Amelie

Amelie, or Le Fabuleux Destin d' Amelie Poulain - is one of the film that changed my life completely. The main character , Amelie Poulain, who is a girl that always help people to solve their problems, but sometimes she forgot to take of her own life. In the end , she finally think for herself and found the love of her life  and other people also happy make their life become better. The reason i love this film is because i felt related to the main character. She is just like me , a shy person whom doesn't have friends when she was younger because she didn't go to school. But in the end , she became close with other people and make some good friends. Also, My short hair is an inspiration from her hairs. :")

Romantic and Dramatic

Since I was small , I have seen many romantic and dramatic scenes on posters , adverts and films from the TV. It was very interesting to see that there is a big different between romantic and dramatic. Romantic themes are usually involve two people being affectionate to each other. But a dramatic themes can be about death or disease and sometimes it does not necessarily deal with romantic themes.On the other hand, romance and drama can sometimes work together as well.  For instance , a dramatic scene with 2 people having rough sex can consider to be romantic, perhaps to some others  not quite. To me, romance usually occurs when there are soft warm lights with flowers and candles , and two people doing affectionate things together. It might sounds cheesy but that is how I think it could be. In movies, there are romantic comedies or romantic drama. Romanic comedies are love between a couple and the film tends to add humour to it between the characters , example Something's gotta give or Love Actually. Romantic comedies involve funny bits and can have a happy ending but with Drama it starts off fine but throughout the film we start to interact with the characters . For romantic drama,at the end of the film ,we see something terrible happen such as one of the characters dies, example Titanic or Good Will Hunting.

And some of mine favourite romantic and dramatic posters. 

However, sometimes , a romantic theme does not necessarily have involve a couple in love, it can just have some senses that can bring up the mood such as  bright warm light with the happy objects. Also, for a dramatic theme, it does not need to have someone to die, it just need to either shock or excite people. These two are the photos i took, which portray romantic and dramatic theme.

United Color of Benetton

 It was probably not my first time seeing  people with different reaction about United Color of Benetton's adverts. They truly shook the world , and me, in a good way. I didn't really have this sort of disgusted look when i saw some of their posters. I gradually have an interest in the photographer- Oliviero Toscani. In the 1970s, their posters was black and white , which makes it more conservative. After a few year , they makes it into color , which makes it more lose manners and happier. However , the target audience was mainly toward westerners as there are only white models. It may be normal back then , but personally, i would feel left out because i am Asian, which i can't feel related to anything with this brand.
But then things changed when Toscani joined Benetton. In 1984, Benetton produced a poster named "Tutti i colori del mondo" , which means " Color from all around the world". Nowadays, if you see this poster , you  would think it was a normal thing to do, such as having a black person hanging around with an Asian and a white person. Back then it was probably madness , people would have question like "how come there are Asian in here?" " i have never met one" , or " i don't even talk to them ". And if they have any kind of reaction , even from bad to good impression, it was still a success because people would never be able to forget about this poster. Not only that , the name its self also have double meaning. When you think of color , there are blue , orange ,red, yellow  green, grey , purple , white , black.. And in clothing, there are many color as well. So Toscani was promoting clothes for Benetton  by letting the models to wear them , but at the same time , he delivered the message from the Benetton that regardless of the skin color , Benetton is for everyone from all around the world. It was a beautiful message. This , of course , help Benetton to go to an international level.
The following year, it seems to me that there were no context or no slogan what so ever in all these posters. In the 1989, Tosconi took a photo of a black women breast feeding a white baby. It was one of those weirdest thing i have ever seen in my whole entire life. I have never seen a black women breast feeling a white baby. And I position myself with people from the 90s, and i am sure they were even more shock then i am. Some people would find it disgusting and unnatural. Again , Toscani was playing with taboo, something that are too sacred and too accursed for ordinary individuals to undertake.then again, the message saying we are all the same , the skin doesn't matter , it is still there.But the brand itself was not really promoting its all clothes. It was selling an idea, an idea saying that people have different color and that doesn't matter anymore.
In 2000, Benetton produced another poster , which putted an end to this abstract ideas. The poster was " Sentenced to Death" which were photos of prisoners who will die. This is a very sensitive subjects as death is something that people feel uncomfortable and scary when they think about it. These posters scared people off and they decided not to buy the clothes anymore. Benetton didn't promote any clothing at all, which makes them lose the trust of people.
On the other hand , Toscani and Benetton gave such an incredible impact into this world , and change the people's point of view. People became less discriminate and ignorant towards other people from different background. And that was good advertising all about " Clever, Jaw dropping , eye bulging , pulse racing and tear jerking" .

