Living Large

http://yeswework.com/print-design/manfrotto-digi-ad/

I ran across this web page that featured the ad and an alternative image for the ad space.  I found this interesting.  First of all the ad is for a tripod, so we would expect that the images used would be very good images.  The audience are photographers so you would want to speak to them and demonstrate what great images you can get if you use this expensive tripod.  Both photos are very good quality. 
The top image uses a framing technique where the outer edges are darkened in order to draw focus to the center.    It also strongly uses the rule of thirds to place the woman and the tripod.  The bottom image is slightly off for a true use of the rule of thirds. 
In the top image the woman and tripod is bigger than life. In the second image, the woman and tripod is smaller than life. I can see why they didn't use the second image.  You don't want someone to associate your product with making you small unless you are a weight loss company.  The product should make you think you are "living large" if you use the product.  Even though the image at the top may technically be a better image for the reasons outlined above, it is better because it has an appropriate message. The one thing that bothers me about the top image is that the tripod leg looks broken where it goes through the cloud.  It did however make me look to figure it out.
The ad itself has a strong use of white space above the logo. 

The White House Uses Infographics

On Facebook this morning, the White House released a new infographic about the troops levels.  I thought it was a little cluttered and contained too much information.  It does show me in a glance that he has reduced troop levels but I think the information could have been reduced.  The emphasis however is on showing that the troop levels have been reduced. 

I wanted to compare it to a graph that caught my attention and resonated with me when it was released a few years ago.  The second graph is simple.  The colors show when Bush was in office and when Obama was in office and the number of job losses. I think the simplicity in the graph that tells a story is what resonated for me. 

Of course, I view the information that is presented with a cynical eye because figures don't lie but liars can figure but I liked the second graph because it was simple.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html#

I think that these infographic were fascinating.  Although the image at the top is very confusing, I think it demonstrates the point of the image.  All the options that are available on Facebook to protect your privacy are available if you can figure it out.  The same can be said about the graphic.  I am not sure about the wisdom of showing confusion.  One of the comments in the class discussion was that they couldn't understand it. Maybe it is only me that took as confusing on purpose but also informative. 

The illustration of the length of the privacy policies show how long it has increased over time.  Instead of a bar chart, they chose to use an image of a document and I think it helped to visualize what they were saying.  The circles nicely show the number of words in privacy policies and then compare it to the US constitution.

Banner Ads and White Space

This banner ad caught my eye.  I think I have been trained to ignore what looks like a banner ad but this one caught my eye.  What first caught my eye was the tag line "the cutting edge of cinema".  It seems counter-intuitive to say "cutting edge of cinema" because movie theaters are so 'old school'.  It made me look at the rest of the ad.  Why did that small part of the ad catch my eye?

First, my daughter works for a local cinema, so maybe I am just predisposed to look at ads about movie theaters.  Second, I think that the white space surrounding the tag line drew my eye to it.  Everything else on the ad is fairly filled up, so initially I ignored it because it is typical of a banner ad. I find it interesting that what caught my eye was in all lower case compared to the larger, all capitalized "Regal Movie Gift Cards" which is what I think I noticed last.

The only color on the ad is the snacks and a small part of the logo.  That was the second thing I noticed and I find that interesting that they chose color for those elements because that is where they make the most (they don't make much on tickets at all).  I didn't note the graduated fill of the background color but maybe subconsciously it helped to draw my eye.  I am convinced that it was the white space that drew my eye the most.

Logo Quiz from Lecture

Scroll down for answers

From Logo Lecture

Open Arms

I thought that this movie poster was interesting.  First, the design is fairly simple.  We see the actor's name and the word 'YES' with an image of the actor with open arms.  We see in the bottom corner that the name of the movie is "Yes Man" so the poster is a kind of rebus puzzle.   The posture of Jim Carrey and the setting kind of reminds me of the "Sound of Music".   The colors are simple also. The warm and cool colors play on each other with the cool blue receding in the background and the warm green coming forward just as they do in nature.  The top and the bottom are fairly dark and toward the center, the background is low key.  The font used is a sans serif font and is simple and to the point. 

