My social issue is depression in terms of how it is portrayed and glamorized by the media, and consequently in our society today. I wanted, in my ad, to satirically draw attention to the loose connotation that the word depression has acquired in recent years due to the media's portrayal of it as beautiful and even romantic. Films, music, websites, and magazines have made it popular and desirable to suffer, to be insane, and it has gotten to the point in society where to be perfectly happy with your life, and to love yourself is seen as ignorance. To me it is in the same realm as the media's perpetuation of eating disorders by promoting the desired skinny look.
This is important to me because, as someone who uses the internet a lot and is very up to date with pop culture, I have seen too many people become actually or further depressed because of how the media has influenced them to think and feel. They aren't faking it. It is actually a problem.
I made this ad hoping to show teens and advertisers what they are doing; how they are propelling and perpetuating disease of the mind because it is seen as artful, trendy or unique. I wanted to show people that depression isn't a culture or a trend, and not to fall susceptible to it because of how it's glorified in current society.
The target audience was originally teens and young adults who are technologically savvy and into popular culture. I wanted to show them in my ads what they don't see the media doing to them. However, it also kind of turned into an advertisement to the media outlets who do this.
My USP is probably the satirical nature and irony in both of my ads, while still getting the message across, as well as the look of actual types of media in my ads (magazine and movie billboard).
DEPRESSED! and #DepressionIsNotACulture
I actually am very pleased with my final results for this project. I could have made it less confusing to the general public, but I think I get my point across in an interesting way, and it looks nice, like a real ad.
What was most challenging for me was actually coming up with a way to get my point across, as it is kind of complex and very specific, but I think I did it well enough. It could have been better. Also, not all of my pictures were the best quality, and that was annoying. It made it much harder to make the ad look good. I think I did well with my editing in this assignment. It turned out looking really good, for the poster especially, even if the content could be better.
In making this ad, I learned a lot more about photo editing and the legitimacy of advertising. I think I learned the most in this unit of any so far probably, and I appreciate that.
My Ad is for depression in teens and young adults with a focus on how the media glorifies the disease.
I really like this shooting assignment because it will allow me to utilize photoshop more than some other ones which is strong point for me, but the shots themselves could have been better, and I think it has to do with the lens on my camera. I'm not sure I will get another opportunity to shoot the half of this assignment that it affected, but I think the shots I have will work.