My Billboard Evaluation

My finished billboard goes against the normal conventions of the typical teenage girl’s magazine advertisement. The billboard is in the format of the front cover of my magazine so that my target audience, which is teenage girls, will recognise it instantly when they see it on a shop shelf. The purpose of my billboard is to reach out to girls and feel as though it is targeting them individually. The genre fits with the feminist ideology of girls being confident and content with who they are. My target audience is demographically targeted to a Westernised society. Not having to fit society’s expectations is a major focus point of my continual theme of girls being unique and not following the heard of sheep which is portrayed through the media.

My finalised billboard shows an image of a girl wearing a light blue pastel coloured jumper which is a popular colour at the moment amongst young girls. The model has a beaming smile across her face which represents her self confidence in her skin, the model is not a skinny size 2 girl with her bones sticking out which the media constantly portrays as “beautiful” instead she is a healthy size with a glow about her skin and hair. The model is also wearing minimal makeup, a small amount of foundation so that you can still see her freckles, and her eyes have only got mascara on to highlight them. Her hair has got a natural wave to it and has been left lose around her shoulders but pulled to one side to fit the angle that her head is tilted again to fit the running theme of natural beauty. The shot was taken as the model started to laugh to get the hint of sparkle in her eyes.

Through my research of advertising billboards from the Egyptians influence to the 1900’s up to modern day with 2D and 3D billboards, I have designed my billboard to reach the best of its potential. I have decided to design it as a 2D billboard and I have included a QR code in the bottom left hand corner to connect my billboard to online content through multimedia. Smartphone’s are popular amongst teenage girls and therefore a QR code is appropriate. Finally the date of the first issue is at the bottom of the billboard in italic to gather people’s attention and give them the appropriate information.

The layout idea of my billboard is to not be overcrowded therefore the title of the magazine is situated at the top like the heading on a magazine front cover in bold Tahoma font for “teen” and Times New Roman italic for “unique” so that there is a clear difference between the two words, these two font themes have been continued throughout my billboard. With the image of the model covering the majority of the page as the main focus point. Below the models chin is a quotation “Happiness and confidence is a girl’s best accessory” by doing this I have highlighted the theme behind my magazine.

My Billboard

 



This is my finalised billboard. I have decided to design it in the format of the front page of a magazine to make sure that it is instantly recognisable to my target audience.

Final Font Decisions

I have decided on this final font layout for my billboard.

I have made this decision because I believe that although my billboard is following a pastel colour theme, the pastel colours struggled to stand out against the pale background, and because the main purpose of my billboard is to grab attention, a title that does not stand out against the background the billboard will struggle to grab attention, therefore I have chosen to stick to a black title as it contrasts against the pale background.

I have decided to differentiate between the two words “teen” and “unique” because I think it will not only attract more attention but is unique from other magazine titles, which is the basis of the magazine. I started with Times New Roman for both but went on to change the word “Teen” to Tahoma as I believe it is more curved and looks more attractive to a younger audience. I looked into the tightness of the characters, I changed the word to very tight then because the letter “T” still had a gap and gave it a feel of two separate words “T” and “een” I adjusted the character spacing between the letters this will create a more immediate effect and draw the audience’s attention. To contrast from the classic look of the word “teen” I decided to stick with font type Times New Roman for the “Unique” but I have used italics to give it a sense of a romantic appearance.

Looking at Font

Now that I have chosen my background I have started looking at different types of font for my title. The magazines name is going to be “Teen Unique” so I have started by looking at standard font Times New Roman because it is clean cut and clear to look at.

To give my magazine a kind of quirky feel to appeal to teenagers even more I think that I should differentiate between the two words “teen” and “unique”, to enable this to happen I have changed the word “teen” to bold to stand out.

I really like the idea of the two words being styled differently so to take this idea one step further I have changed the “unique” to italic to contrast against the bold of the “teen”.

To give the title an even more modern feeling I have changed the font type of “teen” from Times New Roman to Tahoma, this is because the Tahoma font has a more round and curved feel from the sharp edges of the Times New Roman, I also believe that it looks more inviting. However I have made the decision to keep the “unique” aspect of the title in the font type of Times New Roman to give the title a bit of an edge.

I have aslo looked into the tightness of the font to see the different effects

Now that I have decided on the types of font and the way I want my title to look, I have turned my attention to the colours of the font. As my magazine is going to be focusing its colour scheme around pastel colours I believe the title should follow a similar design. Therefore I have tested out 3 of the most popular pastel colours starting with pastel blue which goes along nicely with the models jumper.

Next I looked at pastel pink

Then continuing on the pastel theme looked at a pastel purple

After that I looked at the pastel orange, which is not always a popular choice but I wanted to explore all options.

And finally a pastel green, although this shade has a little electric feel to it which could also attract attention.

After looking at the different colours I went back to the idea of the two words differentiating from one another, therefore I looked into mixing up with colours of the words.

First I looked at two of the popular pastel colours blue and pink

Afterwards I looked at orange and purple

After exploring all pastel options I will now go onto making the final decision.

Designing my Billboard

I start the process of designing my billboard by using the Microsoft word publisher software. I have set my chosen image as the background, however to add emphasis to the joy in the models face I have made the decision to crop out her right shoulder. By making sure that the photograph is situated in the right position with the models face, I have placed a 3x3 grid (rule of thirds) over the models face to ensure that the majority of her face is in the centre of the billboard which will then become one of the main focus points of the billboard.

 

Now that this is the case I can move on to looking different types of font that I can use.  

Final Decisions

After studying my final three photographs I have chosen this one.

I have decided on this one because of the colour of the model's jumper fits to my colour scheme, and also because the photograph looks more natural rather than staged, the image gives the impression that the model is comfortable in her own skin which fits the house style of my magazine completely.

Possible Photos

After taking some photographs to be possible main models for my billboard I have narrowed it down to three possibilities.

I have edited these photographs by enhancing the brightness and changing the density of the contrast. I have not edited the models physical appearance, I have just changed the colouring of the photograph. This is because my target audience is teenage girls. I do not believe in drastic photo shopping of people's physical appearance, this is because it can give girls the wrong idea of what people look like and what they believe to be society's expectations of their appearance.

Template for My Billboard

Planning my Billboard

Following my research into billboards I have decided how to organise and design my billboard.

My billboard will be focusing on an image of  a teenage girl, the photograph will be from the shoulders up and focusing on her face (mid shot). The model will be wearing minimal makeup to focus on the idea of natural beauty and will reinforce the idea of girls not having to cake their faces in makeup to feel comfortable in their own skin. This will represent my magazines house style.

The billboard will have a QR code in one of the bottom corners to enable a quick link to the online media aspects of the magazine and also a website address for those who do not have a smartphone to quickly access the website as do most other institutions.

I have decided that the billboard will have a plain and simple design that is still eye catching. Vintage and pastel colours are very fashionable at the moment so I intend for my billboard to follow that sort of colour scheme, this will break away from the other styles of magazines available enabling my magazine to stand out as a unique product.

The billboard will have a very small amount of textual content as the findings of my questionnaire show that the majority of people do not pay attention to most of the textual content anyway, I will put the name of my magazine “Teen Unique” in big bold letters across the top, with the photograph covering the majority of the background, with the rest of the information set out in the design of the front cover of a magazine. By doing this I therefore aim for everything to be attention grabbing and for the main focus of promoting my magazine to be put across.