This is my apple pie advertisement! Below is the reflection I composed describing my advertisement, the elements and principles of design I used, the tools in Photoshop I learned and any changes I would make to my ad:
Using the Photoshop Program was a new, learning experience for me, one that I really enjoyed and would be interested in working with again. The goal of my project was to construct a distinct advertisement with appealing color, design and attraction to hopefully capture the attention of my classmates. To briefly describe my project, I started with two basic, background illustrations, a plain, baby blue color and a red and white checkered table cloth. Incorporating a family picnic setting, I added many necessary blended, manipulated images and short, catchy text descriptions to sell my apple pie product to the wide ranged audience. With the unique, original theme, Kirsten’s Homemade Apple Pie, I especially wanted to include some of my own personality and the required creativity aspect. Throughout my 8”x11” advertisement, I carefully focused on the project guidelines by using a mixture of several structured advertisement layouts, a large variety of the elements and principles of design, and multiple tools in Photoshop.
While completing my advertisement project, I clearly discovered the noticeable visual impact utilizing design elements and principles gives an image. In my project, I used all the elements and most principles of design. For examples of elements, every manipulated image creates various types of lines, the diamond cropped glitter, silverware and cinnamon pile shows shape, and many single apples, the full apple basket and the lemonade pitcher represents form. The whole apple pie has texture, space takes up the empty background, the fascinating type slogan gives text the audience can read and the shiny apples also create value. As for principles, the asymmetrical image gives a sense of balance to the advertisement and the color difference between the two backgrounds and the text creates an obvious contrast. The emphasis in my project is mainly on the whole, textured apple pie, and the unity of the design elements shares a visual connection to the product and relates the images to my theme. In total, the several, affective elements and principles I portrayed within my advertisement added interest, excitement, importance and detail to the overall theme.
Photoshop is a useful, reliable tool that, with practice, is quite simple, too. There are many techniques for creating an image in Photoshop and I tried to use almost all of them when putting together my advertisement. Lots of the accessible options I learned were found in the tool bar, like the color tool for adding and changing colors, the text box for applying text to an image, the lasso and marquee tools for manipulating and feathering pictures, and the triangle icon for moving around images on my project. A few other tools I have learned for recently added pictures are shrinking the image to size while holding the shift key and also clicking the check mark to allow more techniques to be applied to an image. A very valuable technique in Photoshop is adding layers, double clicking to name layers, grabbing and dragging to move layers and clicking on a layer, then the trash symbol to delete them. Layers were a beneficial tool for me because they were a major organizing option for the objects I placed on my advertisement. Though, the most helpful technique was the magic wand to manipulate images significantly easier.
Since this is the first advertisement I have created, there are definitely a few small things I would change. First off, I would be more precise when feathering images. The slight changes I would make to my project would be to try to overlap my images, minimize the excess white around the edges of irregular shapes and accurately, equally match the size of every small, red and green apple. On top of all that, if I had more time, I would try to keep my patience level more composed when working with a new, unfamiliar program. However, I am very happy with the successfully completed result of my creative, designed advertisement.
