Creating the New: Adidas Print Ad Series
Type: Schoolwork, pair project.
Scope of work: Ideation, Digital Imaging, Art Direction, Copywriting, Layout Design, Photography.
When: Year 1 Semester 2
No online images were allowed for use; we took all the photos ourselves in a studio at school and at our own time. We also sourced for the products and model by ourselves.
Softwares: Adobe Photoshop, Bridge and Indesign.
We had to create a series of 3 print ads for Adidas, based on the sports ‘Basketball, Running and Tennis’, to promote our chosen products and champion the importance of print media in this digital age. My partner and I wanted to incorporate Adidas’ belief of “Creating the New” in our idea as well. Instead of competing against others, we decided portray the athlete breaking her own records and creating new ones, with her literally tearing through them, donning Adidas gear as she constantly aims higher and tries outdo her past self. The burst out of paper also helps bring out the charm of print media. The headlines of each article show how the athlete is breaking her own records, paired with the same copy across all 3.
A Peek into the Process
After experimenting with different ideas, we chose the one we felt was most visually appealing, matched the criteria of championing the importance of print media, and Adidas’ belief of creating the new. We came up with different versions for the series where the athlete would be bursting out of an image of a vinyl record, with the headline "Always breaking records with Adidas", and out of written records with the headline "Rewrite the history books with Adidas", for example. Later, we changed it to news articles of sports records and revised the headline to make it more direct but energetic, better matching Adidas' brand voice.
At first, we tried creating a flat piece of paper that she bursts out of, but we changed to a giant newspaper to create more visual interest and amplify the charm of print media.
First draft of the articles of sports records we created, featuring our model and her respective sport in each ad.
Articles after layout adjustments to make it more realistic.
(Before touch-ups): we tried making them vary slightly in colour for more individuality but eventually decided to make them consistent for the series.
Apart from the Adidas logo, we created everything from the news articles and advertisements at the sides, down to the rips in the paper which we photographed in a studio.
Visual Credits:
Adidas Store image used for mockup: https://www.ovo-7.xyz/ProductDetail.aspx?iid=19026722
Adidas Logo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Adidas_Logo.svg
