Annie Assignment 2 Ad

I first thought of the concept of screen addiction when I was laying on my bed in the dark and realized how long I had just spent on my phone. I wanted to create an advertisement in the style of an Apple ad because often times social media gets the reputation of being addicting yet smartphone companies like Apple ignore the fact that they enable these addictive apps to become part of people’s everyday life. Additionally, I wanted to invoke the Apple’s style because the smartphone brand is instantly recognizable with its distinctive minimalism and typography.

When I started brainstorming for this assignment, I only knew I wanted the photo to depict someone laying in bed in the dark intently using technology, and for it to look like an actual ad for one of Apple’s products. The first consideration was who I wanted to portray being addicted to technology. Thinking back to how my little brother who is only 10 and goes to extreme measures to make sure he has access to his ipad (including sneaking downstairs to play on it after bedtime), I decided to focus on portraying the effects that Apple’s products, particularly ipads, have on children. Thus, I photoshopped a bit of redness into the eyes of the photo of the child, which contrasts with the blueness of the image and is still quite subtle since the eyes are small. Additionally, the captivating blue light reflecting on the child’s face and the sides of the parents emphasize the addictive and dangerous quality of too much screentime.

To convey my message not only in the image of the child but also in the text, I took inspiration from many iPad ads for the new iPad Pro, which concentrate on how powerful the device is. As I remember back to my little brother, I realize that the iPad really a lot more powerful than I thought, but not in the way that the original ads want me to see but in the way that technology really has the ability to control children + their mood/actions. So I decided to use the same word “powerful”, but subvert its meaning in my assignment.

Additionally, I noticed that in some apple billboard ads, they will have a link to their product (ex: apple.com/privacy). I thought putting the idea of screen addiction into part of a URL would be a subtle way of communicating my message. Also, I put the apple logo on the ipad because it would follow the direction of the child’s eyes which point to the ipad and the logo.

I made many different versions of this assignment, including one version that is inspired by Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign where I wanted to display the perspective from the front facing camera of an iPad and show a child’s screen addiction close-up; however, I could not find a photo from that perspective that I could use.

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