Print Advertisement Theory

Print advertisements follow a set of common rules for the way that they are pieced together. The position of the main elements are typically done so under the guidance of key rules based upon how we, as humans, read media in our culture and the psychology behind how our brains respond to it.

The first rule is the Rule of Thirds.
This is essentially a way of laying out the page. It is divided into three sections, either horizontally, vertically or both creating a nine-by-nine grid.

The main elements of the page are separated into these blocks. If something has significant importance then they can be placed on the dividing line itself. You can see this in the following example where the above grid is overlayed on an existing advertisement:

Another rule is the Gutenburg Rule.
This splits a page up not into 3 or 9, but into 4 quadrants. It follows something called "reading gravity" which in our culture is Top Left -> Bottom Right, in other cultures they read in an entirely different way and thus advertisements between parts of the world may be structured different.

The four areas are, in order, Primary Optical -> Strong Fallow Area -> Weak Fallow Area - > Terminal Area.

Using this structure dictates that anything on the top right of the page will be seen first, and in the bottom left will be seen last. From this standpoint designers can set out a page to influence the aspects of a page they wish us to leave the page thinking about, and how to embed it in our memory. Typically the logo is placed in the top right as this is the brand the consumer will respond to.

The above advert puts the most important information where your eyes first look, and in the area where your eyes is simply the text "keep it safe", leaving readers with that as the last message.

Maslow's Human Needs

Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs is a hierarchy for displaying the needs of humans. They begin with the basics needed for survival, without any emotional development. This is the Physiological segment. As each level progresses it is less about just surviving, and more about comfort and development. Safety, Love and Belonging and Esteem are all based upon enabling the person to be fulfilled in life and to be happy. The top most segment, Self-Actualisation is about intellectual development - creativity, problem solving and lack of prejudice.

For a person to look at the higher segments, they must have fulfiled some, if not all, of the needs in the lower levels. This is a logical way of looking at it - after all you're not likely to want sexual intimacy if you haven't had a meal for a week.

For my strategy for the products and in the advertising I am going to assume, with my audience being that of one higher on the socio-economic hierarchy, that the Physiological (food, water, breathing etc), Safety, Love / belonging and Esteem are already at least partly existing within the individual.

Because of this I am going to appeal to the Self-Actualisation part of the pyramid. Creativity and spontaneity. Creativity is an area I'd like to focus on most, since my target audience will be the generation who have access to new tools and the time to learn them. Artistic students and those who work in creative industries are the prime targets and I must aim my advertising and themes around them.

Regulatory Bodies

The two regulatory bodies my products will come under are OFCOM and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The former as my Idents will be on national television, and the latter because I will be advertising my channel to the public.

OFCOM
The Office of Communications, OFCOM for short, is the regulatory body for the Electromagnetic Spectrum in the UK. This means they have a statutory duty to protect the citizens of the UK from offensive or harmful material, and to license the airwaves in this country. Complaints about broadcasters are registered with them as they are independant from the main broadcasting corporations and the Government.

OFCOM does not follow up complaints about broadcasts that are not licensed by it, even if they broadcast to UK audiences. Valid complaints are scrutinised to ensure the broadcaster has not breached the broadcasting code with its programme. The broadcaster will also be asked for a response to the complaint.



As well as the duty of regulation material and handling complaints, the organisation is also set up to conduct research and promote competition in the markets it oversees. Typically using a consultation system whereby they publish a freely available document and use responses sent in to form conclusions on an issue.

Advertising Standards Authority
Unlike OFCOM, this organisation is not part of the stature and thus cannot enforce legislation. It's principles broadly reflect legislature on advertising however. These are written on the ASA website:

The Advertising Codes contain wide-ranging rules designed to ensure that advertising does not mislead, harm or offend. Ads must also be socially responsible and prepared in line with the principles of fair competition. These broad principles apply regardless of the product being advertised.

