Redesign Reflection

This assignment excited me because the guidelines required some creativity, in order to change who the ad would appeal to, and how it would pull that off. I was able to create a whole new ad for a different audience than the original. It was different and a new kind of assignment than I have ever been assigned to do before. The only worry I found with this assignment in the beginning was finding an ad that I could change for a new audience. Class was helpful with this area, during peer brainstorming.

Initially I came to class with the idea of redesigning a Bose stereo advertisement; however, this ad featured a lot of text and would have been too much information to consolidate for a new audience. With help from my peer group and teacher-student interaction I decided that the Bose ad was too general and we found the Eddie Bauer down winter coat advertisement instead. This ad was chosen because it had a relatively simple design, the product was easily determined, and the ad had appeals that were being used to reach its audience. Since the ad featured all of these things I decided it would be a good ad to try and redesign.

The advertisement that I ended up with to redesign was an Eddie Bauer down winter coat advertisement. I had trouble discovering an alternative audience for this ad; none seemed different enough from the original. So, to solve that problem I began delving deeper into whom the original ad was really appealing to, instead of saying it appealed to women, I went more specific saying it appealed to athletic women.  After I did that, it was easier to determine a new audience of middle-aged, business-men for the redesign. The design of the new advertisement came straight out of a picture in my mind. I continually looked at the original ad and gained inspiration from some of the simplistic and timeless qualities that it carries. A picture that included my new audience within it began to form in my head. To remember all of the details, I jotted down my ideas on paper as they came and expanded on them as I wrote my essay on the computer.

As I began writing my essay I was challenged, as always, with getting all of my thoughts down on paper in the most organized and sensible way. I found many details and aspects in the original ad that were rhetorical appeals, and I was challenged with getting all of them on paper in a way that made sense. To avoid sporadic and choppy thoughts throughout the description of the original and redesigned rhetorical appeals, I slowed down and really thought about the ways the ad was appealing to the viewers. I decided which details thoroughly did what each rhetorical appeal is meant to do, and described those details in full to show that I understood the purpose of pathos, logos, and ethos. One other challenge I ran into, was finding a way to include logos in my redesigned advertisement. The original did not have any statistical fact about the product, nor did it include science and math, so I had trouble producing a fact that seemed believable for my new audience.

This assignment was similar to an art assignment in my opinion. It required us to design a new advertisement for a new audience based off of an original. I took many art classes throughout high school and treated this assignment similar to the assignments I did in art class. I was able to use the original ad as a resource for the creation of my redesign. I found myself feeding off of the colors, text, and overall mood that the original ad had in order to fully develop my redesigned advertisement. I really enjoyed the creativity that this assignment allowed for. It gave us freedom to create something on our own, yet had boundaries that helped us write successful essays.

After the fact, I feel like I have a better understanding of what advertisements are capable of besides just promoting a product. I learned that they often use emotions to strike interest in viewers, and facts and logic to allude to the logical and moralistic sides of people. These things are used to promote the product, but also can influence the audience in ways that we may not even realize sometimes. Evaluating the rhetorical appeals through this redesign assignment has helped me grasp how pathos, logos and ethos make a difference in an advertisement as well as on the people who view it. When seeing new commercials and ads in magazines I feel like I can identify so much more detail than I could before that give clues about the brand/company, and what their goals are.

If I were to go back and re-do this essay I feel like I could improve some areas that are weak. I would try physically drawing out my redesigned advertisement so that I could see it, rather than pull it all from my memory during the writing process. Although I am happy with the way my redesign turned out, I would like to know if actually drawing or sketching it would benefit my description in any way.