could never get the sun to be overhead and still bright, so instead I used softer lighting, and made it look like the sun was out by using the "soft lighting" layer effect, "brightness and contrast" and "colour balance". The latter was used a lot to make each individual bit stronger, especially the hair, which I boosted a lot, particularly in the first advert. One of the major problems I had later was that the grass was too sharp and clear, and looked wrong surrounded by the soft background and skin, so after playing with it for a while to find a solution, I decided to use a strong "gaussian blur" on it to make it look less focused.

I think that my choices while editing fit my target audience really well, and everything I wrote about on my initial design still stands, but there are some things that I could not show on my sketches that I have shown here, such as the effect I used for the backdrop. It fits really well as the soft colours and slow transitions between them keep it out of focus and keep attention on the model, as well as working as anchors, telling the audience what the image is all about. I also changed the colours and cropped the image to best support my yellow/pink/blue colour theme which goes towards showing the image as soft and innocent, as that colour theme is mainly used in association with babies and women, which are mainly seen as innocent and pure, especially the sort of woman I am advertising to. The women chosen for the two adverts were very carefully chosen, as they both represent the feelings I was trying to get across. This is one of the reasons that I prefer the first advert to the second. The model in the first advert looks far more at ease, which fits into the style of the advert. She also has better physical qualities for the theme, as well as easier to edit. After realising that it would be too hard to have a naked model for the advert, I decided to have a white dress, which suggests innocence and purity. However, after taking the photo, I realised that using the close up shot, it would be easy to Photoshop the dress out entirely, meaning I could essentially have the naked model as in my sketches. As the image was cut off at about neck height, it also removed the problems of making the image "family friendly" which would have been hard to solve without the perfect shot and length of hair like that in my sketches. Another quality I prefered in the image was the hair. I thought that ginger hair was too striking, which didn't fit in to the soft, dreamlike quality of the advert that I wanted. I did try to edit this first, but it is very hard to completely change hair without it appearing fake, which is why only small changes are ever used, which is what happened in the first advert, changing the dull brown colour to a more vibrant one. However, it was brightening the highlights in the hair which gave it the soft, perfect, bright quality which they both have, especially in the first advert. The eyes were important too, and I wanted to make sure they were blue, as it is a natural eye colour which not only fits the theme, but are also the lightest, most striking natural shade.

The starry sky effect I used on top of it was to relate to dreaming, as well as keeping with the idea of innocence. Stars are often associated with dreaming and dreams, and are regarded to be objects of hope and purity, which is what I needed to show in my advert but failed to show in my sketch. We were told to take a picture of a perfume bottle off the Internet, and so I searched until I found one that suited my design, which happened to look similar to my sketches of an ideal bottle. My problem with it was that it was hard to make it look transparent, as the white background shows through the bottle. To resolve this, I added colour to it and made it look like the bottle was showing the colour underneath it, which worked quite well and made the bottle look transparent, to an extent. I also experimented with ways to use the bottle first, in an attempt to find out how the bottle could be worked with well and created one design, "Flow". It is through playing with this that I thought of using the white background the bottle is rested on to my advantage. I also took the idea of the reflection from this design, and this was influenced by the "Insolence" advert that I looked at near the beginning of my blog. I also really liked the ripple effect I created, but I didn't think it would have fitted into my current designs.

In the end, of the three adverts I had sketched out, I only chose to use two of them. The one I did not use was the full length figure. Although I did try to use it, and took several full pictures, I could never get it to work, and I think its because of the grass that surrounded the figures. As I already mentioned, the grass effect didn't work as well as I had hoped, as in my sketches and imagination the grass was taller and neater, swaying all together in the wind, with the sun giving it an emerald green hue. In reality

though, the grass was too short and the lack of sun made it too dull and lackluster. Even with editing, it still didn't look good, so I abandoned that idea. Here is an image I spent a bit of time on while trying to get to grips with the theme and how to go about it.