In addition, the Codes contain specific rules for certain products and marketing techniques. These include rules for alcoholic drinks, health and beauty claims, children, medicines, financial products, environmental claims, gambling, direct marketing and prize promotions. These rules add an extra layer of consumer protection on top of consumer protection law and aim to ensure that UK advertising is responsible.

If an advertisement is found to be in breach of these, the following sanctions can take place:

• Bad Publicity: The ASA publishes rulings on its website
• CAP Compliance Team: The ASA can refer the complaints to this organisation who enforce the ASA and CAP (Committee of Advertising Practice) who will ask the media publisher to remove the offending material
• Copy Advice: The publishers can be asked not to publish their advertisements unless first vetted by CAP.
• OFCOM: Adverts televised on licensed networks can be forwarded to OFCOM to investigate and punish as appropriate.

In order for my media products to be valid, they must adhere to the regulations of the medium that they are. My Idents must not be offensive or harmful to the public and breach broadcasting code, and my print advertisment must not breach the standards of the ASA.

Audience

The way my media products will be interpreted and viewed depend entirely upon the particular area of the market I aim it. Not only this, but within this market share there are different types of engaging with media ranging from passively consuming to making up your own meanings.

In order to categorise swathes of people there are several methods at my disposal. First is the National Readership Survey (NRS). Which divides the market into 6 categories based upon income.

Grade A: upper middle class

Higher managerial, administrative or professional

Grade B: middle class

Intermediate managerial, administrative or professional

Grade C1: lower middle class

Supervisory or clerical and junior managerial, administrative or professional

Grade C2: skilled working class

Skilled manual workers

Grade D: working class

Semi and unskilled manual workers

Grade E: Those at the lowest levels of subsistence

Casual or lowest grade workers, pensioners and others who depend on the welfare state for their income

In addition to this, there is the National Statistic of Socio-economic Classification. (NS-SEC). The difference with this is that it doesn't classify people based upon skill, it only takes into account employment. The categories can number up to 18, however for analytical use it is broken down into only 8:

1. Higher managerial and professional occupations
2. Lower managerial and professional occupations
3. Intermediate occupations (clerical, sales, service)
4. Small employers and own account workers
5. Lower supervisory and technical occupations
6. Semi-routine occupations
7. Routine occupations
8. Never worked and long-term unemployed

Finally a system that takes into account only household earning, is the ACORN system.

Band A: Wealthy Achievers

Large amounts of disposable income and typically in high-end administration, managerial or professional jobs. These are the people who tend to like luxury goods and important brands. Aproximate income of £50,000 or over.

Band B: Urban Prosperity

lots of disposable income but the jobs change from high level to a more intermediate level. Aproximate income of between £35,000 and £50,000

Band C1: Comfortably Off

Disposable incoming is significantly less than the above, although life would still be comfortable. Income roughly between £25,000 and £35,000.

Band C2: Moderate Means

Manual labourers such as tradesmen who do not generate a massive income and will not be able to afford luxuries on a regular basis. Most likely to have a young family and roughly earns around £15,000 to £25,000 a year.

Band D: Hard Pressed

Very low income and not likely to be able to afford luxuries like going to the cinema regularly and may not have the opportunities to buy DVD's.

As well as classifying audiences in this way, it's important to take into account how the audience will engage with the media, as I eluded to above. There are several models used for this.

The Hypodermic Needle Model

This is what the majority of audiences are. Essentially passive, they take in the media presented as it is forming no conclusions of their own, much like a Baudrillard theory that we accept the micronarratives given to us. Media aimed at this audience is typically formulaic and predictable.

Two-Step-Flow
Media is passed on my people of influence. For example, your friend with a taste in movies will reccomend one to you and as a group you will all go out and view it. This system relies entirely on working out the tastes of the opinion leaders and aiming at them, and hoping that it is propegated out via them. Thus, two step flow.

