Leaflet 'Wrap Up'

After all of the hassle trying to get certain pictures, fonts, layouts for our flyer/leaflet, MJM Productions has finally come to the point where we almost 'wrap up' creating and editing the leaflet. I could not wait for this day to come. Also, Matiss and I were making final additions and changes to the flyer. I was doing the back of the flyer, I will talk about this later in this post. James was doing the presentation.

In the beginning of the session, I quickly reminded my group to fill in the font gaps with yellow because in James's design, the font was pink and yellow. If I forgot to remind them, the font would not be the same, it would just look...pink. Yellow is a 'crazy' colour, however, it attracts customers. So, if we apply yellow to our font, customers would be interested in reading it. We included the yellow in the text by using the bucket tool which allowed us to fill in gaps with a certain colour. You can see this on the image on the left. Unfortunately, this took us most of our time because there were tiny spaces and they are extremely difficult to fill.

Thinking that we have completed the front of the leaflet, we printed it out. As I looked at the design, it did not look that special. I thought it was too brief. In that case, I asked Mr Hind about what we should change. He said that I should take the printed copy and go round classes and see what they think of the leaflet. I chose to do that so I decided to go to the art room next door to the photography room. The students were a mix of children aged 11-12 and teenagers as well. This is good because teenagers and children are our target audience. A couple of children and teenagers said that the front is brief. One girl also told me that the bottom of the leaflet is boring and needs a little bit of tweaking. Another teenager said that it should be more relaxed and should match with the steam. I took all of these ideas on board and I told these to my group. I decided to change the slogan. In my idea, it said 'fresh and hot' so I said that to the group. Although we wanted to change the slogan, we were thinking to merge the two together. The image on the right shows you that we made slight changes (the slogan has changed, there is an added boarder, Shakin' Moo's mascot and 2nd slogan are tilted and made slightly bigger).

Whilst that was done, I was continuing with the back of the leaflet. I came up with an outstanding idea of making the Shakin' Moo's map by getting a map where Shakin' Moo's is on Google Maps. I copied the image onto paint and selected the bits I wanted. Then, I dragged the map onto a Shakin' Moo's logo boarder which I made earlier by erasing the logo words. The map automatically cropped itself in the shape of the Shakin' Moo's boarder when I selected and deselected some layers. Finally, it looked like a proper Shakin' Moo's map! Matiss helped me by installing the font as I was using a different computer without the font. Also, he added and arrow which I could not find. I included the 'free wi fi' logo as previous Shakin' Moo's flyers had these. Here it what it looks like:

Meanwhile, James was doing the presentation for presenting our product to Chris Lane. He was stuck of a few things to write. Fortunately, I helped him.

Our targets for next week is not to rush anything because when I showed our 'draft' product to the children and teenagers, they thought it was rushed as well, so in conclusion we need to realise that its about quality not quantity.

Next week, we will be advertising the flyer to Chris Lane with our presentation to help us. We will be practicing our presentation mostly next session.

Hi Michael

Some really strong comments with good illustration. Very well done.

Ninth Session: Photoshop

In today's session, we realised that we were almost finished with our final leaflet. All there is to it is to add the Shakin' Moo's font to the final flyer and then we would be pretty much done. Plus, we needed to tweak our final design as it still had crop marks, lasso and magnetic lasso marks (the marks are white leftovers from cropping). All we needed to do with these is just to rub them out. We used the blur tool for this on Adobe Photoshop. Here are the images before and after:

Unfortunately, you cannot see the change clear enough because the change we done was very minimal. What I can tell you is that the edges of the cup are smoother and sharper after and previously it was a little bit jagged. We used the blur tool for this. However, it seems simple but it is not. You will need to zoom into the image from 150%-200%. This is because it is very difficult to clear the extra lines and leftovers from far away and normal image size. Also, you need to be careful using the blur tool because if you make a mistake, it just might erase some of the cup. Here is another example that will be clearer to see:

As you can see, the image before has quite a lot of extra white bits, mainly in the corners (between the legs and arms). Again, to solve this we used the blur tool again. It was really difficult to do the corners because one little slip can erase more than the corner. Eventually, the image has no excess white bits left. There is no problem to leave a little white behind as it could give the image a glow.

