Drive Me Wild! Design a Car Ad in Introductory Photoshop Project ~

Drive Me Wild! Design a Car Ad in this Introductory Photoshop Project ~

Project Summary:

• You are the designer of a new car advertisement - everybody likes cars! Especially high school students. And car ads have a broad appeal to both men and women.

• Base your design on existing ads and images for inspiration if you wish, but you must create a NEW ad that does NOT yet exist, a unique marketing approach all your own.

• Using a your sketch and other copied images as a foundation, trace everything with the Pen Tool.

• Then colorize using your unique color schemes you mix on the color palettes.

Learn These Tools & Concepts:

Design focus is Color and the Pen Tool.

Teaching Color Theory can be tough, especially in the Digital Classroom, where pigments are messy and the additive colors computers use are confusing.

However, the effects of color can be understood directly using advertising as a tool.

For instance, nowhere are color choices more crucial than when designing a car ad: Warm colors for hot rods, cool colors for environmentally friendly electric vehicles.

Plus everybody likes cars! Especially high school students, and car ads have a broad appeal to both men and women.

Other People's Work:

These are examples created by students following this project.

This Project Happens in Three Parts:

Part #1: Sketch Your Layout ~

Design Always Begins with Paper and Pencil

• Grab a pencil and do some basic sketches of your layout concept, design ideas and rough draft.

• You don't have to be Rembrandt - just to do a good job.

• Include in your sketch a logo, slogan, a "call to action; make room for all that stuff.

• Also include your shapes, colors and everything you've learned about design.

• Your drawings are graded using this rubric.

Part #2: Move to the Computer ~

• Scan your sketch into Photoshop or Illustrator.

• Then find images of cars, backgrounds, and any other objects you need that match your drawing as close as you can, to use as templates.

• Look for interesting scenes from magazines or websites, anything that resembles your sketch: Architecture, interior design, Landscape, Outdoor Sunset and many other magazines have these types of scenes.

• Copy the image and paste it on top of your scan in Photoshop, just to use as a template to copy.

• Draw over your images with the Pen Tool using all the skill and detail you can muster to demonstrate your prowess with the tools.

• Draw over your images with the Pen Tool using all the skill and detail you can muster to demonstrate your prowess with the tools.

Part #3: Color Theory ~

• Teaching Color Theory can be tough, especially in the Digital Classroom, where pigments are messy and the additive colors computers use are confusing.

example

• However, the effects of color can be understood directly using advertising as a tool.

• For instance, nowhere are color choices more crucial than when designing a car ad: Warm colors for hot rods, cool colors for environmentally friendly electric vehicles.

• This project introduces students to Color Theory by limiting them to only 5 colors in their ad and requiring them to use one of these color schemes to create them:

Analogous – Complimentary – Monochromatic – Triadic

• That's right! You can only use 5 colors!

Last Step: The Final Product ~

• Your final Computer-generated image must be created from scratch or pieced together from many different image sources. example car ad You may use images found online as long a they are blended together to make a cohesive and convincing scene changed by 90%.

• All content you use on your subject must be 90% your own, modified into an original composition, including all text and imagery.

• Your final background should also be pieced together, not a single scene from a single source image.

• ALWAYS save your projects using the following naming convention:
LASTNAME-FIRSTNAME-PROJECTNAME

• DO NOT name your project any other way - Improperly named projects will not receive credit and you will be sad.

• NEVER leave your work on the desktop or depend on a flash drive - instead, save your work in a folder you can find later - preferably on a virtual drive where it can be backed up.