Uses & Gratifications
This suggests people will view media for specific purposes. To get what they want from it, for example the adrenaline rush that comes from a horror flick, or the emotional responses to a romantic comedy. Quite often influenced by external factors that change their mood, the availability of wealth and the career they are in play a factor in what gratitfication they will seek from a media text. Someone who has low income is unlikely to want to see a film about the rich getting richer, as opposed to an aspirational film.

Obstinate Audience Theory
This suggests that people will only interpret what they want from a media text rather than being told. Media targetted at this audience will need to have sufficient depth to enable the audience to pick it apart, a formulaic system will leave this portion of the audience unfulfilled and possibly bored.

My Target Audience
Having researched this, I think I am able to classify my audience for my media products. I am going to be aiming them at Grade B-C1 markets based upon skills, these will be the typical users of technology and gadgetry as a commodity value rather than purely a tool. It's also highly likely that if they have children they will be older, as to rise to such a skill level over a period of time, and thus they will be more likely to have such devices and interests. Using the ACORN system, this would be classified as Bands A, B and C1 as they have the disposable income neccassary to purchase such devices. The skills and education neccassary to be in an occupation with such disposable income also suggests being educated, and the factual nature of the channel will appeal to them.

Planning

I have began to plan the themes and contents of my media products. This involved sitting down and drawing both a mind map, and a story board / sketch of my ideas for the over all themes, the poster and the ident.

Although the website is a primary task, once a theme has been developed and implemented in both the ident and the print advertisement, the web design element will be straight forward to port across.


I have made two videos of my planning session showing the progress I made, as well as finalised versions of them in a large readable image.

You can see the images below:

The basic plan is to focus on the urban night. But to do so in a way that highlights the way technology is lighting up the dark so to speak, as opposed to the gritty underworld feeling that the night can connote.

The plan for the ident is to replace cars with computer generated blocks of coloured light, they will represent pixels and will be seen performing typical traffic things before pulling up at some traffic lights at a red light. As the cars bunch up the camera will zoom up into the sky (CGI) and their colours will reveal the logo from above.

The Print Ad will continue this block of light feel, replacing buildings or other mundane urban objects with the logo illuminated.
 

Photographic Techniques: Planning and Aims.

In order to get an idea for the requirements of my print advertisement and the following ident, and web design I am planning to go into urban environments in order to find locations to either film or photograph. In doing so I hope to mimic some of the styles below, and to find ways of merging what I want in terms of photographic style with that of the idents I have analysed below.
One particular technique I would like to experiment with is a long exposure on movement, especially in urban environments such as below:

Similarly the use of the Bokeh technique of blurring, to produce aesthetically pleasing points of light.



I hope to demonstrate my ability to use photographic techniques such as  Framing, lighting and to gain possible locations / images to use for the various mediums my products must be in. I will post afterwards analysing my findings.

Idents

The definition of an ident is the following:

Idents - Station identification is the practice of radio or television stations or networks identifying themselves on air, typically by means of a call sign or brand name (sometimes known, particularly in the United States, as a "sounder" or "stinger", more generally as a station or network ident).

As part of my production involves one, I have been researching into examples of ones I would like to take inspiration from. I've found the following examples of ones I think fit the ideas of where I'd like my Channel's theme to go:

DR2


I think the audience for such an ident is going to be male, and an older male audience at that. The slow plodding music gives it a humorous feel but compared to a channel aimed at the youth market, they are a very slow paced ident. Similarly the quirky contraptions may not suit the brash and loud humour of the stereotypical youth and may reflect a more intellectual audience. The style is very simple and one I think I could mimic, a coloured background and a panning camera would be easy to accomplish, and the quirky contraptions would reflect the techy / gadgety audience that I am aiming at.
Dulux


Although not strictly an ident, this Dulux advert's style, use of music and camera techniques are great examples of things to use for my own ident. The mise-en-scene within it, typically schools, kitchens, dark corridors and car parks reflects a family target audience of Mum and Dad. The music by Jonsi, lead singer of Sigur Ros an icelandic alternative band, could be argued to be more aimed at the female audience on a stereotypical level. The use of time-lapse gives it a sweeping sense of rapid change. I could easily emulate this with the right software however the nature of a timelapse means that an enormous amount of time would need to be spent to gain a short amount of footage, this may prove impractical.
SBS


