Ancillary Task (Newspaper Advert) Final Refined Version

After taking a lot of feedback from others about the general design of the advert, I took what they said into account and re-Photoshopped the advert together. It is roughly the same design, just with the tweaking of a few parts in the picture, the adding of a bit of red here and there to liven up the page and the moving around of the text into different places. Overall I am pretty pleased with the end result.

Ancillary Task (Newspaper Advert) Audience Feedback

I posted my finished design on facebook and asked people to give me some feedback. I asked what they liked, what they didn't like,  as well as what they thought should be added, removed and changed if anything. I found all the responses very helpful and I will take into account every comment made as I make slight changes to the layout of the advert. I have posted a screenshot of the comments below:

A big thanks to everyone who commented!

Ancillary Task (Newspaper Advert) Final Product

Ancillary Task (Newspaper Advert) Development Four

After deciding all of the things discussed in the previous post, it was time to return to Photoshop and put everything together and producing the final advert.

I firstly needed to decide what layout the writing would have in regards to the picture. I could either just leave the picture as it was and have a black box to the right hand side of it with the all the information regarding the programme based in it, or I could try and insert the text into and around the picture in a much more creative way. I decided to go for the second option as I felt the picture would feel a bit blank left the way it was. I put a black box around the picture which would give me space to put in the writing when it needed it.

I decided then that the tagline would look best as a kind of title underneath the police officers feet. That way the audience would look at the picture of the police, wonder what was going on and by reading the words 'It's all Greek to me' they would agree and want to read on wanting to know more. I inserted the paragraph underneath the tagline. This was done for two reasons. The first was that, as already said, I wanted the reader to continue down the page and having the writing directly underneath this would allow them to do so with ease. I also felt that the space on the stairs was too plain to be left with nothing inside it and would make it look boring. As you can see from the picture I have also tilted the paragraph slightly to the left. I felt left straight the direction of the text would line up too much with the lines of the stairs which I felt again would bore the human eye.

The final thing I needed to was to insert the name of the documentary and the time/date it would be viewed on. This is why I left the black spaces above and below the picture. I placed the name underneath the picture in the font chosen earlier. I feel that the white writing on the black background makes it stand out well compared to the rest of the picture, without taking anything away from it. I then added the date and time to the top right of the box of the advert in the same way except smaller and more subtle. Being in the top right means it is not part of the grand scheme of things and does not get in the way of the advert in anyway, but is there so that people know this obviously important piece of information. I also feel that it helps fill some of the black space behind the police which again I felt was blank and boring.

Ancillary Task (Newspaper Advert) Development Three

The third thing I needed to consider whilst making the newspaper advert for my documentary was what was written on it. From my research I have found that one of the reasons that younger people do not overly enjoy documentaries is that they think they over complicate things. Therefore I do not want to over complicate the advert. I want to use quick but powerful messages to engage their thoughts and interests. This could be by use of emotive language or by saying something contreversial that makes the reader either agree or dissagree. There are two kinds of writing that I want to use to engage the interest of the reader in the advert, one of which being a tagline and the other being a paragraph explaining just enough about the documentary for people to know what its about, but not so much to as to lose the readers curiosity.

Below I have included examples of taglines that I am thinking of using:

"The birthplace of democracy?"

Athens is known to historians to have been 'the birthplace of democracy'. It was the first place in which the right to a free vote was introduced. The questionmark at the end of the statement makes the reader wonder is this really true and if it is, why is it being questioned now. Searching for answers I hope they will want to read on.

"It's all Greek to me.."

Probably one of the most famous statements used to view other cultures. If you cannot understand a foreign language the phrase 'it's all Greek to me' is often used because of the Greek language's complexity. This can be seen in another light too. The actions of the protesters must also seem very foreign to western audiences, making them very 'Greek' and thus you can use the phrase in the same way here.

"Athenian Tragedy"

Drama and Theatrical productions are something that have survived in Greek culture from ancient times all the way into the present day. Tragedies were usually tales with something bad or upsetting happening at the end. This style of playwriting was adopted by Shakespeare who is of course universally known across the UK and abroad and is also someone who is studied by young people during their time at school. This links us in with both a western audience and a young one.

"Don't bow down, rise up!"

