Final Project I

Match.com is a website in which men and women take risks and let chance dictate their future. This was theme was similarly reflected in my experience with this project.

Selecting my initial action or subject for the assignment was not too difficult. I wanted to let my photographs influence the outcome of my brand name, so I did not put much thought into the action I choose. I picked three separate actions, photographed all three, and selected the one I felt would give me the best results: a woman putting on make-up. Taking the original photographs, I found to be the most challenging part of the project. As an inexperienced photographer, I did not plan out my shots as meticulously as I should have, which would have entailed paying close attention to the light, removing any distracting objects in the background, and providing my actor with careful direction.

After reviewing the photographs, it wasn’t long before I came up with my brand name, Match.com. I wanted to steer clear of any obvious solutions, such as perfume or make-up brands. While studying the images of a young woman applying make up, it elicited thoughts of a woman preparing for a date. With my brand identified, narrowing down my photographs was relatively easy. Many of my pictures were out of focus or had distracting images in the background so I used cropping and Photoshop editing to my advantage to get each shot the way I anticipated. Additionally, my experience with Flash made creating the slide show unproblematic and allowed me to manipulate the photos how I intended.

Lastly, selecting music took some trial and error. My first instinct was to select slow, romantic, typical “love” music. After testing it out, I felt my images and the match.com logo was too joyful to fit that theme. When contemplating the concept of my brand and message I wanted to communicate, the Frank Sinatra song “Love and Marriage” came to my mind. I changed the music and found the upbeat tempo and comical association with the television show “Married…with Children” worked well the playful logo, enticing photographs, and dancing images.

Similar to the users of Match.com, I let chance influence my actions and was both pleasantly surprised and happy with the results of my project.

Website of the Week 3!

www.strawberryfrog.com

Strawberry Frog is a marketing company that focuses on Cultural Movement.  I found their website to be fun and easy to navigate through.  They use a frog as their mascot in clever ways to add some excitement to the clean and traditional website.

Spoof Photoshop Tutorial

If you have ever used any of those online tutorials for software programs, than you will thoroughly appreciate this spoof photoshop tutorial.

Photo Finalists

I have narrowed it down to these four pictures. I would still like to edit them to remove some of the busy information in the background and make the colors look more consistent. The brand I have decided on is Match.com which I feel works well with these photos and is somewhat unexpected from the original subject chosen.

Website of the Week 2!

www.gatobiablo.com

This is not a company website, but rather a person's portfolio who works at Blue Sky Studios. There is not much work currently up on the site, but if you look under animation, there is his Flash reel which is unbelievable. It really shows you the full capabilities of Flash as an animation program, not only for websites. Additionally, if you look under the links page, there are links to several other animators amazing Flash portfolios. Enjoy and don't be jealous of how amazing they are!