Meanwhile, the IT came to unlock the control panel because of the administrator blocking us to install the font for our leaflet. Plus, he helped us install the font so we were able to use it. Whilst the IT guy was installing the font, I said to make the Shakin' Moo's mascot smaller because the font needs to be big. So, we made the mascot smaller (left picture) in order to do that. When the font was ready, we wasted no time getting the font onto the flyer because we had to wait so long. Here is the flyer with the text on:

Already it looks more appealing. Matiss and James thought we did not need to do anything else with the font. I had an idea. I said to add yellow to the font as on the draft, it had yellow on the blank bits. I thought that these would make it even more appealing. My group members agreed. Unfortunately, we did not have time to do because the IT guy took ages to download the font...

I had an idea to create the location services on the back of the flyer. My group agreed with this as well. I will talk about this more the next three weeks because we have got half term and no CRAM Media on next week.

I do not think we needed any targets this week as we have done not that much to our flyer because of the IT guy coming in extremely late. We could of finished the flyer if he came in on time!

Next three weeks, we will be improving the flyer as well as the font. I will continue with the location services and talk more about them. I may show you some pictures on my blog.

Hi Michael

Excellent blogging again - well done! Yo are including lots of detail and illustrating you comments effectively.

Eighth Session - Organising and Begining our Final Flyer

In today's session, Mr Hind arranged individual meetings about our folders. When Mr Hind asked me to come over for my meeting, he told me what is good about my folder and what is bad. Personally, I did not think anything was wrong with my folder as I completed every task Mr Hind told me to do so far in the best of my ability. However, I knew that my folder was not properly organised because I was going to leave that to the end as I have loads of other things on my hands. Meanwhile when Mr Hind was checking my folder he started commenting on it. First, he said that my folder is very good, it had everything there. On the other hand, I knew he was going to say this, he commented on my organising. I told him that I was going to leave that to the end and he agreed. So all I needed to do is organise my folder. He said to put the neat write up of 'The Brief' in the beginning, followed by planning, research report and background research. This was going to be no problem to do.

After lunchtime, MJM Productions began designing our final flyer with 1 of our 3 edits each. I done the backgrounds, James and Matiss did the cups and lids. Everybody in the group had difficulty choosing my picture because I liked the picture with the table (right), however James and Matiss liked the chocolate bar background (left). Matiss and James asked people around the classroom which image do they like the best. They liked the one which Matiss and James like. I was confused because I put a lot of effort on the one that I like but not as much effort on the one James and Matiss like. I was kind of disappointed because I spent a lot of time on one thing and people like the other. On the other hand, I could be happy about this as they like my images that I edited. Unfortunately, I do not know why they chose that background because the hot shake is not exactly going to float on the flyer, there is no table or anything to support it. Plus, I think the background overpowers the hot shake as the chocolate bars are very big. I am very confused...

We decided to use this cup for our flyer. This is because it is well edited (before there was fingers holding the cup against the wall), plus it had the Shakin' Moo's logo on front of the cup. This is very important for the Shakin' Moo's logo to be on the front of the cup because customers who would pick up the flyer would want to know who sells these hot shakes. The best way to do it is to show the Shakin' Moo's logo. One bad thing I could find in this picture is that the lighting is too bright. You could still see the camera flash on the cup. This would appear too bold with the background we have chosen as the background I wanted has just the right lighting for this cup. Overall, this cup is colourful and vibrant and is also delivering the message that Shakin' Moo's sell hot shakes with the logo it has on the cup.

To represent Shakin' Moo's, we decided to add on the two things on the right (the Shakin' Moo's mascot Mr Moo and the Shakin' Moo's logo). These two images were going to be included in the flyer on the bottom left corner.

We needed to get an A5 format but Adobe Photoshop only allowed us to use A4. James told Matiss to half the lenghs of the A4 and it would come out as A5. I already knew this because I have done this already right at the start of the Campaign Unit (when we made our first practice flyer).