I think what caught my eye with this poster is a recent experience that my daughter told me about.  She was at a car dealership waiting for her car to be serviced.  In the showroom they were holding a salesman training session.  One of the main points that she got from it was that they were told to make sure that their arms were open when dealing with customers.  The body language of open arms makes people comfortable and they feel welcome.  From this poster we get the feeling he is feeling great and free but on another level, we feel like we could go up and talk to him because he is open.  His arm and leg that is pulled behind him also lead the eye to the upper corner and the bottom corner.  His pose tells and does a lot. 
http://www.reelmovienews.com/gallery/yes-man-poster/

Colors that pop!

 

I found this ad interesting because of the colors.  The cool blues and white recede into the background while the warm yellow that is saturated advances.  The blue also sends the message that it is high tech even though it is just a diner scene and the blue and yellow are directly across from each other on the color wheel.  The splash of red on both yellow areas draws your attention to the object.  I don't think that the font was appropriate however and it was not big enough to read even when the image was full size. 

The subject of the ad was a bit confusing however.  It took me awhile to figure out that the ad was for a book or magazine with 1000 cult objects.  That is not good.  However, the design caught my attention and made me stop and figure out what it was about. 

Canada Ad Uses Imagery to Lead the Eye

 

I found this ad interesting for several reasons.   As I was flipping through the magazine, this image caught my eye.  The statement in the middle of the photo is not very noticeable because it lacks significant contrast and size.  Instead the image leads the eye directly to the statement. In this size it is hard to see but there is a person standing at the top of the rock on uppermost rock.  Although I did not notice the person right away, I think it helped to lead my eye to the blurb. The image uses the rule of thirds.  The bottom left has content and the rocks send the eye around and up to the blurb which are also in the rule of thirds area.  I did not note the sun when I first viewed the image but I wonder if it helped to bring my eye down to the bottom left in order for my eye to float up and right.

Here is the low contrast, relatively small print statement:

 

 The Flat Earth Society? After I read the statement, I had to read the small print to figure out what it meant. 

 

It was only then that I discovered it was a tourism ad.  I thought it was quite clever because it forced the viewer to discover what it was about and relied on image to point to the blurb instead of large print with high contrast.  I also found it interesting that the blurb made me curious to read more.  

Source: Smithsonian Magazine. May 2011 pg. 29.

Sweet Grannies

I have been thinking about a lot of things lately.  The other day when I was visiting my grandfather, he told me and my sister about when he was married to our grandmother.  You see, my family tree has many branches because of divorce.  My grandfather and grandmother divorced when my father was 7 years old.  My grandfather is now 96 years old.  I saw him when I was little but when my parents divorced when I was 8 years old, I no longer saw him until a few years ago after his second wife passed away.
He mentioned his first wife, Madeline and we said that we knew her.  He told us that we were too young to be alive when he was married to her.  We had to explain that yes, we didn't know her when he was married to her but we knew her when we were kids - she was grandma!  I didn't know her well, but I did know her!
After that got straightened out he told us about how wonderful of a woman she was but she had a temper.  She was told that he had a girlfriend and she got so mad at him that she chased in through the neighborhood with a butcher knife.  After that incident and a few other instances of violence, her parents came to him and asked him to divorce her and he agreed. 
I don't know if he actually had a girlfriend but thinking about your grandmother chasing your grandfather with a butcher knife is quite a head trip.  I immediately thought that everyone's point of view made their own circumstances look better.  I talked to my mother and my father about it and they confirmed that she did have a terrible temper and she had thrown a gravy boat at my father's face when he was a young married man and she wouldn't speak to her son for several years after that.  What ever happened to sweet grandmas?  Is there such a thing?

Who Are The Cit'iots (city idiots)?

