Viagra - Combat Antiquing (part of video ad campaign)
by TAXI, Toronto
Other ads in the campaign focus on different activities older people stereotypically participate in, such as strolling and reading.
Target Markets
These ads would be marketed towards towards older men, aged 50+, baby boomers. I know this because it’s made obvious just by the product. A secondary target could be older woman, in the same age range, who might have a husband or significant other who could use Viagra.
Cultural Themes
The cultural themes present in these ads are just those relevant to the target market, aka baby boomers. They are getting older, and can relate to the topics brought up in these ads.
Overall Observations
It’s very clever the way they’re able to promote this product without actually saying what it’s for and what it does. Being such a well known brand, Viagra has the luxury of being able to just hint at it and still get the point across. This might not read as well to people who don’t know the brand, but I can’t imagine that being much of a problem.
Design Is V1
The general idea of my design is theory is that design is a tool that communicates a message or solves a problem, but more importantly that it’s a result of outside influences. By that I mean, design is influenced by the culture that surrounds it as well as the experience and style of the designer. Whether that be by following standards set before, or going outside the box and creating something completely unique. All design is creating to fulfill a specific purpose, which can be creative or just functional but to me, it’s almost always subjective to the influence of other similar designs and sometimes the culture thats related to the market your entering. And at the same time, location can help to dictate this as well. For example, because of the International Type style, Swiss designers are more likely to design clean, minimalistic type based pieces because it’s part of their design culture.
My Design Process
1) Research and Inspiration
I start by researching the background of the project. If it’s an ad campaign for a product, I’ll learn as much as I can about the product so I have more aspects to play off of when I’m trying to sell it. I’ll also look at the products and maybe ads of it’s competitors, or just similar products. Then, once I’ve familiarized myself with all these things, I find it’s quite helpful to just look at good design and advertising in general as a source of inspiration. In particular, I have a lot of design/advertising books and magazines I like to flip through just to get my mind running.
2) Sketching
This part of the process often takes place during the research and inspiration process as well. I always have a notebook in front of my when working on a new project, so I can quickly jot things down that trigger any sort of response related to the project. I’ll make word clouds or lists to help brainstorm ideas, then move onto rough sketches/thumbnails. I’ve found a lot of our professors like to go through this 3 step process, which is rough sketches, polished linear roughs then digital roughs. However, in my case, I usually find what I’m looking for in the sketch stage and move right onto digitals, because I’ve found I work a lot faster and more proficiently digitally.
3) First Digital Draft/Experimentation
Once I’ve kind of laid out a basic design through sketching and in my head, I move onto the digital phase. I’ll usually come up with 2 or 3 digital versions and experiment with all the different aspects like colour, choice of type and imagery until I find one that suits the assignment and goal best then start to polish it up. I’d say this is where I spend most of the overall design process, because I find myself making a lot of subtle, meticulous changes here and there until it’s exactly how I want it.
4) Peer Critiques and Revisions
After working on the design myself for a while, I like to show it to some of my classmates and/or professors to get a different perspective/opinion on it and improve/correct certain things I wouldn’t have noticed myself. In most cases these are technical changes made to the actual design. The main concept doesn’t often change in this phase of my process unless there’s a major problem pointed out.
5) Finalizing The Design
Finally, after getting some feedback, I’ll go back to make final touches to the work alone, and just once again go over everything once more to make sure it’s perfect. Typically there aren’t any major changes, more like touch ups before I hand it in. I consider myself my own worst critic, and I spend a lot of time looking at every little thing, so I know if I’m happy with my design enough to leave it, I’m confident enough it’ll do well. And if the time permits (if I get it done ahead of schedule), then I’ll leave it for a while, because looking at the same design for so long could skew my perspective, then I’ll come back to it again near the deadline and see if I still like it and make changes if necessary.
If I ever get stuck on a design and don’t know what to do, as mentioned, I like to leave it alone for a while, go do something else and come back and look at it with a fresh mind. Usually, this involves just watching a movie, reading a book, or just getting out of the house for a while. Usually it’s not related to the subject matter of the project, just because I like to get my mind off it completely so I have a fresh start. The way I see it, if I’m ever stuck it just means I’ve been trying too hard and over-thinking things, so it’s good to stop, relax and focus my attention to something else for a while. Even if it’s just working on a different project.
About me.
Hi, I’m Michael Corpuz, but you can call me Mike. Miguel if you fancy. I’m an interactive hero, slowly making the web a better place, one line of code at a time. I’m a design juggernaut, making the web a better place to look at, and ridding our media driven world of unecessary cheap photoshop tricks and eye-watering bevels. I’m evolving, transfering these skills over to print design and advertising. I’m a man in possession of a steel trap for a head, consisting of a solid background video production, art and photography, using these creative instincts I’ve grown up with to enhance my design. I’m a self-proclaimed nerd, of epic proportions, who plays more video games, watches more movies, and researches more obscure facts online than I have time for. And if I can find the time after that, I like to jam out on the ukulele/guitar. Most importantly, I’m evidently horrible at writing autobiographical content for myself, and I’m probably missing a lot of vital information here, so feel free to ask me if there’s anything else you’d like to know.