Fresh colours and a gentle piano melody gives to me infers a female target audience. The simple shapes and colours coupled with this music suggests an older audience too, a younger one would have a far more loud and vibrant ident with heavy music and in your face colours. I don't think it would suit the target audience of my channel - however the technique of vector animation and simple shapes could be emulated easily to fit.
Fiver


A good comparison to SBS, using a similar technique of simple shapes and colour an entirely different feel has been acheived by the dark background and more overt music. The way the shapes merge and form into the various genres the channel broadcasts is a clever way of implanting it in the audiences mind. Particular references like the unzip, and the computer terminal flashing cursor at the end lead me to believe it is a male young audience. Cliché terminal looks and such I am keen to avoid to prevent my channel being too far down the track of geek to warrant a large audience but the method of animation is one I can replicate.

All of these demonstrate similar conventions. Primarily a clearly defined logo visible either at the beginning, the end of all the way through. They are also all within the length of about 30-45 seconds (excluding the advert) and contain very little on screen. The music employed is typically simple with no vocals and contains no introduction or climax, essentially being nothing more than a melody rather than a song.

Semiotics in Media

Semiotics is the way in which symbols and icons provide meaning to us. For example, the trusty red slash through an object which to British audiences at least signifies that anything contained within this or is overlayed by this is forbidden.

Semiotics can be broken down into three main branches:

• Icons
• Indexes
• Symbols

Icons:
Icons are indistinguishable from the entity they represent. By this I mean graphically they are exactly as depicted. A prime example of this is the Trash Can icon on a computer - its meaning is just that, a trash can thus its image is a trash can. Icons are extremely important in a User Interface, so for websites they are crucial to help user navigation.

Indexes:
Indexes are connected to their meaning, but are not a direct representation of it. A photograph of smoke on the horizon will imply that there is a fire beneath it. They indicate a meaning and are not limited to visual means, smells can be indexes too. For media products, sound and vision would be the only types of indexes available.

Symbols:
A symbol is neither an indication of meaning, nor is it a direct representation. It's meaning is derived purely from convention within the audience. This generally means they are far more susceptible to the impacts of Social and Cultural relativism than the other two (smoke implies something burning in all cultures, a bird symbol does not). Symbols tend to be logos and brands for companies, for example the coloured squares of Windows, the blue-backed F of facebook and the circular swirls on the BBC One idents.

On a typical website you would expect to see all three.

 

An example of an index, the large high skyscrapers and sprawling city accompanying a story on successful business gives an indication of that. Small business prospects do not produce such large buildings, and in our culture a big building is always a sign of success (large home, wealth etc).

Examples of Icons. The weather is represented by a graphical version of the condition. There is no way an image of a cloud with the sun poking out behind it can mean anything other than, in this context, a cloudy day with some sun.

A Symbol. The cut out of BBC in white blocks only means the BBC because of the convention of using it with BBC produced media. Without this they would simply be three letters in a peculiar font. 

Textual Analysis of Various Websites

Like all media, Web pages are tailored towards a specific Target Audience / Market. Below I shall analyse two contrasting markets - the male orientated Dave and the female orientated ITV2.

Dave's website is designed to fit in the gentleman's club parlour art style demonstrated on the idents. The dark floral wallpaper and up light images really capture this atmosphere. The little touches such as picture frame borders further enhance this dark, even seedy, guilty pleasure that is a channel designed for panel shows, male magazines such as Top Gear and sit coms. The dark red used on the navigation and login - the highlight colour as explained in the Colour Theory post - has connotations of the "underworld", a boudoir-esque feel acheived through one simple contrasting colour.

