Art 408 Movie Poster Design for 25 Years of AIGA in Los Angeles

When brainstorming for our first Art 408 project, I drew up a couple of conepts of how I can tie 25 years of AIGA with some of the characteristics of the city of Los Angeles. I found it interesting when Jimmy Moss, my professor at Cal-State LA for Art 408, mentioned that none of us mentioned entertainmet as an important factor of design in Los Angeles. I took this feeback to heart and figured that it would be a perfect combination of great design and characteristics of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is after all the entertainment capitol of the world. My top designers who will be honored in this project, however, are not known for their movie advertisements. 

One of the ideas that I have for this project is a full color poster honoring 4 designers who made a significant contribution to the city of Los Angeles. The poster will have a movie feel to it. I was thinking going along the ines of a typographic approach, with inspiration coming from the film "The Departed". Agustin Garza, Deborah Sussman, Ed Fella, and Dvid Cross will be the designers that will be presented on the poster. The portraits of these folks will be set in black and white to add a dramatic effect similar ot a mob movie. More details to come after receiving feedback from my professor and classmates...

Advertising By Design; A pricey, sort of badly-designed, yet somewhat useful book.

When picking up a copy of the book "Advertising by Design" by Cobin Landa, a required textbook for my Art 454LP advertising class, I was fairly disappointed at the very look of the book. For $40 (used) I expected a little more production value in a book that focuses on advertising design. It looked sort of cheap, especially when I opened it and saw that they used the "impact" typeface for some of the headings. I know a lot of advertisements use that typeface, but it just did not fit well with the the layout of the book. I agree with my professor Jimmy Moss that this textbook will probably not be in my shelf for too long.

On the bright side, when reading just two to three pages into the book, I actually soaked up a lot of information about advertising. In my career goal of being a creative director and fashion designer, advertising should be an essenial part of my education. Being that I have no experience in commercial advertising whatsoever, it was refreshing to know that I am quickly learning a thing or two about it. 

The most interesting part about the first chapter "A Brief History of Advertising", was the basic theories of advertising and when, where and how they derived. The theory of "reason- why copy" was the first noted advertising method which was delivered by Claude Hopkins in much of his work. This method which is the very concrete way of selling; providing you have a good, solid, argument. An example of this method was Hopkins' warning ad of plaque to advertise Pepsodent toothpaste. The idea of selling toothpaste to get rid of plaque is fair and simple and appears to have no hidden message behind it. In many cases, today, it would be a bit difficult to sell an ipod for example, because there probably isn't a solid reason or necessity to own one. But in the early 20th century, it seemed pretty valid. I thought it was interesting to see the gigantic leap over the last century in advertising methods.