March 12, 2012 (monday)

Today, I was out because I was not feeling so well, But it was the day that we had to show a rough draft of our video. My partner informed me that Jimmy went over the class and gave feedback about our video's.  My partner mentioned that he liked the concept that we had. So we were on the right track. That was kind of a relief since we had a short amount of time to finish the promo videos.  


My partner and I communicate back and forth constantly and we know what we are going to do and what we want. That being said, we already had a clear idea of what the postcard was going to look like and how the video was going to look.


At this time the video was still incomplete and needed some revisions and rendering. We will develop it further more until Wednesday.

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Today was fun day in class. Even though we didn't do much but it felt relaxed and free.  I wasn't as stressed out as usual. Maybe it is because the class is almost over and I'm extremely excited about it. 


There was a quick discussion about a student that came up with a good phrase or tag line. It was  something like .."NOT you local design school".  Jimmy mentioned that even though it's a good tag-line but it is starting off with a negative, which is the word "NOT".  When promoting something you never start off with a negative statement because you want people to take action not to gear them away from the actual advertisement. 


We all showed our promo videos to the class. Most of the groups had good videos that only required minor changes to be a great promo video. A lot of the groups did great work and it came out better than I thought it would.  We were all confused at first because we were not sure what to show in the video, how to montage it. The final results show that we are a really creative group and we are capable of producing ideas into actual results in a short amount of time.

Wed march 7

On Wednesday, we had to have the concepts ready. We had to basically know what we wanted to video take, who was our audience.  My partner and I had an idea but Jimmy mentioned that it was very boring, so we had to come up with another idea. We knew that we wanted to do postcards for our collateral piece no matter what the video was about.  

Some of the students already had concepts and videos and some of them didn't even have an idea yet.  As my partner and I were talking about different ideas, we came up with two that we can work with.  Since we are targeting high school kids, we decided to write down everything that the high school kids like, such as music, sports, electronics, ect. Then we could figure out how to tie in those interests with graphic Design at Cal State LA.  

monday march 5th class discussion

On monday we gathered around the big table like we always do and discuss the next project, which was the 2-3 minutes promotional video for the graphic Design department at Cal State LA.  Before that class began, one of the students thought that we should all participate and make a one great video. After the class proposed the offer, Jimmy thought that it was not a good idea. 

Most of us were confused about the video. We were not sure on how to make it, what to do or where to start.  Jimmy showed us a video that was very short and very plain, but not very interesting.  What we are trying to do is promote the graphic design department not bore the audience.  

Jimmy stepped out of the room for about 45 minutes and we had a great conversation about what we thought was good at our school and then compared it to other school, such as Cal State Northridge.

We had different idea and different views. Most of us were wishing that we had more option for the classes that are required for graduation, because they are very limited. 

Wed Feb 29, 2012

Today was the big day. Presentation and the final work was due! Guady and I were confident and knew exactly what message to send out to our audience.  Our final images were not fantastic but were pretty good.  I was happy of the overall work and we had worked very hard on this particular project.  We put in a lot of time working together and it payed off.  Our ad was convincing, it conveyed what we wanted to say and it advertised what we wanted to advertise.  We decided to make minor changed and add additional information so it will look good our portfolio. We will be re-taking some of the images to capture more of the device and more of the boxers.

Monday Feb 27, 2012

On Monday, our professor was ill, he could not make it. We had to critic each others work because on Wednesday, which was the next class meeting we had to have the final comps and be prepared for presentation.  The critic, actually went better than I thought. Everyone participated and gave their thought and ideas on how to improve our work. Gaudy and I were in a good shape because they didn't have a lot of negative criticism on our project.  They pointed out that the logo was a bit small and we fixed that instantly.

A lot of group did really good and we gave good feedback and we expressed our ideas and helped one another so we can all get good grades.  Some groups did not take the comments into consideration and kept what they had and other took advantage of it and made changes to make it better. 

Feb 22, 2012 Wednesday class

Wednesday was an exciting day because most of us had worked on the layout, taking the pictures and ready for the first criticism.  We all laid out our work and we went one by one to see each others work. We got feedback from Jimmy to see what was working and what wasn't.

Most of the student did a pretty nice job. Some had good imagery, some had nice layouts and some had nothing. When it was our turn we were advised that the imagery was not quite working and the layout not right yet.  I agreed because we needed to work more on our layout and also take the time to really edit some of the pictures.

Overall, I think this is a nice assignment and I'm very excited to see the work for Monday.  I am learning a lot in this class and I hope it will benefit me while I go into the real world.

Feb 20, 2012 Monday's class

We started the class with a discussion about our guest speaker, Kali Nikitas.  We discussed what we like, didn't like, what we thought was helpful and most importantly what we learned from her.  I liked her presentation because she is very encouraging and makes it seem like anything is possible if you go for it.  More like Jimmy's advice when he mentioned that we shouldn't be afraid and just for for it. If you want to be successful then you have to put your fears aside and go for it.

Monday was a review day for our initial ideas and sketches. We all put our work on the desks and walked around to each others work. Some groups had good sketches and great ideas and other not so developed yet. Out of all the sketches that my partner and I did, people liked the bathroom scene the best. They thought it was a funny ad, and that is what we were going for.

We already had the idea, sketches and the heading all working together.  We just needed to figure our the placement of things and taking the images. 

