Title: Advertisement I
Medium: digital illustration Size: 8.5 x 11 in Date: November 2023 Advertisement I is a digitally illustrated promotional poster created for the Reagan High School Snack Shack. The poster is made not only to be aesthetically pleasing but also conveys important information about location, products, and payment methods. The piece combines graphic design and digital illustration to create an easy to understand composition, conveying relevant information easily without confusion for the viewer. |
Inspiration
This piece was inspired by the advertisement work of Andy Warhol and his commercial-focused pop-art, specifically his Ads Portfolio from 1985. Warhol made such advertisements throughout his career becoming prolific in the industry of commercial art. Towards the end of his career he compiled some of them into Ads Portfolio. Warhol saw advertisement as an important part of modern American culture and society and sought to apply fine art and commercial art as one. Some of his pieces, including his famous Campbell's Soup Cans are stylistically similar to my work as well as illustrating a common food product. Warhol was known for often utilizing popular products, commercial items, and celebrities into his works. He saw these things as important for American society and therefore "worthy" or necessary to convey in the form of fine art.
PlanningWhen planning this piece I already knew from the beginning that I wanted to create some sort of advertisement. I was doing this project for both my IB art and MIAD Scholarship Portfolio Classes, the latter of which was requiring us to create a piece based around food. With this restriction, the clear solution for me was to create an advertisement regarding our school food selling business called the snack shack.
I started my planning process by deciding what I wanted to convey with this advertisement, the snack shack was currently undergoing a process to switch to cashless payment so I decided that would be a major focus of the poster. I also wanted to represent some of the products that we sold, so that customers may see the poster and come looking for the items displayed. This food portion was going to be hand illustrated using Procreate, while the rest of the piece would be created using Adobe Express and Adobe Photoshop. I decided this because while I could complete the entire piece in procreate, it would be far easier to utilize adobes more advanced fonts and text features. This way I could make the poster look more professional without having to hand draw many of the elements of the text as I would if I used Procreate for this portion. I began sketching out some of the possible foods I could display, I wanted to make sure the selection of products looked enticing to viewers so I decided to use very colorful and differing options. I then sketched in Procreate, using the pencil brushes, a composition for the illustration of the products that would be displayed. This illustration would be completed first, becoming an element to later be used alongside the text and graphics in the final poster. |
Ads Portfolio by Andy Warhol, 1985
Campbell's Soup Cans by Andy Warhol, 1962
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Process
The process for the creation of this piece, specifically the illustrated portion, began with linework using a technical pen tool on Procreate. This was followed with color blocking and creation of a simple background. I then began detailing the various food items starting with a lolly pop. I then began detailing the other food items taking care to make their logos and images accurate to the actual products while maintaining a stylized and cartoon-like look to them. I struggled slightly with the three-dimensionality of the objects and trying to capture their complex forms while maintaining the stylized look. I did this through creating highlights and changes in tone across curved surfaces and the round shapes of the candy, cans, and bottles. I also was able to capture some of the shine of plastic wrap and aluminum through this method, bringing more life to the various materials that make up the products shown. One of the most challenging parts was the orange bottle of Gatorade. Since the bottle is clear plastic filled with colored liquid I had to somehow capture the way light moves through its complex shape and interacts with the liquid inside. This was quite difficult to get looking correct and took a lot of observing references of such bottles from differing angles. In the end I was incredibly happy with how that part turned out, likely due to how much work was put into it comparatively with some of the other less-intensive objects.
Once I finalized my composition and had fully rendered each of the food and drink products, I decided to change the background to my schools color of blue. I then put the entire image into Adobe Express where I could easily add text and text graphics with manipulable properties. I added the title and all the relevant information sticking generally to a color palette of white and blue with some black text. Once it was complete I inserted the entire thing into adobe Photoshop where I could further manipulate its properties, complete color corrections and export the file in a wider variety of image formats.
Once I finalized my composition and had fully rendered each of the food and drink products, I decided to change the background to my schools color of blue. I then put the entire image into Adobe Express where I could easily add text and text graphics with manipulable properties. I added the title and all the relevant information sticking generally to a color palette of white and blue with some black text. Once it was complete I inserted the entire thing into adobe Photoshop where I could further manipulate its properties, complete color corrections and export the file in a wider variety of image formats.
