Is your advertising campaign fit for purpose and why?I feel that there are a number of different reasons why my work Is deemed fit for purpose with the task that I was set. I firstly know that the posters I created were in a very similar style to posters that I have seen used by other campaigns that are based around the same area. For example this image of a Christmas tree that has been thrown onto the street is the kind of poster that inspired my work. The implication of the poster is that the tree is like a homeless person and that it doesn’t take long to go from being a part of a household to being on your own on the street. I felt that not just this work but a whole range of other posters with a similar style held a very powerful message and one that I wanted to attempt to convey in my work without having my work seem too similar.

The most challenging aspect of my poster creation was that I wanted my work to be unique enough for it to be recognisably mine but without straying away from the message. The main thing that I knew was that I wanted to stray away from using imagery which left a negative connotation with the homeless. Images of people looking sad or sat alone, I wanted to convey the same message but in a way that made people stop and think and actually want to make a difference in the homeless problem. I feel that the main way that I have made my work fit for campaign use is by creating a set of 3 posters that are all directly related, one of the posters showing that someone's home could be the street, another showing someone's home being a house and another which shows an abandoned railway station, the 3 posters contain the same layout and colour schemes which let you know that they are part of a set. All of my posters all have the word Home faded out on them some more subtle than others, the message that I am trying to convey is that it isn't always easy to spot a homeless person or a place that someone could call home, sometimes you have to look really closely to see beneath the surface because the stigma that is attached to being homeless is incredibly derogatory and is a viewpoint that should be changed.

Example Poster

My poster

At the top of this page you will see that the three posters that I created all follow a very similar theme, this was definitely the idea that I wanted to portray. I wanted to create posters that applied to both of my target audiences (16 – 24 and 25+) my original intention was to have the poster of the street be aimed at those who are 16 – 24 and that the poster with the house on would be aimed at those who are 25+ due to the implication that those people over 25 would have the homes for those who are homeless to stay in.

After looking at the finished products I actually feel that it would be the other way around and that the house poster would be motivation for the 16 – 24 year olds it would make them realise that there may be a nice place to stay and that they should get in touch. The poster of the street will hopefully make people with homes realise how good they have it and possibly make them want to help out homeless charities and get in contact.

I feel that my poster set definitely communicates the message that I was trying to convey. Upon first glance the poster still has a very clear message when read, there is a fact about homelessness and countless contact details on how to contact a homeless charity. This should clarify the message enough, however, for anyone willing to take a closer look they will see the word home faded into all the posters and will understand the deeper meaning of the posters. I think that is what I like best about my posters the fact that the message can be interpreted in a number of different ways dependant on the person who sees it however as far as I can understand there are no negative connotations to be found.

In the top left of this page you will see the flat plan for what was the original idea that I wanted to use for my set of posters. When you compare the original flat plan to one of the finished products ( shown below flat plan ) you will notice that whilst being shown in this manner they may look very differently but if I were to fill the blanks where the boxes are the final posters would actually look very similar.

When I started to create the first poster I very much used this template but upon finishing everything the way that I had laid out the poster all seemed very cluttered and unorganised. That is what made me want to move the layout of it around a little bit, I shifter the title, tagline and statistic over to the top left of the poster, my main reason for this was to keep it neat but the secondary reason was to allow for more space for the image which would allow the poster to be more eye-catching.

The large image was originally only intended to cover around 2/3rd of the poster but upon moving my title and tagline to the top left I felt that perhaps I could spread the picture to cover the entirety of the space that I had, after a little bit of searching to find the correct image which I felt conveyed a powerful enough message and was of a high enough aspect ratio to allow me to stretch it without blurring. I felt that this allowed my work to be more eye-catching and would do the job that it was intended to do which is drag people in to look at the poster.

Originally I left a really big section in the bottom right as my intention was to leave a large paragraph that was based around the information from the charity. This idea also changed and what I decided to do was to give a small section in the bottom right. I still included a decent amount of information based around the charity but opted to use a smaller font which was still readable but didn’t take up a sizeable amount of the page.

The only thing that was exactly the same was the logo placement. I felt that this was definitely in the right place, however I did slightly raise it and put it a little higher than was originally intended, this was too allow a footer which had the information on how to contact the charity such as a phone number and an email address.

I had originally planned to only create 2 posters but due to me finishing those ahead of schedule I decided to try and create some extra pieces of work that could help me improve my grade.

The first thing that I created was the leaflet, shown to the left, using very simple shapes I feel that I have managed to create a leaflet that very easily spreads the awareness and message of what SASH are trying to do without bombarding a person with massive amounts of text or leaving too little information for them to understand.

The colour scheme remained the same green that SASH currently use and I opted for white text as it shows up well and reinforces the colour scheme that I had been using throughout the work.

Using screenshots from the SASH website I was able to create a leaflet that was entirely factually correct and allowed people to understand what SASH do, some of the key aspects of the charity and how they can help get involved and help to raise awareness and funds for the cause.

