Photographic Styling - Taking a trip to the beach

This was my first shoot in Photographic Styling at FIT and it was so interesting! I've assisted on shoots before but this was obviously so different as its A) on a much smaller scale and B) it's not fashion! However, I learnt so much about the lighting, setting up the backdrop and setting up the camera. I'm really excited about this course as I will develop my skills so when I return back to Nottingham Trent in January I will be much more confident when we are required to produce photo shoots. I'm even more excited for the last two shoots as these are portraits and a 4 page fashion editorial. I'm praying I get the role of stylist for these shoots! 

This shoot was interesting as I have never really worked on such a small scale in photoshoots. I have either worked with people or large scale art installations such as window displays. 

We chose to photograph the perfume 'Aqua Savon' for our advertisement project, which I admit I had never heard of so I first had to research the history of the perfume and the brand before we made any decisions for the shoot. We eventually decided on re-creating a beach for the backdrop of the shoot with sand, sea and shells. In theory we wanted  to submerge the bottle into water which had golden sand at the bottom - which turned out to be not the greatest idea! By mixing the sand with the water we ended up with a mud-like pond, not what we were after! So we used our initiative and placed sand under the plastic container holding the water and that thankfully gave us the golden beach we were searching for! 

My favourite shots are definitely where the bottle is surrounded by sand and shells as this really gives off the beach vibe we were going for. Overall I am really happy with the results for this shoot and I can't wait to get stuck into the next project in a few weeks! 

We won, we won, we won!!

Ahh I can't believe all our hard work paid off and we won our section! We are all so over the moon!

The feedback we got from Chris, Tim and Karen Gilbert was all really positive as well! Some of the key feedback was our presentation skills, they all thought we were very clear and confident in our execution. They also thought the layout of the presentation was very clear and on brand, something we tried really hard to achieve and thank fully it worked! They also thought our research and use of stats was of an extremely high quality and really backed up all our points. 

The only negative they had was towards our advertisement and Tim suggested possibly editing it by making it more sleep focussed. However, we found this part the most difficult as we wanted to avoid using cliche's so we had to find another way to represent sleep.

Cloud Nine's final ad campaign!

These are our final advertisements! We decided on a 16 second long video which focussed on the key elements in the fragrance such as jasmine and the bed sheet which links back to sleep. We wanted to keep it short and not use a model as we wanted  to steer clear of the stereotypical sleep product campaigns where a sleeping woman in bed is extremely common. We also chose to use subtle colours for this reason as the use of dark purple or blue is now heavily associated with the 'cheap' sleep aid products.  

We made the photo advertisement and the video very similar in style! We used all of the same items in both as we wanted them to represent sleep in the same way. The bed sheet represents sleep, the jasmine shows the key ingredient within the fragrance and the music we layed over the video shows the key qualities of Cloud Nine: purity, transparency and well being. 

cloud nine - white jasmine

Ever since we got our bottle design back we haven't been 100% about it! Originally, as you can see from previous posts, the bottle was blue, short and stumpy, and the text was in a very boring and dull style! We changed all of that ourselves on photoshop. We stretched the bottle to look it a lot more elegant and also did the same with the lid as we thought that was the main thing making it look a lot more manly that we wanted. 

We then changed the colour of  the bottle by changing the hue and saturation until reaching our desired result. We always wanted the bottle to be very pale as this is the colour we want our fragrance to actually be. 

The final part of the new and improved bottle was embossing the new logo on our bottle. It gives the logo a slightly raised effect and adds a lot of depth, a long with the shadow behind the bottle. 

Our NEW final design

 I think me and my group are the most indecisive people ever! We have had some issues with our product designer not understanding the brief and not having time to re-do our packaging and bottle but his friend Chris said he would give us a hand which is great! 

On a previous post I uploaded images of what we thought was our final bottle and packaging but after looking at it again we decided a few changes were needed! 

We asked Chris to edit the logo slightly on our packaging. We asked for the font to be changed to Baskerville Old Face and the name of the product to be changed to 'white jasmine' instead. We felt that 'gentle jasmine' sounded like we were trying to alliterate and failing miserably! We then asked for a thin black line to be between Cloud Nine and White Jasmine. I really think this makes our brand and packaging look a lot more sophisticated and luxurious! 