Experimentation
My main experimentation was in the process of creating a composition of text in Adobe Express. I had never used this program before so I explored its features before attempting to create a poster. This included a practice poster based around the rat king, that I made utilizing Adobes AI generative features as well as its text editing and formatting features as well as graphic library. These were all interesting tools to explore and really gave me a sense of the detail and depth that can be achieved using Adobe Express as a simpler alternative to Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator for quick graphic design. Overall I was happy with how this poster turned out and decided to begin working on my actual piece using Express. The first attempt was not very satisfactory so I decided to entirely redo it with similar composition but some differences in style, shape and size of text.
Critique
Compare
Both my Advertisement I and Warhol's Ads Portfolio and Campbell's Soup Cans are created in a 2-D format with often stylized elements. My piece and Ads Portfolio are both created for the purpose of commercial advertisement of products and/or businesses. Campbell's Soup Cans also displays several commercial food products just as my piece does. Stylistically, the illustrated aspects of my piece are very similar to Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans with stylized or cartoon-like imagery.
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Contrast
When it comes to medium, my piece is completed digitally while Warhol's were made before the digital age using more traditional printing methods. The composition of Cambell's Soup Cans differs greatly from my piece, being a repeated image of the same product while mine is several products arranged in an interesting composition. My piece is rather more similar to the composition and format of Ads Portfolios individual works but those are still incredibly varied in their layouts and in many ways dissimilar to my piece, including style and format.
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Reflection
I really do think I greatly developed as an artist throughout this process. This piece was my first large scale attempt at real graphic design and advertisement in which I actually illustrate the elements myself. Previously, all of the advertisement work I did was either photo editing or manipulation or simply manipulating and formatting pre-made graphics alongside text. I think this step away from using basic graphics to designing and illustrating my own is important for developing any sort of real graphic design skills. I am also incredibly happy with the way this piece turned out, it is one of the first pieces in my portfolio that is incredibly text heavy but I feel I executed this element well during the creation of this work. I also was glad I was able to further explore three separate programs during this process, including Photoshop, Adobe Express, and more of Procreate for the iPad. All of which are excellent creative programs that are valuable, in my opinion, for my skill set as a digital artist. This was unique because normally I solely work in one program, occasionally taking something to Photoshop in order to make necessary edits or more technical format changes. In the future I would like to attempt more advertising work such as this, possibly exploring more differing styles and mediums as seen in Warhol's work like Ads Portfolio.
ACT
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
- My piece was stylistically inspired by Andy Warhol's stylized Campbell's Soup Cans. his focus on commercial products and advertisement as an art form also further inspired my piece and led me to create Advertisement I as it was made.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- Warhol wanted to focus on the concept of reproduction and the way products and prints are mass reproduced for commercial purposes. The commercial world and industry he saw as one of the major aspects of modern life and that's what he chose to represent through his art during his career.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- I further explored pop art and commercial art as an applied art form. This is one of the main ways art is seen in the real world and is an important aspect of advertising and industry.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
-When looking at Warhols work, it was mainly due to the connection of commercial products and advertisements shared across both my project and Warhol's work.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- I further explored the impacts of art and design on commercialism, industry, the modern world and consumer driven society.
Bibliography:
https://www.merrittgallery.com/andy-warhol-ads-portfolio/
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79809
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
- My piece was stylistically inspired by Andy Warhol's stylized Campbell's Soup Cans. his focus on commercial products and advertisement as an art form also further inspired my piece and led me to create Advertisement I as it was made.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- Warhol wanted to focus on the concept of reproduction and the way products and prints are mass reproduced for commercial purposes. The commercial world and industry he saw as one of the major aspects of modern life and that's what he chose to represent through his art during his career.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- I further explored pop art and commercial art as an applied art form. This is one of the main ways art is seen in the real world and is an important aspect of advertising and industry.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
-When looking at Warhols work, it was mainly due to the connection of commercial products and advertisements shared across both my project and Warhol's work.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- I further explored the impacts of art and design on commercialism, industry, the modern world and consumer driven society.
Bibliography:
https://www.merrittgallery.com/andy-warhol-ads-portfolio/
https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79809