Blog Reflection

Through the Capstone project and working with my mentor I learned the importance of communication and collaboration. When you are trying to work on a project it is harder when you are afraid to ask questions or ask for help or opinions. Basically, in order to be successful in whatever you're trying to accomplish it is important to be passionate and comfortable with your topic and who you're working with. Without this communication, you're not getting the most of your time. Your work will also suffer because without communication there can be no collaboration. Another thing I learned from this project is the importance of collaboration. You should always get multiple perspectives and opinions on every project because it will only make it better. This is especially important for advertising because everyone views these ads and they have to cater to a wide amount of people's interests. 

Socially, from this project, I have learned the importance of being able to communicate even when I don't want to. I am a very shy person and I didn't want to ask questions sometimes because I didn't want to be a bother. Personally, I have to learned to collaborate but also be original. It is good to ask for  other's people's perspective but you also have to work with your own ideas. Intellectually, I learned that advertising isn't just making a product look good, it's so much more. You have to cater to the population. 

Some challenges I faced were trying to come up with new ideas and trying to be more creative. In advertising, the main goal is to make your advertisement stand out and grab the viewers attention. For me, personally, I am not that creative and it was difficult coming up with new ideas. Even when I was creating my own advertisement a lot of the methods and ideas I used were from ads I had seen in magazines. I just had to put myself into the buyers/ viewers shoes and try to be original.

Mentor Log 2

This would be the second time Alex and I have met for mentor hours. Last time we gave me a mini project which ended up being a part of a larger project.

When I got in we looked at the catalog from corporate and it showed all the items that needed to be displayed. Other than that, Alex had free reign of what the store layout was going to look like. We had to take out different carts for set up. There were 4ft carts and 2ft carts and U-bars and so many different options. Alex and I went through all the rules for which types of clothing belong go with each certain cart.

So from all the shipment I did yesterday, together we set up a cart/stand with clothing. Through this I learned a couple things, like how certain colors, fabrics, and styles go together and how others don't. Merchandising carts also involves adding brand advertisements too, and this includes little posters, cut outs, and little boxes that have the brands logo, and we put this on or near the carts.

After, I did some for making my advertisement. I looked at a lot of magazines, that ranged from my mom's Better Homes to my teen magazines. I started to pick out ads that I liked and possibly wanted to mimic and I also picked out potential products I could use in my own ad.



HOURS: 5
TOTAL: 9

Mentor Log 7

I met with Alex today and I showed her my advertisement. She said she really liked it and that it look professional, and most importantly it brought attention to the product. The only suggestion she had was to change the placement of the brand name. I had put it under the product and she said that it would look better if I put it on top. Alex also filled out my mentor evaluation at this time too.

I changed my ad in accordance to Alex's suggestions, and personally it didn't look and better or worse to me, but I made the change anyways because she is the expert. I'm really happy with my finished product and now I'm just working on the video to show my whole editing process.

HOURS: 3
TOTAL: 25

Mentor Log 6

I spent today working on my advertisement some more. Alex gave me the idea of putting a large transparent image of the product in the background of the advertisement. I think this will make my ad look more professional so I spent today working on that. I had to research how to do it and look up a few video examples. My main issue with this is trying to get the transparency I want so it doesn't go unnoticed but doesn't take away from the entire advertisement. Another part of my project is to show the whole editing process of my ad for my presentation, so I'm also working about making a video. My challenge now is trying to edit my ad fast enough to fit into the time frame for my video.

HOURS: 3
TOTAL: 23

Mentor Log 5

This part of my hours were spent completely on my advertisement. I spent half of the time researching on how to use the program and how to edit make my ad look the best and most professional. I took a break from my first advertisement, which only included pictures found on the internet, and I tried to make an advertisement with my own pictures. My best friend is a model so I took some pictures of her and tried to create and ad with a fake brand, all created by me. I learned that this was harder because pictures I took from the internet are more professional than my own and they are easier to edit. I went back to my original ad and tried to implement some more professional methods that I have seen in magazines, like reflections and blending.

HOURS: 2
TOTAL: 20

Mentor Log 4

I showed Alex the start of my advertisement, which wasn't much, but I wanted her opinion on some of the pieces I had chosen before I put them together.

We worked on mannequins today and I learned that they are a big visual selling point because if customers see a items that look good on a mannequin then they will think it will look good on them. We dressed two mannequins, one male and one female, and we dressed them in the branded trends. This was a lot easier than merchandising a whole cart because this was more like just picking an outfit for myself. The only challenging thing was fitting the clothes to ensure they look good on the mannequin and picking some accessories. We had to stuff and pin some of them to make sure that the clothes look fitted. Today was really interesting for me because the work we did really tied in with my paper because it proved how advertising is misleading.

For my advertisement I looked at different programs I could use to edit it, and I ended up choosing photoshop. I have never used this program before so it took me awhile to get all the pieces together and I had some difficultly meshing each photo together.

HOURS: 4
TOTAL: 18

Mentor Log 3

In this session, Alex let me merchandise a cart all by myself. I still had to follow the company standards but other that I got to organize it how I wanted. This was really hard for me because I'm not one of those people that can visualize what they want to do and how they want it to look. I had to actually put the cart together and organize it how I wanted and take it apart each time the products didn't look right together or didn't fit. It's really hard trying to make a whole bunch of different types of products look appealing and look neat so it took me a little longer than I expected to finish. When I was done, other than a few tiny fixes, Alex said the cart was really good. Following all the standards, making it look appealing and trendy, within the time constraints was a challenge. This taught me a lot about product placement and how much that can affect or influence a potential buyer.

After, I started to work on my advertisement again. This time I searched the internet for pictures of products, models, and backgrounds for my advertisement. I selected various pictures that I thought would look good together and saved them.

HOURS: 5
TOTAL: 14

Mentor Log 1

(side note: Mrs. Sutter I changed my mentor a while ago but I forgot to tell you. I changed my mentor because in order to do a lot of my hours then I would have to leave school early and take bart to SF and my mom was throwing a fit, so I chose an easier option of someone who was available close by. If you want to email her to call her just let me know!)

I have already known my mentor, Alex, for a few months so we skipped the "getting to know each other" part and just went straight into it. Her job is to basically take all the new shipment and arrange the store in a presentable and appealing way that advertises the brands we want to sell, and convinces teenagers that they need to buy our clothing. First, we looked at the catalog we get from corporate that explained all the trends and what these trends included. All the trends have super cheesy names, like "Summer Romance" or "Sante Fe Festival". Summer Romance is consists of light airy fabrics and floral prints. While Santa Fe Festival has darker colors and tribal prints. 

On Monday Tilly's got in their shipment, which was about 30 boxes of clothing, accessories, and shoes. Alex's project for me was to start opening all the boxes and separating them into the trend they belong to. This took me awhile because 1) the store isn't allowed to have box cutters so I had to use a blunt piece of metal and 2) each article of clothing is wrapped in plastic. Then after all of that was finished I had to go to each trend and separate the brand name clothing from the generic clothing. 

I thought I was done with the whole project but I guess that was only one part. 

INDIVIDUAL TOTAL: 4

RUNNING TOTAL: 4