For our project, we had to use our own original imagery, whether it was illustrated or photographed or both. It was an interesting experience; I had to be very creative with how I set up the shot. Having very little prior product photography experience, I had fun setting up the shot and playing around with the lighting and angles. I taped two pieces of presentation paper together and used it as my backdrop.

This is the final shot I went with (in the first draft of our project, anyway).

It was a great learning experience. I’m looking forward to taking more advertising photography.

In my research on “issues” related print advertisement, I came across a blog that criticized the use of powerhouse advertising agencies in their pro-bono work for nonprofits; this particular person felt that the only goal these types of agencies have in mind is to win awards, but they do not help advocacy or emphasize call to action. It was an interesting read to learn that even advertising agencies can suffer from losing sight of their goal. He cites many ads and calls them out on being too abstract and not being direct enough. While I agreed with him on some examples, there are others still that I thought had enough clarity to match its visual impact, such as the one displayed above. It’s creative but drives a point about hunger. The ideas connect to me, and there’s a call to action in the end. It makes me think more about to what point we can abstract an ad until it becomes meaningless, or worse, turns against, the intention of the ad. The balance between making getting donors to give to a nonprofit versus not is very delicate.

The first part of our project process involved ideation and concept development. We were to create 20 sketches for pros for our issue, as well as for the cons. My poor partner had to drive all the way out to West LA to meet up with me (and he lives in South Gate!) to make this complete. After our first review, we have to create another 20.

What I learned from this first iteration is that interesting copy is much easier to come up with when you have sketches and visual concepts. It was fun to try to think of clever copy that could potentially capture the reader’s attention that would also go well with our visuals.

And, lastly, I learned that concept development makes me you look at ads with a critical eye; what about them makes them so great? What makes it a bad ad? Most people pick up an ad and say they like it or hate it without much reason; I’ve come to analyze the concepts of the ads I look at and to figure out what makes it clever, thoughtful or interesting.

Over the weekend, my project partner and I did a lot of research into our topic of cocoa beans and child labor/slavery. We learned a lot about what goes on in these cocoa bean plantations and how the children get to be in the dire position that they are in. ‘Twas an illuminating look into how

However, the feedback we got was that it may not be controversial enough, and it’d be difficult to position the issue with both pros and cons for it–a requirement that needed to be fulfilled for this project. So I think we can reposition ourselves as addressing the issue of Fair Trade, rather than specifically child slave labor in chocolate.

I just had the misfortune of experiencing what it’s like to be a little too simple with your designs: I nearly went deaf. No worries–everything is okay, I can hear. But for that half a second that the volume was what appeared to be at the highest, my ears are in pain.

You see, on a Mac, changing the volume level precisely is not afforded in the keyboard. As a baseline, I like for all my applications to be on max volume, and then adjust the system accordingly. But when I use the keyboard to adjust my volume, it adjusts in notches, so often times I want a volume level that exists in between the notches that are offered.

Well, I’ve been teased at work for not using the OS volume control that can be found in the taskbar in the upper right. So, I used it, and guess what?

THERE ARE NO INDICATORS OF WHAT MAX OR MIN IS.

It might be obvious to some people that a knob being at the “lower” end means “lowest,” and a knob at the higher end means “highest,” but it wasn’t obvious to me; after all, direction is relative, and I ALWAYS go from top to bottom as my lowest to highest on controls. I’m not really sure where I got it from, but there ya go.

So imagine the fury I felt when I accidentally damaged my eardrums for that half second, thinking that the top is lowest volume.

For the record, I may have been an idiot to think that the volume would go from lowest to highest (top to bottom); however, there are NO indicators on the volume control to indicate where the volume levels are! The icon for volume is at the top, setting it as (to me, anyway) the baseline for minimum volume. I’m pretty sure that if the volume bar existed above the volume icon instead, I wouldn’t have made the same mistake.

This is when simple can be too simple; if something like volume control doesn’t have the proper indicators to prevent people from second guessing its function, it can cause serious harm, like it just did to me.

EDIT: It was brought to my attention that the soundwaves on the volume icon changes as you go higher, but it takes an extraordinary amount of volume change in order to see one wave added. BAD DESIGN, APPLE. And painful, too :\