A video that sum up all the adverts from the 1960s onwards.

LOGO & MANIFESTO

A Logo
Yes , every single product has a logo, an organization, a company , or even just for an individual. A logo is a graphic mark to aid and promote instant public recognition.So it should be recognizable and neat, but also meaningful. For our "agency" , we have come across for a LOGO that will represents us.
We are ARCHIPELAGO , which is a chain or cluster of islands. The word itself is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- ("chief") and  πέλαγος – pélagos ("sea") through the 
Italian arcipelago. The name suits us very well as the five of us are from all around the world : Singapore , Vietnam , Sweden , Russia and Latvia, just like islands from different 
continent.

Every agency always have their own manifesto and what they believe in. For instance, Denstu, one of the greatest agency in the world, has the "Good Innovation" slogan. According to Tadashi Ishiii, by innovation, they are not just talking about
 technological innovation, they also want to create new, socially significant value, and drawing on new ideas that give form to our vision a business group that can help create brighter, happier future of society. This makes me think deeply about our agency and manifesto. The problem is that each of us have different personality , so we all believe in different things, for instance , different cultures and religions.
However, we still have some common things in us, which pulls us all in the same direction.Here are just some ideas of our manifesto:

We are international
We are optimistic
We are down to earth
We don't judge 
We are non-discriminating
We are brave
We believe that we don't need umbrella because everyday would be a sunny day.  
And based on our own manifesto, i have some rough ideal about the LOGO for our agency.
The first one was about the togetherness of our group. There are 5 people in our group , so these words A, C, P, L, G represents 5 different people , united together. It seems like a nice logo at first , however, this logo would be too complicated, it will not create a big impression on people. 

And finally,thanks to Benn, we have some official logo of our group. But we are still not sure which one would suit us best.

Advertising from time to time.

 Another trip to a museum. Last week, i couldn't go with my class to the museum so i just went there by myself. It was the Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising, which is located near Notting Hill Gate Station. The interesting bit is that the ticket was £6.50 for adult but she gave me the £2.25 ticket. I wonder why and then i realize that it was a child ticket! I guess my look really deceive my age! As i go inside the museum, i slowly noticed that all the things in here was displayed according to different period of time.From the 1890s to the 1990s. It was incredible to see that some people still kept things like posters or chocolate boxes from a long time ago. From the 1890s to 1960s , all the posters and boxes were written and draw by hand,there was no use of computer or graphic design. Therefore , the style is very different from nowadays advert. For instance, the highlight of the museum was the " Waste Not , Want Not " campagne. During World War II Britain had to economies on raw materials, save on energy and salvage scarce commodities, which encouraged by a powerful propaganda machine.The message was to grow your own vegetables , make do and mend or recycle paper. They were all very effective propaganda, but everything were drawn by hand.

Also, It's easily to know that there are changes in advertising , for instance, the changes of Coca Cola advertising from the 1920s to present. You can clearly see how coca cola adverts evolved and still remain one of a most popular soft drink on earth. Perhaps Coca Cola really knows how to please the consumers , from its Unique Selling Point ( it's the first soft drink, with bubbles gas) to Emotional Territory ( such as it's refreshing , make you feel good about yourself, etc..)

Moving on to a different section of the museum, I can see the changes of soft drink appearance. However , it stills look catchy enough to attract the consumers, and the concept of trying to sell the product still remain the same.