Deconstruct an Advertisement

Lets talk about why Halo Top Creamery icecream has become so wildly popular, so quickly! I want to show this photo of an Instagram post by Halo Top. Its a bit older, but its a good one. Here are a few points I wanted to go over about this ad.

1. What is the main purpose of the ad?

The main purpose of this ad is to show off one of the many flavors from the company AND to show how few calories are in it. It shows a fun vibrant flavor…HOW COULD THERE POSSIBLY BE 240 CALORIES IN IT? Yes its that amazing. Thats the main point of this ad.

1. What are the ad’s strengths?

It is very bright and eye catching. Unicorns are also very trendy and popular at the moment, so that attracts likes and attention. It showcases the brands top feature- its Low Calorie feature, too.

1. What are the ad’s weaknesses?

It is not very informative. They only have text for one line of the post. Many people do not read long text posts on Instagram, but it still does not convey much information, just a clever little line about unicorns.

1. What is the ad trying to accomplish with its design?

It is trying to draw the eye to the calorie count. It is trying to show that you can have fun while eating ice cream and not counting calories. It is showing that Halo Top is a carefree treat.

1. What metrics (likes, shares, re-tweets, etc.) will be used to determine if the ad is successful?

This ad will be popular if it gets a lot of like. that is seen just under the photo with a count of how many people like it. It will also show if some of your friends or people you follow, like it too so it creates a community feel as well.

Halo Top is so great at advertising and I just wanted to highlight some of their tactics. They are a great brand to follow and observe.

Dance Showcase Poster

Here is the first advertisement I was able to have published. I won a contest among the many graphic design classes in high school, so my work was plastered all over the place at school, online, and in the community to advertise this dance production. The show is kind of a big deal in he Rocklin area. There are two high schools that are highly competitive in sports, including dance. Both schools have nationally recognized teams and many girls in high school are highly involved in dance instruction. I think that that area had an exceptionally high volume of dance participants, so it was cool that my poster was selected to represent our schools production. It was also interesting because the highest level dance team from the opposing nearby school also participated in our schools presentation as well, so it was a piece that tied two rival schools together. I’m really proud of this piece because when I first started conjuring up ideas for what the poster should look like, I was just messing around and playing with fun ideas. The fun idea seemed to work and when my instructor saw it, she immediately saw that it was above the others. Not to toot my own horn but it looked pretty awesome compared to the other creations. I was surprised to find that my fun idea was now posted on every blank wall around the campus and it was a different feeling that i liked being able to say “Hey, I made that!” when others commented on the poster. Overall, it was an interesting building experience!

Early work that started it all!

So the featured image above is one of the first projects I finished in high school. It was the first project I was satisfied with, one looking like it wasn’t made by a monkey on a computer! This is a Type Montage and the white space image in the center is supposed to be the outline of a longboard. All the words surrounding it are words that I thought related to riding longboards! It is one of my favorite activities to do when the weather is not horrible. Guess that’s not an option here in Idaho! All I have to say about this piece is that it was relatively easy i.e. typing words, adjusting font size, changing colors, and organizing words. The only hard part was that it was very time consuming! Overall though, I enjoy working with Photoshop when I know what I’m doing. Otherwise it’s frustrating.  Anyway, like I said, I was satisfied with this project even thought it’s not exactly high quality or professional by any means. By posting this I hope that you and I both will be able to see the progression I’m making as I take more classes to improve my design skills.

Happy Designing friends!