Finally we needed steam for our flyer. Matiss went on Youtube to find how to make steam on Photoshop. Eventually, he found a clip on Youtube which told us exactly that. If you want to watch this clip click here. I thought that was really clever. Here is our flyer so far (before and after):

In my opinion, I think it looks good so far. All it needs is the location services and the slogan. However, when Chris Lane e-mailed Matiss the Shakin' Moo's font, we could not install it for some reason. I think the school computers administrator banned access to the control panel. I am sure we will get it fixed next week.

Next week we will be finishing off our flyer and hopefully tweak it a bit more to make it look extra-professional. I am very pleased what we accomplished so far.

Seventh Lesson - Pictures

Finally, I could not wait for this session to come. In this session, we finally get to begin on creating our flyer. Plus, Mr Hind was here so he could help us create the final flyer. This only meant that we needed to take some pictures for our flyer.

To do this we went to Shakin' Moo's to take these pictures. This was also the place where we received our brief as well. I volunteered to take the pictures for my group. My aim was to take as many pictures as possible. I could take them inside or outside the store, take these pictures from different angles, take different sorts of lighting, plus taking different objects for our flyer. Here are some of the objects that I was willing to take:

• Shakin' Moo's cups - for the cup for our flyer
  
• Lids - for the lid for our flyer (half open)
  
• Steam - for the steam flowing out of the cup for our flyer


• A sort of boarder - for a boarder for our flyer
  
• Shakin' Moo's font - to make our flyer look attractive and professional


• Backgrounds - such as the ingredients shelves, Shakin' Moo's window, etc
  
• Shakin' Moo's decorations/merchandise - possibly to add to our flyer

I took most of these things. The reason why I took Most of these things is because I could not take a picture of, including the Shakin' Moo's font because there was bearly any letters or words in the Shakin' Moo's font that we needed. However, I told Chris Lane about this and he was going to give me the Shakin' Moo's font by e-mail. I do not usually go on my e-mail account so I asked Matiss to give his e-mail account to Chris. Chris said he will e-mail the font to Matiss as soon as possible.

After taking pictures, we had to cut down what we got from 30 pictures to at least 9 pictures. We agreed on 9 pictures and this was easy cutting them down because we had very effective ones and ones which were very bad quality e.g. blurry pictures and even pictures that did not even relate to the topic. These pictures on the right hand side of the screen are the pictures we chose as a group. The background pictures (images 4, 5 and 6) are the pictures I will be editing. On the other hand, it was also hard choosing pictures because there were so many pictures with cups and they were all good. Plus, we needed to find a reasonable picture of a lid because the recent ones we tried to crop with the magnetic lasso tool did not work. This meant we needed an easier image to crop. In the end, we chose these 9 on the right because they had all the characteristics and angles we needed.

With that all done and dusted, we settled on a laptop each where we were going to edit the pictures we have chosen. Before starting the editing, Mr Hind showed us some features on Adobe Photoshop which would come in handy for our edits. There was a tool called levels which allowed you to fiddle with the brightness for the picture and the contrast (you could use this tool to make the image appear saturated). Then there was a tool called gausain blur which blurred a curtain part of you edit (you need to select the part you want to blur first). There is curves as well which makes the image lighter or darker and you could sharpen the image as well with this tool. Mr Hind introduced the clone tool as well. This tool obviousely clones your image (copies it).

Taking Mr Hind's advise, I used these tools to edit my pictures. Here is one example I did:

This image is now warm and vibrant. This background would want to welcome customers in as it is warm and matches the 'hot shake' vibe. There were disturbing pieces of paper on the wall on the before picture. Now I cleared them away. I used the ink tool to get the current colour on the wall and colour in the paper. I also done this on the reflection. I used the gausain tool to blur the image. As you can see, I blurred a part of the image. I blurred the top half of the picture, not the reflection because this is where the cup would be on the image and that is also the bar. The cup is going to be focused. However, there was one thing I could of done. I could of used that ink tool to colour in the piping on the left hand side. This would make the image better. Overall, I think I put time and effort into this and I am pleased what I have done.

Our target would be to take time on things, not rush them. But do not spend to long on one thing. Plus, look over our work to check if you could improve anything. This could be a target for me because I have just spotted an improvement that I could of done with the picture I have edited (the piping).