My husband and I have been considering buying a farm upstate while the real estate prices are low.  When my husband was reading the "Country Folks" (a weekly farmer newspaper that contains classifieds - we call it the farmer bible) he saw some farms up for auction.  We checked them out online and didn't like the area and I decided to check out farm auctions from the USDA.  There was one in Schoharie that was coming up for auction soon.  We checked it out using Google Maps and the found the property boundaries on the tax assessor's site.  We decided to take a ride and check it out.

As we drove north we started to notice more and more pickup trucks instead of cars.  We noticed junk in people's yards instead of pristine landscapes and we commented on it that we could never get away with that in our town anymore.  We felt as though we were driving through our town 30 years ago.  We found the road that the farm was on and we headed up the dirt road.  We were really excited because the road on our old dairy farm was dirt.  We were driving slow and a pick up truck came up behind us, so I pulled over the best that I could.  He went by us and gave us a dirty look.  We started driving the roads that surrounded the farm to get an idea of the area.   We saw a few Mc Mansions with pristine landscaping but overall there were mainly working farms. We were pleased to see real people with kids riding old bicycles in the driveways. At the same time though, we were pleased to see a few Mc Mansions because that meant that if you needed to sell off a lot, there was demand. We took pictures of neighboring farms and streams by the roads.  Several times we had pickup trucks go by us and again we got dirty looks. 

It took us awhile to realize that they had identified us as 'cit'iots' and we fit the profile.  We wished that we had put a bumper sticker on the car that said "My other vehicle is a Tractor".  We  realized that if we bought a farm up here we would have to put up with the local's dirty looks.  Maybe we would fit in our with our cows and older tractors but I think it would take quite awhile to be accepted because the truth is, we have become cit'iots.  We were looking at the farm with an eye for future subdivision, just like the cit'iots did in our neighborhood.  We were looking down at the locals wondering how they could make a living from just farming.  I guess it is a matter of your perspective. 

The Bull's Adventure

I think that the worst time that any of the cows ever got lose was when a bull a got loose.  We got a phone call that there was a couple of cows loose from the summer pasture at we rented at another farm.  When we went to look at the place of the last reported sighting, we ran into several police cars.
We were informed that the bull was running into cars on the highway.  Yes - running into cars, not the other way around.  They said that prior to this he had attacked a person and the person had called the police from his garage.  The bull had gored him and had attacked his car.  The man that had gotten hurt came over to us talking the police.  He said that it was the strangest thing!  He had been petting him and when he realized that it was a bull, he jumped back.  He also said he grabbed a pipe and that is when the bull went nuts.  That is when he got jabbed in the ribs by the bull.
The police were waiting for a tranquillizer gun to come from the county seat.  They were prepared though in case the vicious animal returned.  We were waiting and after another 1/2 hour or so passed, the police got a call and left.  We drove over to the farm and found the animal trying to get back in the fence.  He got shipped the next day and we ended up paying the man's medical bills.  We never heard anything about the cars that he supposedly attacked. 

More Farming Thoughts

I have been thinking about how much city people changed the farming climate where I lived.  Don't get me wrong - there were lots of city people that had moved to the country before the last wave that appeared shortly after 911.  I think the big difference was though that when they came, they wanted you to change to their way of life instead of them changing when they moved.
It is like the neighbor that built a house along side one of our fields.  One foggy morning the cows didn't appear at the barn waiting to come in to be milked.  About the same time we were ready to start chores, the phone rang.  It was this woman and she was very upset about her landscaping being trampled by the cows.  We started to freak out because judging by her attitude, I knew for sure we were going to get sued for damages.  So we went out on the tractor to figure out where they got out and figured on going through that spot and get past the herd so we could push them back.
We were shocked at what we found!  Someone had cut our fence and it was like a road where four-wheelers had been riding.  We started up the road and ended up at the woman's house.  We told her, "build a road and they will come".  She started to talk about the damages and I explained to her that we were ready to sue for cutting our fence, our time, and potential damages to our cows from eating things that they shouldn't be.  By the way, I should have you arrested for trespassing on our land.  It took her a few minutes to realize that she was in the wrong.  Cidiots!