On the polar opposite of the scale of Gender related websites, ITV2 demonstrates in just the background alone which audience it caters for. The made up woman and smart-casual dressed male is not something a male targetted media text would contain as the largest "surface area" of the page. Furthermore the big advertisement for one of the channel's shows entitled "The Only Way is Essex", women stood in posed positions are crucially not sexualised in the way a male audience would respond to. Sure, they aren't ugly but the toned down clothing and stern faces seem to be showing female strength rather than the typical "come to me big boy" look.

The colourscheme of the site is also an indication of its target age range. The almost garish lime green implies its intended for a younger audience. Older women would stereotypically prefer pastel shades in calmer colours, this is very in-your-face. The programming also backs this up, older women who are perhaps of a higher income would not want to watch fly-on-the-wall documentaries of Katie Price (generally speaking).

Colour Theory

Colours are paramount to an effective and successful website design. They influence the mood, the tone and can if used wrongly turn users away from your website. A way to avoid turning users off is to not use too many colours, as it often makes it harder to find information on the page. Too few colours potentially makes a page boring and plain, however it is better to have too few than too many.

A common practise is to have three main colours on a page.

• Primary - This will take up the most area on the page and generally sets the feel of the entire design
• Secondary - Used to back up the primary colour, its usually this is pretty close to the primary but in a different shade or tint.
• Highlight - To be used in moderation, this is used to emphasise parts of your design as it is contrasting to the previous two colours. An example of its usage could be an important button on a website or the logo on a print advert.

 In order to achieve a good colour scheme there are key conventions and tools that are available to help. Firstly a good knowledge of how the spectrum works, this is used with a "Colour Wheel". It shows the Primary Colours in key locations:

Primary Colours are Red, Green and Blue

In addition to this, it has the Secondary Colours which are the adjacent primary colours blended together. These sit in between and are Magenta, Yellow and Cyan.

Finally the Tertiary Colours are a further blend of the adjacent colours to produce even more colours.

Finally producing the full wheel, as shown below.

After we have our full wheel, we can begin to devise colour schemes using a variety of methods to pair up colours with one another. The first one is Analogue, whereby the 2 adjacent colours of a chosen colour are picked. This can in design terms, lead to one that feels harmonious.

The next method is Complimentary. This is where the colour directly opposite a chosen colour. As its a contrasting colour, this is usually how the Highlight colour is picked.

Split-Complimentary combines Analogous and Complimentary together to produce a colourscheme with a degree of contrast, that does not have such a jarring impact as straight complimentary. By having two analogous colours, it allows the design to feel more harmonious.

Finally there is Triadic. This involves selected three hues of equal distance apart to gain your colour scheme. This has the benefit of having a more balanced colour scheme, while staying colourful.

In order to designate a colour scheme for my Website, Ident and Print Advertisement I will be using these techniques and conventions in order to ensure it's both colourful and not irritating to the eye.

Website Structure Conventions

All professional websites will follow the same basic conventions. At their purest form it boils down to:

• A Logo / Header section
• Well defined navigation
• Content, using a mix of text and multimedia
• A footer section

It's important to note that these are not part of good User Interface design, you can have all these elements and still have a very bad user interface. These are the core structures that any website needs to have in order to function fully as a website.

You can see these conventions in place on the BBC news website:

Header Section:
Typically the logo will be situated on the left, in this case BBC News. There may also be a graphic, as you can see on the right in the form of the signifier of the red atlas with the white circles. I feel this works well, as all the most important information and links are placed at the top, along with a Search Form. It makes it easily accessible.

Navigation: 
There are 2 typical types of website navigation. In this case, they have gone for a horizontal format as opposed to a vertical list style element. Horizontal can be used on websites where horizontal space is available, as depending on how many links are required, it can appear cramped if there are too many elements.