Next week, we will be putting these images together to begin on our final product.

Third Day of Planning

Unfortunately in this session, Mr Hind could not be here so I thought that this session was more difficult than it used to be. This meant that for creating our final flyer we would not get any assistance from Mr Hind as he has got good Adobe Photoshop skills. This was not going to be a pleasent session.

I knew that things were going to be bad sooner or later after we found out. MJM Productions came together and we started to get to work on the final flyer. After looking at the tally we done last session, we saw that people who scored our ideas prefered James's idea (because of the drawing not the idea). So in that case, we needed to get a picture of the Shakin' Moo's cup because in James's idea, it included a half-open cup with steam comeing out of the cup. I picked out a picture from Matiss's memory stick. This was a Shakin' Moo's cup (right). The group needed to crop around the cup so we could add it onto our flyer. I told my group to crop only the cup not the lid because the lid was closed on the image and we needed a half-open lid. I also suggested that we could crop the closed lid, add it onto our flyer and rotate it. Finally, you could place it onto the cropped Shakin' Moo's cup. This sounded like a good idea. However, when we tried to crop the image, it did not work. Maybe because me plus my group had limited Photoshop skills. In the end, we could not crop any images. This is where Mr Hind comes in and gives us advise. On the other hand, it was good not to crop that image because it was taken poorly. Also, it looked unprofessional and I am sure Chris Lane (owner of Shakin' Moo's) would not like to have a unprofessional product delivered to his doorstep after all the time we had to complete it.





In that case, I decided to create a shot list for me and each of my group members. A shot list is a list of shots that you plan to shoot in the future. This shot list is for next week when we go to visit Shakin' Moo's to take some photographs for our flyers. In my shot list which I created, I included sub-headings about the different things we need to do next week, such as What we need to take pictures of, Where are we going to take the pictures and What are we going to take the pictures for (you could see this on the picture on the left). I printed three copies for my group.

Our targets for next week would be to solve problems quicker without the teachers help. I hope my group does not ask Mr Hind how to take pictures on the camera when we go to Shakin' Moo's.

Next week, we are going to Shakin' Moo's to take pictures for our flyer. Hopefully next time we can be able to at least start on our flyer. I think I contributed well in todays session and I will do the same next session.

The Second Day of Planning

In today's session, it was the next day of planning. Unfortunately, we did not get onto the part when we take our top 3 ideas onto Adobe Photoshop and create the final, final flyer. Instead, our main objective was to finish off our drafts and create a questionnaire for our market research. I was hoping to contribute even more than the last session we had so I could prove to my group that I can do more for my group apart from doing tasks myself. Fortunately, this shows my self-manager skills.

We started to finish our final flyer designs. This is my final flyer design (have to use the same picture from last post because that was the finished design):

I spent a lot of time on this design. First, it was just a rough design on a block of an A3 piece of paper, now it has completed the stages of tweaking and is the final drawn copy. I added a farm background as a cow comes from a farm. Blue sky is added to give a more calm, naturalistic feel to the flyer. The idea of 'hot milk' coming out of the cow's udder is original. I included location information on the flyer so people can find Shakin' Moo's. I also put on the flyer that people would get a free topping with this flyer as the previous flyers have that same information and this would manipulate customers to come to Shakin' Moo's to purchase a milkshake. Hopefully with a free topping. I included the slogan 'fresh and hot' to describe the product without describing it how it looks like and the ingredients in a massive paragraph. You always need to keep the slogan short and simple so the reader could memorise this easily. This is what I have done with my slogan. I hope this design would be the actual design for the flyer.

Below is Matiss's final idea and James's final idea. Both have a catchy slogan. James's final idea has a great font. Matiss's final idea has to split settings which is smart. Take a look:

Meanwhile, we were given our second task. We decided to create a table for to go around the school and take down peoples opinions about my idea, Matiss's idea and James's idea. However, the table idea was too complicated and complexed. I decided to take a more easier approach for my group as they were struggling. The idea I came up with was a tally. To double check if this was a good idea, I checked with my teacher. He agreed with this so we decided to create a tally. The questions on the tally were:

• Which idea do you think is the best?