This was the phrase chanted by teachers and students at rallies across Greece as recently as this Christmas. It is in protest of the dire cuts being put on the country's education system relatively destroying it. They did not think that bowing down and accepting these cuts was acceptable and urged people to rise up against them.

I have also included below examples that of paragraphs that I could include on the advert:

"There comes a time when people need to rise up and fight for what they believe in. This can be portrayed as a bad thing by the media. Now the truth is revealed.."

"If you lost your job, your home, your education, your healthcare and you are still expected to pay more, you would be in a state of outrage. Why should people from other countries be any different?"

"Lies lead to Unrest. Unrest leads to Protest. Protest leads to Anger. Anger leads to Rioting. Would you be any different should the need arise?"

I believe that all of these are very brief, but powerful statements that would engage a readers interest without giving the game away. They all have deep meanings to them regarding western media views, the state of Greece's affairs, and addressing whether the audience really knows what is going on. I have decided to go with the second tagline and the first paragraph as I believe they are the most powerful and will be the most understood of the options I have chosen by the reader.

Ancillary Task (Newspaper Advert) Development Two

Continuing from my previous post, I then needed to decide what kind of font would best fit the mood of the advert. It not only needed to be one that fitted in with the younger target audience, but also needed to have some relevence to the themes of the documentary. To begin with I thought that some graffiti style fonts would fit in well with this line of thought:

 

 

However, after searching through many different kinds i decided not to proceed with using this kind of font. This was for two reasons. Firstly, although the fonts did fit with the younger audience feeling, I do not believe that they have as serious a feeling as the documentary would want them too. The second reason I chose to reject these fonts was that I personally found them pretty hard to read sometimes and obviously this may lead to others being put off of the program because of it. I began to look through other fonts after rejecting these to see if I could find any others that would fit in well with both the feeling of the advert and the programme. Below are some of the examples that I found:

 

 

 

I thought that these fonts were much more in line with the feeling that I wanted to put across in the documentary. Because they are all much more blocky fonts than those that are graffiti styled they are much easier to read, although they still have the same modern style which means that they will still fit in well with my young target audience. Out of these fonts I decided to use the second one down for my advert. This is because it is probably the most simple of the fonts although it still has an edge to it. I do not want the font to overtake the image in the advert in it's appeal which I feel some of the more decorative fonts may do. I feel the chosen font will enhance the image rather than take any of the edge away from it.

Ancillary Task (Newspaper Advert) - Development One

For an advert in a newspaper it is clear that you need to have either one or more very strong images to try and grab people's attention. When searching for such images related to the project, I came across the image below:

I really liked this image because not only was it clear and simple and had room for me to edit it, but it also conveyed a lot of relevence to the documentary and symbolism relating to the riots. At the top you have the authoritarian police standing together with weapons and sheilds drawn, blocking the way of the people below. At the bottom of the picture you can see the single protester, his arms out showing his power. This can be used to symbolise the way that the weak are standing up to the strong in Greek society, although the general public are of greater number.

The first step in editting this photo was to remove the background behind the heads of the police. This was to add more emphasis on the picture itself rather than what was going on in the background. I then decided to make the picture black and white. This, I believe, gives the picture a much more intense feel which can be used to show the tension of the situation. I also feel that this makes the picture feel a lot colder which is ironic with it being in such a hot country!

Thirdly, I decided that I felt the way the stairs were set out on the picture made it feel a bit flat. However this was easily rectified. I wanted to give more of a sense of power to the lone man at the bottom of the picture. To do this I used the smudge tool in Photoshop to draw lines coming away from his body as if there was some kind of powerful force coming out from him, being used to show the power of protest.

I continued this line of thought over the final two steps of editting the picture. As you can see at the bottom of the post, I have done two things to make the protester seem all the more powerful. I have firstly increased the black/white contrast of the police, making their area of the picture seem all the more cold, and it could prehaps even be seen as all the more deadly as the lack of colour could be used to show a lack of human emotions, something related to their thuggish methods and the heartlessness of the government. I have done the exact reverse in view of the protester at the bottom. I have put him back into colour whilst leaving the rest of the picture in black and white. I think this gives his stance a much more emotive/human feel and I also believe that this makes the lines moving away from his body look clearer and again more powerful.