I then went onto photoshop and lightened the packaging as we thought it looked slightly grey and too dark. Overall, we all really like the new packaging and think it represents our brand and product much better!  However, when the images are uploaded to my blog they look slightly darker than normal. 

The final design

We finally have our final designs!! After asking Chris to remove the yellow bands from the packaging we received these designs back. I think it looks SO much nicer! Much more elegant and less retro and tacky. I'm also really glad we chose to include the image of the jasmine up the side as it brings the packaging to life. 

These three bottles are designs we received back from Chris. They are all identical except for the height and width. I don't really like the top bottle as I feel like it is too clunky and stumpy! I like the second and third however, I think my favourite is the second one. We chose not to have a label on the bottle and instead wanted the brand and product name printed directly onto the bottle. I think this looks much better than a sticker as the clear bottle will allow the clear perfume to show through. Once again this reflects all of Cloud Nines brand values.

This task has really shown us all how difficult briefing is and how hard it can be trying to get your ideas across to another person. I have learnt a lot about writing briefs since starting this module so hopefully next time I have to write one it will be a lot better!

Re modelling

We met up with our product designer again today and this was the result! I really like the image of jasmine crawling up the front and side of the box as I think it adds depth to the packaging. Chris, the product designer, also changed the font to be more curved which I think looks a million times better! 

We are still quite unsure about the yellow bands on the box. We asked for the border down the sides to be removed as we thought it would look slightly better, which it does, but it's still not right. The band looks far too thick and the yellow is too vibrant for our brand. We briefed Chris asking for a soft, pastel shade but this was the result. 

We asked Chris to remove the yellow bands and hopefully that will look a lot better! 

Gentle Jasmine - The packaging

After our first initial meeting with the product designers we received this design back. When we briefed them this is exactly what we had in mind. However, once seeing these designs we realised that our original thoughts and ideas may not be the best! 

We really don't like the font used on this packaging and we feel like its too harsh for our brand. We also were unsure about the yellow border around the box, it's too harsh and vibrant compared to what we had in mind. Something is missing from the box in terms of the front side but we are unsure about what! We discussed removing the yellow lines and possibly adding an image of jasmine. We quite like the idea of the image being in black and white and quite sketchy. This would give the packaging a much more luxurious look. 

Cloud Nine photoshoot

We came up with the idea above when we were on photoshop experimenting! The fragrance  bottle will be surrounded by jasmine, as that's a key scent within our fragrance. Both the bottle and the jasmine will be placed on a crinkled bed sheets to represent the fact it's a scent to help you sleep in a less obvious way that a woman asleep on a bed.

At first I didn't like the sound of having the bottle placed on bed sheets but I love it now! It's  very simple yet effective, very much like our bottle and packaging. 

As we have given the brief to the product designer we are now just waiting for him to get back to us with his designs. 

The only issue with this is that we might now have an actual bottle and instead just a digital version on CAD. However, we thought about this and discussed it and came up with the idea of adding it to the image with photoshop. Hopefully it will look as good as we expect it to!

Experimentation

We spent the afternoon experimenting with more ideas for our photoshoot by using photoshop. The examples here are me experimenting with different techniques such as layering and blurring. I like both techniques but I personally think layering suits our brand and product the most.  

The bottom image shows blurring. I thought it would look cool to highlight the eye make up and keep the rest of her face and body slightly blurry. 

My favourite of the images is the second image with both bottles on there. I love how delicate the flowers look within the bottle. 

The top image is nice as well but I'm not 100% about it! I like how the bottles opacity is low but I'm not sure the right image is behind it or maybe the wrong effect is on the image as I think it would look a lot better if it was softer.

Jasmine, Orchid and Rose

The past few days at uni have been soo interesting! It really helped our fragrance project come to life!

Karen Gilbert is a perfumer who has worked for companies such as M&S, Boots and Superdrug. She was extremely inspiring and made me and my group get excited about our brand!! Karen gave us suggestions on how to improve our brand and product which we have definitely taken on board. 