Birthing and Roadside Attractions

That is something that you don't see every day.  At one time in my life, I saw that probably once a week on average.  Part of my job on the farm was watching the cows that were ready to give birth.  At first it was quite an experience to see it but after awhile it seemed old hat.  I have very few pictures of these events because it was so common. I haven't seen this happen since we discontinued the dairy.  We have beef cows but it is rare that you would happen to catch them in the act of giving birth.
I remember a few births specifically.  I remember that one time a cow went a little early and she gave birth out in the field across the street.  While we were getting her across the road and her calf, a neighbor was walking down the road.  She started to freak out that we were taking the calf away from the mother.  This woman walked by the farm a few times a week.  Did she every notice that all the calves were in separate pens away from their mothers?  I thought it was an interesting reaction.
And speaking of people not thinking, I remember one time I was in the calf pen during the winter.  I went out with an axe to break up the ice in the water tank because the heater had failed.  As I was chopping the ice, a car stopped on the road about 10 feet away from me.  I heard the man say, "Hey kids, look at the farmer lady".  It was a good thing that there were kids in the car because I was ready to throw the axe at him.  I am not a freakin' roadside attraction.  Go back to the city, you "ci'diot" (ci'diot (city idiot) is what we called the people that moved from the city to country).

Clanging Change

The Merry Go Round
The same old car, and the same old girl,
The same old life with the same old whirl,
The same old road with the same old turns,
The same old gas that the old car burns.
The same old springs with the same old squeak,
The same old sights that you saw last week,
The same old toot of the same old horn,
The same old traffic cop, since you're born.
The same old desk in the same old place,
The same old boss with the same old face,
The same old job, and the same old pay,
No, there's nothing new in the news today.
And so the music goes round and round
In the same old way, with the same old sound.
By Burton Coon - October 18, 1937 Suggested by the daily trips of Miss Helen.
Helen is my husband's aunt that just passed away last year at the age of 96.  Burton was a neighbor and when he was old, he used to ride with Helen to work in town.  Burton was a farmer, not because he wanted to be but because when his father died, he had to take care of his mother.  He was studying to be a preacher and gave it up for his mother.  He wrote for the local paper and he admitted that he always resented it.

I have always wondered how some people can live their entire in the same town, and in the same house.  I like change.  I have lived many places.  Probably the most interesting place that I lived was in a bar that a friend owned.  The bar was on the border of the NJ and New York.  There was an upstairs bar that was licensed in NJ and a downstairs bar that was licensed in NY.  My boyfriend and I slept on the pool table after the place closed for the night.  So he slept in NY and I slept in NJ because the pool table straddled the state line.  We stayed there for a few months until my friend had to close the business. 

I have never forgotten that when she closed the bar, I helped her take the bar stock up to her mother's house.  We drove my boyfriend's 1960 Ford Ranchero about 100 miles away from the bar.  I will never forget that every time we hit a bump, the bottles clanged.

Communicating With a Two Year Old

Many years ago when my daughter was two, I found that we had communication problems.  One day, she told me a lie.  I told her that she was lying.  She turned to me and loudly roared.  Confused, I repeated that she was lying.  Again, she roared at me.  It took several minutes for me to realize that I she thought I was calling her a "lion" because I wasn't pronouncing the word properly.  I think that was the day that I decided to move away from the south back to the land of speaking properly. Two years later I left Florida and moved back to New York. 

I had no idea what seven years of living in the south with a man from Alabama had done to my speech patterns until I moved back.  I had people stare whenever I said I was "fixin'" to do something.  I remember when I first moved there that I would tease other people about using the word "fixin'".  Somewhere over time, it entered my vernacular and stuck and I didn't realize it until I was back in the land of proper speech. 

My daughter was four when we moved back to New York and I was amazed how quickly her southern draw disappeared and her vernacular changed to northern expressions.  I think it may have been because every time she said "yes ma'am" or "no, sir" people's heads turned and some people even laughed at her.  She learned quickly that she was supposed to just say "yeh" or "nah". 

Story Ideas

I think I am in analysis paralysis in this class.  We are supposed to be coming up with story ideas and I have nothing!