• Which idea shows the product well?


• Which ideas font do you like the best?

In total, we asked 11 people which were in our CRAM class. I was a little bit disappointed and annoyed about the results because people only judged the drawings instead of the idea even though we were going to use these ideas on Adobe Photoshop to create the final product and not even use the drawings. I felt sorry for Matiss because as we know Matiss is not that much of an artist, however his idea was very good. In my opinion, my idea could of been successful but they were judging the drawing...

Our target would be to create less complexed ideas and to create simple ideas (table to tally). Next week I really hope that this time we would be going on Photoshop to create the final product.

Planning Day

In the start of today's session, we got into groups to plan the look of the flyer. Last week, my group and I came up with brief, initial ideas. Today however, we are going to develop on these ideas and hopefully come up with new, original ideas. Our objective today was to come up with ideas for our advertisement.

Our plan was to produce our own 4 ideas in our group (the ideas were just drafts). We done this by spliting a A3 piece of paper into 4 boxes for our 4 ideas. It was easy to do the first box because in the last session, we had a meeting and we all had one idea each on the meeting sheet. My first idea was milk being poured out of a carton, it gradually becomes hotter when it reaches the Shakin' Moo's cup. Then there is a slogan on the flyer. Next up was the second box. This had something on the flyer which I liked to call a 'hot udder'. So in that case, the flyer had a 'hot udder' and a hand was squirting the milk out of the udder which sprayed out hot milk/milkshake! The slogan says "hot and fresh" because the milk is fresh from a cow and it is a 'hot shake'. I discussed this idea with Mr Hind. He thought that this idea would be very effective as it is original. Then there was the third idea which was a fire-breathing cow drinking a 'hot shake'. You never know a 'hot shake' might be that hot to make you breath fire. Finally, there was the fourth idea. This box was the hardest because I ran out of ideas. However, I knew which idea to choose so I went for an idea which i knew it was not going to work. The idea was a 'explosive, hot invention' (the slogan). This only ment the idea was a bomb going off and the 'hot shake' flying towards us. Who never knows, some people might adore the idea.

In the end, I chose a idea. Mr Hind said that this idea was the best idea I came up with as it is creative and its only the hot udder! So this was on the top 3 list in our group. James was the hot cup with steam coming out of it and Matiss's was to split into to settings; a cold setting and the hot setting with the hot shake in that particular setting. So thats our top 3.

Moreover, this meant that we have to make the final copy of the draft. I tryed my best with my only drawing skills that I had. In the end, the drawing overall was reasonable, I also added some colour to my final flyer idea.

After that, we were given our final task which was the idividual background research. This was about researching about different things which related to our main task (to make a advertisement for Shakin' Moo's). This meant I looked at different milkshake companies, statistics and other things that are related about milkshakes.

Next week, we will be hopfully taking the final 3 ideas on board and will be using them on Adobe Photoshop to make the final, final copy. Our target for today would be to spent less time worring on which 3 ideas we will pick. Overall, everybody has contributed well and I have also done my bit to the task/tasks.

The Brief

In this session, we were going to receive our brief from Chris Lane (a man who owns Shakin' Moo's which is a milkshake store.) However, we were not just getting the brief on paper and just plan, Chris was going to explain what we needed to do. This ment we needed to write the brief down and take some important notes.

I was once again working with James and Matiss because all of us are effective team workers. The main things we were supposed to take notes of was the location of Shakin' Moo's, the current promotions, the competition, the main customer audience and profits. We found out that the location of Shakin' Moo's is a major issue as it is hidden in Burleigh Street and is being shadowed by a electrical shop called Hughes. On the other hand, as Primark opened down Burleigh Street, customers are crawling all over the street and sales have been increasing ever since it opened. Next, I have found out that Chris current promotions are Valentines Day (the money from the purchased milkshakes goes to a charity.) Plus, Chris has released a new shake which he thinks is the best milkshake he has ever made. It is a Tesco Chocolate Fudge Brownie flavoured milkshake. Not only that, he released something else called 'hot shakes' which are hot milkshakes which I think is completely different. Unfortunately, there is another issue apart from the location; the competition with a milkshake chain called 'Shake-Away'. Fortunately, the place is dull compared to Shakin' Moo's and sales are quite low. Overall, Shakin' Moo's is doing pretty well for a new milkshake shop. The main customer audience is children and teenagers aged 3-16. I found out that they get more customers and profits by advertising. One way they do this is with the current costume / mascot they have.