During the fragrance workshop we experimented with different scents which we thought would work well for our brand and sleep body mist. 

As our fragrance is more functional than just a scent we knew we needed to include scents which help improve sleep - which is why we used Jasmine as a heart note. We also then used Orchid and Rose, giving our fragrance a very floraly scent. 

It took a while and a few adjustments along the way but we eventually got our finished perfume and it surprisingly smells pretty good! 

Research

After narrowing down our ideas to a fragrance which will help aid a better nights sleep we decided we had to conduct research of our own.

These images show the questions we asked and the responses we got. 

As well as a fragrance to help you to sleep we were initially thinking of selling personalised fragrances which consumers would be able to design themselves, for a premium price. This would mean our consumer would have their own unique, individual scent. 

However, after gathering the results we realised that the majority of our target market would rather purchase a ready made fragrance opposed to a personalised one. 

This really made us re think our idea and now we have decided to narrow down our product ideas and we have come to the decision, based on research, to focus on jut aromatherapy and a fragrance which will help aid a better nights sleep!

Bed in a field

We have had Joanne for two lectures now and i've really enjoyed both! I particularly enjoyed the seminar today as she really encouraged us to brainstorm ideas, which is something we haven't been given the time to do in seminars before. 

My group chose to brainstorm ideas for our photo-shoot which we have to create a brief for on monday - scary! We initially were playing it very safe and discussing very simple ideas which have been heard and seen SO many times before such as a woman sleeping in her bed, a quiet field with a model in it etc or even just a bed in a field! But after a while our creative juices got flowing and we came up with quite a few cool ideas! We really liked an idea we had about the model in our advert having the best dream she has ever had because she used our fragrance, although we would make the dream a lot more wacky and humorous than the stereotypical dream of chocolate or a good looking man. 

We eventually settled on the simple but effective idea of having the elegantly shaped body mist on a bedside table showing everyone how much of a necessity it really is!

In the seminar it also dawned on us how little time we have left until our first presentation for this project!! This year has gone TOO fast!

I'm sleepy

After much deliberation we have FINALLY finalised our idea for our new concept! We have chosen to focus more on aromatherapy than personalisation, although personalisation will still have a key role within our concept. 

After gathering research from mintel, mumnet and various other online surveys we realised it would be best to target our product at women aged 35 and over. Women with stressful jobs, mothers and housewives will be our target market as research showed us although young adults would love this product they wouldn't necessarily buy it and would only use it if it was already in their house! 

Campaign

Campaign awareness - Leaflets in Dr's surgery

                                          - Website, Facebook

                                          - Banners

                                          - Create suspense and excitement in stores and online 'coming                                                          soon banners with exciting counters in stores.

                                          - John Lewis, Selfridges, Harvey Nichols

Campaign objective    - Build suspense 

                                          - Gain brand awareness 

                                          - Make people think about their sleep pattern 

Emotional response    - From the campaign: Excitement and mystery 

                                          - Once launched - Thought provoking 

Packaging/ product     - Bed 

                                          - Pillows

                                          - Blanket 

                                          - Test tubes 

Scent is everywhere

We've been given our groups for our fragrance project and it's getting me excited! This brief sounds so fun! 

We've got the chance to design a brand, a concept for a new fragrance and direct a photo-shoot for the advertising campaign! 

Before we started having a play around with ideas for our concept we looked at the already available products within the market:
- Candles 
- Body spray/Deodorant 
- Perfume 
- Air Freshener 
- Flowers
- Technology 
- Aromatherapy 

We started gathering secondary research, before our trip to London, and find out the trends within male and female fragrances. This gave us an understanding of the market and a rough idea of what area we want to look further into when we go on our trip to London for primary research. We decided to go for a bit of a unique concept rather than a standard, stereotypical body fragrance. Some of the ideas we came up with were: 
- Innovation within fragrances (different ways it can be applied: gel, roll on)
- Personalisation (mixing scents)
- Aromatherapy 
- Fragrance/scent within jewellery