Independent Project

For the independent project I chose to work on an update advertising campaign for the charity Vest-A-Dog which helps provide ballistic vests for police and service dogs. The vests have been responsible for saving the lives of many canine officers but most agencies don’t have the money in their budgets to provide these vests. 

Vest-A-Dog Website: www.vestadog.org

While the Vest-A-Dog website is function and fairly well assembled I found it to be a bit boring and hard to navigate. So as part of the rebranding attempt I started work in progress website that contains the same information but is more visually appealing and easier to navigate. 

You can find it here:

http://roolowe7.wix.com/vestadogrebrand

I also used a QR code square that links to the Vest-A-Dog website. [Included as separate image in the attached photos]

[Following write ups are in order of attached images, but titles should help connect them to working files]

Title: A Life of Service

Medium: Photoshop Photo Manipulation

Purpose: Website Ad or Poster as part of advertising set for Vest-A-Dog

Concept: This poster is supposed to represent how service dogs (especially police canines) spend their entire lives protecting their human partners and the community at large. The picture is meant to encourage people to recognize that police dogs are protecting people their entire lives and keeping people safe is their entire life. 

Notes: I spent a lot of my time on this piece correcting the colours and contrast until I was happy with the picture. I found it was a bit dull and the colours weren’t vibrant enough originally. This was probably my least favourite piece and I had a lot of difficulty trying to figure out what to do with the background, my original plan had been to erase the background and substitute it with my own design but I found I couldn't erase the background without a lot of fuzz and leftover pieces that were really hard to try and erase. 

Title: Man’s Best Friend

Medium: Photoshop Photo Manipulation

Purpose: Poster or Website Ad as part of advertising set for Vest-A-Dog

Concept: The concept of this piece is that police dog’s literally “jump through hoops” to impress us. The poster’s focus is that because police dogs spend their time protecting people that the least we could do is to try and help protect them while they do the same for us. The image of the dog jumping through the fire-hoop also exemplifies the danger that police dogs go “through” on a daily basis. 

Notes: I was really pleased with how this one came out, unlike the first image I tried to make the fire and the dog a bit more vibrant but dull the rest of the image a bit. I did this to try and really accent the smoke that was coming off the fire, I think that helped to make the image more dramatic. I also included the QR code in this image so that the poster can be tied to the website and as such increase traffic to the website if the ad is effective.

Title: Police Pup

Medium: Photoshop Photo Manipulation

Purpose: Website Ad or Poster as part of advertising set for Vest-A-Dog

Concept: This image was meant to really showcase police dogs as members of the police force. I wanted to go for a “COPS” feel with this one so I really highlighted the presence of red, white and blue because those are the colours in police siren-lights. I wanted a really dramatic tv-police feeling poster.

Notes: I tried posterizing this image to get rid of the image details and to change it to just a few colours so that I could edit it into red, white, blue and black. I had trouble minimizing the colours as much as I wanted to so I had to erase most of the yellow that was left over by hand.

Title: Save A Life

Medium: Photoshop Photo Manipulation

Purpose: Website Ad as part of advertising set for Vest-A-Dog

Concept: The idea behind this image, like with Police Pup, was to show a dramatic side to police dogs. I also really wanted to show a canine ballistic vest on one of the posters. 

Notes: I tried to make an interesting and easily recognizable background for the image and to show both a canine ballistic vest and a dog wearing one. 

Title: To Serve and Protect

Medium: Photoshop Photo Manipulation

Purpose: Poster or Website Ad as part of advertising set for Vest-A-Dog

Concept: I wanted something that had a little more historic meaning as well as being easily recognizable. So I decided to make the base of this image a picture of Dale of Cawsalta, the first ever RCMP dog.

Notes: To highlight the police aspect I tinted the image blue and changed the vibrancy, which also modernized it because the original was a black and white image, and I added the slogan of “To Protect and Serve” which is a motto most commonly known in connection with law enforcement. I added the QR code to link the poster to the website and I erased the background so that the dog was the focal point. 

Title: VAD

Medium: Photoshop Photo Manipulation

Purpose: Site Logo part of advertising set for Vest-A-Dog

Concept: I wanted a basic minimal logo for the website. I wanted something that was fairly identifiable as a police dog, so German Shepherd was the ideal choice, and I wanted it to be wearing a ballistic vest as that is the charity’s purpose. 

Notes: I decided to use a silhouette for the dog and flat colour for the vest to keep the design as basic as possible.