Finally, we got our brief. Our brief was to create a advertisement which advertised either the new product (the Tesco Chocolate Fudge Brownie Milkshake) or the hot shakes. This advertisement could be done as a poster or a flyer. This should have a good design as Chris told us that he is not much of a designer.

Our target would be to come up with a simple idea then progress it from there. Also, this design should be original. I am sure that we can accomplish this.

Hi Michael

Some really strong comments here supporting some excellent photography. Your technical commentary is very thorough. Well done.

Second Campaign Session

In the start of the second session, Mr Hind told us to make a start on our Research Reports (this is to research and explain about different campaigns, advertisments, flyers, etc). I decided to get hyperlinks of different websites which have various campaigns on them so I would be able to continue where I left off. One website I chose to look at later on was http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/. Click here to visit the website. Whilst I was researching, I found a number of different types of campaigns, such as campaigns to raise awareness (NHS), advertise a product(Sony Bravia), etc. These two campaigns that I just mentioned were the two I chose for my Research Report.

After researching, we were given a camera from Mr Hind. Our task was to take photos from the skills we learned. However, this task came with a twist. We were only supposed to take pictures of 1 object. Plus, the objects were given to us from Mr Hind. The objects were:

• Piping
• A lamp
• A wrench
• A block of wood with a peg stuck onto it

Mr Hind wrote the objects down onto seperate pieces of paper and folded them. 1 member of a group had to pick a piece of paper, open it, see what they got and then they have to use that item, as if it was a draw. I volunteered for my group and we got the piping which was reasonable, we could take some preety interesting photos with this object but I would of prefered the lamp. So in 30 minutes, we had to take 20-35 pictures of the object.

In my opinion, the best pictures we took were the hallway with the piping (left) and the corner with the piping (right). Matiss took the picture on the left. The picture was not supposed to come out like this, it was much darker on the display screen. However, when I first set eyes onto that picture, there was something I adored about it. The blur and the light shade gave the picture a 'horror show' effect. The piping on the floor just boggles your mind as you are trying to figure out why is it there. The light coming out of the circular windows volumises the 'horror show' effect. I came up with the idea and took this picture on the right. I like this picture because of the different light shadings on the piping, the background, the middleground and the foreground. This makes the picture look 3 dimentional as well. Not only that, this boggles your mind as you are tying to find out why the piping is there and what lies on the other side of the corner.



After showing Mr Hind the pictures we shot, he gave us 1 final task. We were either to edit 1 of our pictures on Adobe Photoshop or re-take some pictures but using a different object from the ones on offer. My group and I decided to re-take some photos because we wanted to develop where we left off and take Mr Hind's feedback (he advised us to include pictures with a less distracting background) to take some great pictures. I chased for the lamp. Unfortunatly, 1 group took the lamp so I took the wrench. I didn't want to take my chances with the block of wood with a peg on it.

These two pictures on the left are my favorites. The first picture had the head of the wrench and the fire alarm on the 3rd part of the rule of thirds. Your eye follows the brick line and then it ends on the object (wrench). It is clever because the fire alarm says "in case of fire break glass" and there is the wrench on the top of the fire alarm to break the glass. The picture mainly focuses on the wrench. The second picture had some symmetry. It is nice and simple. The clever thing is all of the gaps in the wood follow all the way to the wrench. Plus, the red on the wrench is right in the middle and red is an eye catching colour. The object is bang on in the middle of the rule of thirds. The targets for both of these pictures is to make it more interesting by adding in a little more of an interesting background. I think we have made the background boring intead of distracting. As a group, we must make the background somehow between boring and distracting.

Next week, we will be reciving our brief from Shakin' Moos which is a milkshake shop. This will be interesting as we are going to be working for a real and popular company. Our targets would be to improve our pictures by using good quality backgrounds and techniques. This would make our photographs look proffesional.