#43 Inspired by Ads

Hello, hello.

As promised on the boards (please don't forget that Lisa and I actively check, read and post on the discussion boards of our flick'r group - here), I created two layouts this week inspired by each of the suggested ads.

Of course, having noticed the ads myself, I knew I found them appealing and that this week would be easy for me. But in the process I wanted to show you how you can take something so graphic, clean or different and make it fit your style. I hope I accomplished that with my two layouts this week.

{best of} summer twenty ten


First off was a page inspired by the Sally Hansen Ad

from the get go I knew I wanted a strip of orange paper running up the length of the page and white alphas. This was the part of the page that drew me... but I couldn't decide if the nail chips should be embellishments or photos. In the end I chose a combination of both.

 I was able to incorporate little scraps of a variety of patterned papers which fit my style quite nicely.

 For actual embellishments I kept it really simple, with a layered sticker about the subtitle and fussy cut cameras from an Amy Tangerine paper from AC.

Overall the page feels like me although it was clearly inspired by the ad. It was the perfect way to incorporate 12 photos while still having some white space.

Easter 


Next up was the Banana Republic ad and admittedly this was more challenging.

First off, I wanted to find an oversized picture and couldn't find one in my stash. I also wanted to find a bold and vibrant floral paper for my background and came up empty handed. So I settled for multiple photos and a colorful floral paper.

 I completed the page above quite quickly and then let it sit on my desk for a few days to simmer. It felt too graphic and plain for my taste. Yes, I could have left it like that and called it a day - but I didn't. It had a lot of the elements of the ad that I loved, like the multi-sized titles in black, and the large photo area with frame around it. But it needed a little more whimsy.

This is the final result. I randomly stitched along the border several times and then inked the paper around the edges in the bold magenta and orange shades from the ad, giving me the "bold" I was going for. I also added some tone on tone embellishments that dress up the page without detracting from the general clean design.  The finished page more aptly fits my whimsical style and I like it better.

And there you have it. My layouts for this week. I hope you will share your creations with us on the gallery. Lisa will be back tomorrow with what promises to be another fun challenge.

xo.
Pamage

#43 Inspired by advertising

Pam reminded us this week that we can learn a lot from professional graphic designers who create advertising to entice us to purchase. They will have studied the principles of design and layout to achieve a visually pleasing result.

So, why invent the wheel, right?!?

I've done this exercise before and even though I thought I'd try to select my own advert to be inspired by, I decided to double challenge myself by using one of the two suggestions Pam had provided us. This isn't necessarily an advert I would have "noticed" but the blocking, the white contrast to the wonderful colours and the differing black font sizing seemed like things I could work with.

I started off trying to find something really bright and colourful to reflect those summer colours in the photo. This older BasicGrey paper jumped out at me and it's a line I've always found difficult to use so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I selected two or three sheets with the brighter pinks and oranges and another with some turquoise tones. The last thing I needed was a sheet of white cardstock which I stole the middle from and a colourful photo that stood a chance against those bright papers. A panoramic photo from Dubai seemed to hit the mark.

I layered up different elements in a similar way to the original advert and finished that part off with the title work using three different sizes of font to match the advert. This was the part of the design which had particularly drawn me so it was interesting to see how that worked. The date is ever so slightly squashed up but on the whole, I like the line up of the three lines.

And then it needed a little something to be a bit more me so I wrapped several different twines round the middle picking up the aqua colour and some white, and then created a little flower cluster, adding in some older blingy elements and a couple of chipboard elements from the Marrakech line.

I think I will end up writing some journalling round the edge along the white border but for now, it's finished.

I can't say it's my favourite page and it's not even really "me" but I really enjoyed breaking down the elements of the advert to see what appealed to me and how to use it. I was really pleased to find a way to use this bright paper which I've struggled with in the past and now that I've cut into it for this layout, I can see me using a few scraps of it again. The wonderfully alluring colours of the original advert was just the summer feeling I needed today :-)

This is one of the things I love about our weekly challenges. They get me to try new things, to have a go at something that isn't really me, and pushes me to experiment a bit more than I would normally or can during something like LOAD. This layout has proved to me that I still love that layering, I can use the bright colours and that I should try different title work sometimes!

What have you learnt this week?

Don't forget to share over at Flickr in our gallery with the tag WM#43.

Challenge # 43 - week of June 11th, 2012

Wow, is it just me or are these warmer weeks just flying by?

Today, I want to share with you one of the pages I recently created and love - and the source for inspiration.

if you know me by know, you know I almost exclusively scrap on a white background. Anything else feels cluttered and off to me. So you may wonder how it is I came upon this choice of background? I was inspired by the ad from a magazine photographed below.

you can easily tell that i picked up the layout composition, color pallete including the accentes in white and black, the title color and placement; even the little bobbles were inspired by the model's earrings. One of the smartest things I ever learned from Stacy Julian was this - media ad artists are paid to do this. They have gone to design school to make things that are visually pleasing to us. Why not use this free inspiration that is readily available to us?

Well, you may have guessed it, but that is our challenge for this week. But I know some of you may be saying, 'yes, but Pam, how do we find an ad we can easily break apart like you did?' or 'Pam, I don't even buy magazines'. I don't buy magazines either, but this is what I do while my nails dry at the salon - I flip through the magazines, not for celebrity gossip, but for future layout ideas. And lucky for you I have a few still sitting in my inspiration file on my computer that I haven't used. So to start us off, I have two inspiration pieces for you. 

Inspiration Option # 1

Banana Republic Ad

Inspiration Option # 2

Sally Hansen Ad

I hope you can draw some inspiration from these two ads and that is eases the process for you to create. Even if just lifting the color scheme or title placement of photo placement, try using these ads for inspiration and see where it takes you. 

If you do create based on these ads, please upload it to our flick'r gallery {here} with the tag WM#43. Lisa and I will be back next week with our results. Like always, thanks for playing along.

xo,

Pamage