Wednesday, Feb 15, 2011

On Wednesday, we came up with the brief and 40 sketches. We had several good sketches and ideas. We knew the direction we wanted to take. After showing Jimmy our sketches we narrow our ideas down to 3 good topic or directions we wanted to take. At first we were thing of doing somewhat dirty, comedy but we realized that it is really hard to come up with three campaign that is humorous and also connects to one another. We then realized that our fantastic ideas weren't fantastic anymore.

We decided to go with our 2 idea or plan I might say. Second Idea was to target Men because from our research we have notice that women sign up more for Netflix then men. So, we thought we should target me to bring in new customer rather than women who sign up more frequently.  

I feel like we now have a stronger idea and more detailed and planed brief to work with. Hopefully, our ideas and headlines work together as a whole and communicate what we intend to communicate. 

Monday FEb. 13

On Monday we presenting our the next assignment, which was to create a set of 3 ad campaign. We had to chose a consumer product that was poorly advertised. My partner Guady and I decided to do NETFLIX. This is a huge company and we have not come across an interesting or eye catching ad in any magazine yet.  We had to write a creative brief before starting on the project because without a creative brief you will be gong in circles and not communicating what you intend to communicate.  


The creative brief is a layout, a plan of the product that you are going to use. It's like investigating a scene. Every single thing matters and every little thing should be taken into consideration before you can proceed. It should be well thought out, well researched and organized.  From what I understood, the creative brief is like the foundation in building a home. Without the foundation, the house would collapse. 


In Advertising, I learned that you don't always need a fantastic image with a great heading to be successful. I learned that you can have a great heading with a okay image or a fantastic image with an okay heading and still get the point across and be successful. 

Wednesday's February 8, 2012

Today was the big day, FINAL. You can tell everyone was very nervous.  My partner and I went first, my partner introduced the idea and then explained one of the ads. After I followed her and went on explaining the concept behind the image we chose. I was very happy with the final outcome.  After the presentation, followed rest of the class. Some groups gave good presentations then others, some had better images than others and some groups had great ideas but poor developed imagery and typography.  Overall, everybody worked very hard on these projects and did a great job.


After the presentations, we were assigned another project which seems harder than the first. Good luck to all.

Monday Feb 6, 2012

This was the day before the final comps. We all put our projects up for final feedback and changes before the big day on Wednesday.  Some of the works were pretty good and some were just okay.  We went over things that were working and things that needs more work and improvement. On our project we were told that ours were so similar to one another, so we had to come up with a new idea and plan in one day before the final.  That made it ten times more nerve wrecking since we only had couple of hours to come up with a totally different idea and imagery.  Well, my partner and I work very hard and came up with an idea and actually build it to photograph it. I thought it would be easier to build and photograph it, then to mess with it in illustrator.

monday Feb 1, 2012

Today we had the ads in actual size ready to go. Each team posted their work on the boards so we can all see each others work and learn from one another.  Todays discussion was about each individual work, what was right, what didn't work, what needed improvement and so on.  One of our ad was in a good standing and my partner and I feel that we have a good explanation for what we did.  But the other one was not as good as we thought it would be.  Although, we do have an idea on what we want to do and how to position it.  We got some positive and negative feedback that would hopefully help us improve our work.

Monday jan. 30- Ads.

Wednesday was a criticism day by Jimmy. Each group got to meet with Jimmy individually to see if we were on the right track.  We had  many ideas but none of them seem to be working according to Jimmy.  He pointed out things that we had to take into consideration and areas where we had to work on.  Overall this project is harder than I thought.  The amount of time and energy in this project is unbelievable, but I must say it is interesting.

Wednesday's class jan. 25- Ads.

I couldn't imagine how hard it was trying to come up with 20 sketches/concepts for our project #1, which is to creating a really good ad.  I guess in Ad every single thing matters, every word counts, every image should communicate and make sense.  Also, my partner and I was informed that we should focus not only on the image and the headline of the ad but the "ACTION" what do we want people to do after seeing our ad.  What is the message and how should they react to it ? I guess it simply telling people "This is what's right and this is what you should do".  The hardest part of all is tying in everything together, the image, headline and the action. I couldn't image how much thought and time it went into a great Ad.  

Jan 23, 2012 Monday's class

On Monday, Jimmy pulled out some example of what is considered to be "good Ads" from couple of magazines.  Then as a class, we went over the ads, discussed why it was a good ad. There were lots of minor elements involved in the ads that made it either worst or better in each ad. Also, the layout has to do a lot with the ad as well, you can have beautiful type and if the layout is off, then it ruins the whole ad.  It's little detail in advertising that makes a big difference and now after the class discussion I became more aware of the things that go in the magazines.

Wednesday's class discussion 01/18/12

Since Monday was Martin Luther Kings memorial day, on Wednesday's Jimmy asking the class if anyone participated in any kind of community service work. One of the classmates mentioned that she voted for SOPA- which stands for "stop online piracy act". The class started to discuss the matter that the government was trying to pass the law to enforce people to credit the artists whenever someone posts something on you tube or any similar site. If they post something and not credit the artist than they would be fined or punished.  Then the first assignment was assigned. In groups of two we had to pick a issue and argue both sides.  The pro's and the Con's of the issue.  The assignment is to create a full page AD in the LA Times, in black and white and argue both sides of the issue convincingly.  Research is due on monday for the first assignment.  

Wednesday's class

Our homework was to look through magazines and pick 3 really ads and write about why they were really good ads. So, on Wednesday went over the homework, looked through each one and picked a couple for discussion.  Each ad has a purpose and the purpose is to get consumer to buy the product.  Depending on the product, the ads are place in different magazines because it depends who their target audience is.