The final piece of work that I created is arguably my least favourite of the work that I produced, not because I feel that it isn't a good piece of work or that it doesn’t get the message across but simply because I much prefer to work with posters as I have a lot more space to work with and can allow my creative ideas to come to life.

This piece of work I actually found very difficult, due to the dimensions of the piece I struggled to come up with an idea that would allow me to subtly spread the word like I had in my previous posters. I decided to go down a different route and attempt to make it like an advertisement. As much as I hate adverts that have corny testimonials this style of advert was my inspiration for this. I wanted to try and create a persona for a boy and a man as if the boy were homeless and SASH helped him find somewhere to go and a man who had found SASH and decided to become a volunteer.

Using what I define as keywords for each participant I wanted to try and relate to the people who are in the same situation as homeless people. Using words like Alone, Nowhere to go, and then positive reinforcement of the success that he managed to find somewhere to go, I feel like I managed to create a testimonial that will allow people to know that there is a chance for them and they can still find a place to stay and get on with their life.

For the volunteer I tried to make it very apparent that helping someone out who is in a worse situation than yourself is a very rewarding thing. I hoped that this would make people think about what their life would be like if they didn’t have a place to go or if they already had children and they had no where to stay. In the hopes that this would encourage people to call up and find out more information about the charity.

I kept the colour scheme relatively similar working with the green background and white text again, however this time I added long black rectangles for a number of different reasons, the first of which being that it made the text very clear and easy to read. The other reason was to differentiate between Which of the two people were talking. The top box showing The speech of the young homeless boy and the bottom boxShowing the speech of the male volunteer.

I left the logo in the same place as it is in the posters as I feel That it is appropriate and that people will be able to easily see it

The techniques I used for the posters in the majority were actually very basic, however I do not feel that it takes away from the overall product and quality of my work. I will break down most of the techniques that I used into small segments as to clearly explain what I did.

The first bit of technique that I used and used frequently throughout the rest of the work were the blending options to add a drop shadow and a stroke to the text as seen here the drop shadow allowed me to raise the text from the background making it stand out more. This also shows the use of the stroke, the stroke allowed me to add a black line around the text which would also help the words to stand out.

I used a number of different techniques to make the word home seem nearly invisible on the ground of my first poster. The first of these techniques was the layer editing option “Multiply” as seen in the menu here -

From my understanding, the multiply effect is applied to layers in a photoshop document. This will cause the selected layer in this case the “Home” text and will try to blend the layer with the background image. An example of multiply in action can be seen here

Without multiply With multiply As you can see without multiply the layer is a gradient of black to white, on a blue background but with multiply on the black square remains the same, the grey square turns slightly blue and the white square entirely merges with the background. This allowed me to make the word fade into the concrete.

To make the word stand out more clearly and not completely fade into the background I again used the stroke effect to add a thicker outline to the word so that it subtly sinks into the background.

Another technique that I used was to make the 1st poster look like it was a little frayed and that it had been on the street and was a little tattered. To do this I found a large wall texture and put it above my main layer. I then went to “Select” then picked the “Colour range” selection which I knew would allow me to create a frayed style of image.

This brought up a menu which allowed me to select a colour range and then gave me a small preview window of what the effect would look like when applied to my work. I knew that I only really wanted the corners of the poster to appear frayed not the entire thing, this made my job at selecting a colour range a lot more difficult but after a fair bit of experimenting I managed to find it a colour range that I was happy with, which I have shown as a picture to the right.

Upon picking the correct colour range I then applied it to my work. After I had applied it I had to hide the texture layer which transferred the selection I had made onto the image layer. I then had to hit backspace and it deleted the sections of the image which I had selected leaving faint white marks everywhere as if the image had been on the street.

One of the other techniques that I decided to incorporate was the use of the perspective tool. I used this so that I could blend the word home into some of my other posters and make it look as if it were laying flat against the ground or a wall and not just standing randomly in the street.

An example of the perspective tool can be seen in my 1st poster and in my 3rd poster used to change the way that the word flowed and blends into the wall/road. I have changed the stroke on the image just to make it stand out more for the sake of the photo -

I think that my series of informational posters and banners will have a positive impact on the public. The posters and leaflets that I have created are very effective I feel. They get the message across appropriately using inviting colour schemes. The colour green is symbolic of togetherness, courage and money. These are all things that the charity represents and needs to work. I feel that the work that I have created is very similar in some ways to the SASH work that is already out there. Below is an example of a leaflet that SASH already has in circulation with a comparison next to the work that I have done.

I feel that the two pieces of work are relatively similar, both have used white background with green font. There are some differences such as the use of bold green font at the top of the SASH leaflet in comparison to the drop shadow, stroke text that I have used. The work that I created appears to use more visuals to get the message across rather than a lot of text. My text also seems to be a lot bolder and larger than there is. I feel that the works are very similar which reinforces what I said about it having a positive impact on the public. If the charity themselves are releasing work that is similar to mine then I must be on the right tracks.