Content:
As this is a News website I am using as an example, the content will differ compared to a TV Channel based site. However the principles are the same: Text, graphics and other multimedia must be used in balance with one another. Too much text is daunting and hard to read, especially on a screen, whereas too many images can mean either long load times, poor search engine optimisation and makes it difficult for the ever expanding mobile browsing market. Too many graphics can also mean that explanatory text and meaning is lost in a sensory overload, leaving the user confused or frustrated. 


You can see more intricate conventions on this website here: http://netaccountant.net/website-design-for-accountants/web-design-conventions/ as well as further deconstructions.

Course Criteria

My media task combines the following two types of media:

• Print
• Web Based

Within these categories of media, certain criteria must be met by myself in order to achieve a successful grade.

Print Media

• Using IT appropriately.
• Showing understanding of conventions of layout and page design.
• Showing awareness of the need for variety in fonts and text size.
• Accurate use of language and register.
• Framing a shot, including and excluding elements as appropriate.
• Using a variety of shot distances as appropriate.
• Shooting material appropriate to the task set.
• selecting mise-en-scéne including colour, figure, lighting, objects and setting
• Manipulating photographs as appropriate to the context for presentation, including within text, within particular IT programmes, cropping and resizing.

Web Based Media

• Combining some or all of images, text, sound and video as appropriate for the task set.
•  Using ICT effectively to facilitate the combination of such material.
• Producing material so that it communcates clearly to the "reader".
• Using the conventions of web publishing to enable the "reader" to navigate the material appropriately.

There are also criteria that must be met for the Evaluation of this course:

Evaluative Criteria:

• There is excellent understanding of the forums and conventions used in the productions.
• There is excellent understanding of the role and use of new media in various stages of the production.
• There is excellent understanding of the combination of main product and ancillary texts.
• There is excellent understanding of the significance of audience feedback.
• There is exellent skill in the choice of form in which to present the evaluation.
• There is excellent ability to communicate.
• There is excellent use of digital technology or ICT in the evaluation.

Initial Market Research

In order to present a well informed pitch of my ideas for a TV Channel website, I needed to gain some quantitative data about what the audience will expect from any new website. I did this using an online survey with a simple single question:

What do you feel is important in a TV Channel Website?

This was posted on Social Media websites such as Facebook and conventional methods such as Forums. The results I gathered are what I feel are reflective of the changing way people are using the internet: Expecting good quality content and the ability to share it.

The results break down as follows:

Blue - Quality of Content
Green - Quantity of Content
Red - Design of the Website
Yellow - Ability to share content 

The link to the survey is here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dFQ2NHFvdUlZMmYzS0ZLenVFdFNKN0E6MQ

Pitch Presentation

Here is the video of the pitch I presented to an audience on my initial ideas for the practical production and the two accompanying tasks:

The other option

The other option I've been considering, and am infact swinging towards is the Design a Website for a TV Channel. This is due to my experience in the world of Web Development, of which I do freelance in my spare time away from education.

This task involves:

• A Web Page with original content and minimum of 3 linked pages
• An animated Ident to accompany that would be used on the channel
• A double page spread of TV listings
• A full page newspaper advertisement.

Of these the ones I am looking at are all bar the double page spread of TV Listings.

The reasons for this and not the Short Film task I outlined below, is that I have done film under this course last year and in years prior to AS. I feel it would be good to expand my horizons in a field that I am also confident in as well as encompassing animation, in the form of the Ident.

Soon I will be pitching my initial ideas to an audience, which will be posted here and give greater insight into my ideas.

Short Film Option

One of the options I am considering following this year is the Short Film Brief which includes:

• A Poster for the Film
• A Radio Trailer
• A film magazine review page featuring the film.

I am considering going for an animated short, this is because I've been inspired by such shorts as Second Wind which can be seen below:

I love the style and technique used, which is a combination of Paper, Photoshop and After Effects. It would also be a welcome break from Live Action, which has been a common task in Media over the AS course - and I am keen to branch out my skillset away from it.

I am however unsure of the Radio Advertisement part, as this is not an area I am particularly interested in or passionate about.