Prelimery Advert

My advert was designed to be aimed at young(ish) men of the age of around 16-26, rather than aim at the main-stream I decided to go for more of an individual approach whose looking at pushing into the frontier, to go as far as they could. However that’s a bit deep let’s first start from where the idea came from.

The original idea came from seeing my aunt jumping from a plane for charity, sky diving, which made me think of the phrase of “Look before you jump”, but to get anyway you just have to take that leap of faith otherwise you’ll never have that lucky break. So with the name in mind I then went about looking through previous pictures I had collected from holidays (been to some very good destinations), you may ask why I didn’t try to get a new photo or one from my aunt jumping, I realistic said to myself I would not get the picture I wanted around my area or within quite a large vicinity, so I used an old one.

The photo on the left is what I started with for my advert. I decided that some parts would need to go such as the other hand, the feet in the water, the ladder and the cable stretching right in the middle of the picture.

I did this by using the clone stamp tool to remove all of them. The procedure is quite simple, all you need to do is press “S” then hold “Alt” and select the location you want to clone and away you go with the brush.

I then decide to also crop the picture to a more bearable size, I did this by using the Crop tool, and I then ended up with the 2nd image on the left.

To explain why I decided to actually use this picture is quite simple. This was the first time my brother had dived into the sea, and he was the first one to do it off the entire boat. He took a leap and down he went. It is also a nice picture apart from how dark it looks, but that was quite easy to correct by using the contract/brightness level tool in Photoshop Elements, not as efficient as in Photoshop CS but still worked to the level I wanted it.

The image now had a vibrant rich feel to it rather than the dullness it began with as well as making the centre of the image more distinct.

I then decided to work on the bottle. Sadly most of the aftershave I have or any bottles were no what I was looking for, so I decided to mix and match a few images until I got what I wanted.

After searching for 20minutes or so and mucking around on Photoshop I came up with the bottle I wanted, which is on the left. I felt that this bottle was good because of it’s unique dimension of the average bottle, most are normally quite tall and thin and circular in shape, I decided to go with this wide and more square shape to target my audience a bit more, I also used it because of it simplicity to changed and mould on Photoshop.

I then wanted to add it to the image, I first started off with a black circle underneath the bottle to bring the eye to the image, but I decided that would distract the person from everything else which wasn’t the idea. So rather I then decided to merge it with the background as though it too was diving into the water. I did this by using the sponge tool on the image and finally came up with this final affect, which was quite affective on the final image.

After having designed the parts of the image I needed I then went about putting it all together, the first hurdle I came to was where to put the bottle itself. I felt that going down in a stair/arc fashion would be good. I set out with Title > Main Image > Bottle.

I image that came out was very busy and didn’t really allow you to absorb the entire image. So I then went about trying to make it simpler, yet keep as much complexity as I could. The 3 images below show you my trail of thought. I decided to curve my slogan in a diving fashion to unite it with the diver, this way your eye goes all away across the advert and absorbs as much of it as you can.

I decided to change from future to desire because desire is more of a cosmetic word than future, and it makes you think that with this cosmetic you will be able to dive into the world of desire which is generally what they are for, attracting the opposite sex in a desirable way. It also meant I had alliteration between depths and desire making it roll of the tongue more affectively while also making it stick in your mind more. I curved the text by simply rotating multiple different words, I found this far more effective to get the curve I wanted rather than the Word Warp tool available in Photoshop Elements.

I then further went to change the name of Leap to Dive. Leap came from how my aunt leaped from the plane, however diving was more relevant to my image and also brought about my desired idea of taking that jump of faith. Dive was also still related to my aunt skydiving.

Overall the image isn’t the best way to bring the name of the cosmetic across. If possible I would have made the bridge less dominant in the picture while also being closer to the shore to allow the breath taking scenery is more see able. However I felt the image is quite effective and the wording / name of the cosmetic would be something many individual males of the age 16-24.