ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS
Professional material is a way of promoting yourself or your business to another company, future employers and your audience. Professional material is all about promotion to others to help bring you more opportunities or job offers as they show the audience and future employers what you do and how you put yourself forward to others. In this essay I will be analysing different kinds of professional material to discover what looks professional and which routes to avoid going down when designing my own.
Business cards are the perfect way to promote yourself to others on a whim or out in public. It holds the basic contact information such as phone number, email address and website address so they can look at your work or contact you later on. It tells the person your career and what you do which is enough for them to check information later if they are interested in your career path. The best style of business cards are simplistic and with a well planned out colour scheme that can attract the eye and are easily readable.
These business cards by Alpha has a well planned out colour scheme, the black and gold being two colours that work well together and gains the audiences attention. These business cards are also very professional and look as if they would be high quality meaning it is a more expensive business with higher standards. This could also be noted by the use of gold which can refer to money and riches, the colour automatically giving the response to the audience that this is more of a expensive company. The text also looks readable and stands out on the background, no clashing happening between the two colours. It is also very simplistic but has its own style that get the audiences eye from the two colours.
Like the first business cards, these are also very simplistic in style but unlike the first it has a more clever style as the shape of the camera already tells the audience what the company do without reading the contact information. Black seems to be a shade that is chosen often as it is seen as a professional colour, these business cards and the first business cards showing this off. The style of this business card is its selling point but you cannot see the text in the image as it only shows one side of the business card, making it hard to discuss if the text is easily readable for the audience but from the quality you could guess that it would be in good quality and readable.
Unlike the first two business cards this business card is an example of a bad business card, the colours clashing and horrible to the eye. Although all of the correct information is on the business card, the colours are hard to the eye and do not work together, making it difficult for people to look at. The use of all of these colours instead of a planned out colour scheme makes the business seem more un-professional and will make people decide to go to another business over this business because of the use of the colours. A badly designed business card can make the audience decide to go elsewhere and can mean you will lose business at your own company.
Websites are an online place that works as a portfolio of all of your work for people to view and can also be a way for them to contact you after viewing your work. Websites also work well as a portfolio for applying for a job or to be offered work placements by companies that find your work interesting and well made. Websites work for all companies but work best in a portfolio style for more digital careers such as media production and graphics.
This website is created by an artesian which is a worker in a skilled trade, especially one that involves making things by hand. It was made as an example of a website by a creative website. This website is well designed and planned out, the colours working well together and standing out from each other. The website is of a simplistic style and looks as if this website would be use as an online portfolio to show off the persons work to future employers or those who may stumble across them and ask for them to do work for them in the future or a small project alongside either work.
This website is similar to the first as the colours work well together and is of a simplistic design, the design making it easy to follow the page around. This makes it much more easier for the audience and future employers to look at your website and to find the information that they wish to find on your website in a quicker manner, making your website and company seem much more professional to the audience and employers. Simplicity and style is important in any design as if it is over packed it is hard to understand the website and can make the audience get confused much easier and cluttered websites can also seem less professional than ones like these two websites I have analysed.
Show reels are a good way for those who wish to get into acting for film making as it can easily compile all of your best work together to show to an employer straight away. They can show a range of your work to an employer without having to send them multiple links of different videos as it will all be complied in one place for them to see in one go. Show reels can also show off your editing skills to an audience or future employees as you have to compile together multiple videos of different genres and to make it flow well, success in this will show skill in editing.
Shawn Bu Show Reel- 2014
Shawn Bu's show reel starts with a title screen of his name and the roles that he specifies in compared to Dave Edwards below that doesn't specify. Shawn Bu's show reel uses suspenseful music over the videos, lots of different videos being implemented into the videos and have quick edits between the videos. Most of the videos over the suspenseful music are action videos or include fight scenes, showing the audience that he mostly enjoys these kinds of projects. When the music changes to slower paced and calmer music, he shows all of his slower videos to show that he can do different kinds of work to an employer and that he is flexible in his work.
Dave Edwards: Film Maker- Show Reel 2015
Dave Edward's show reel starts with a title screen that has his name and his occupation, the title screen flowing nicely into the rest of the video. When each video plays the title is shown at the bottom of the screen with the role that he played for each video, making it clear to the audience and future employees what he is capable of and is wanted they can go and see the videos in full of one specifically catches the eye. The flow of the show reel is perfect and voice overs or sound effects from the videos are implemented perfectly into the show reel along with the music. When edited in, the voice overs work well and help express emotion to the audience. The video shows that he has done multiple roles with lots of different kinds of projects to show multiple skills in different projects. The show reel is also only 1 minute and 50 seconds long, making the audience not get bored and to see all the work in the best way possible. This is my favourite out of the show reels I have watched as it flows well and shows all of the work off in the matter of under 2 minutes. I also enjoy the titles appearing with each role which I may implement into my own show reel.
Alberto Martinez Show Reel 2014
Alberto Martinez' show reel uses a well known song from the beginning as soon as the tile screen appears. This can make the audience feel like something is familiar to them although can also result in copyright strikes on your video. Like Dave Edward's show reel they also show the title of the video when it is being played and shows when he made it and the genre of the video. Unlike the other two show reels, this show reel shows lots of each project rather than quick edits of lots of projects. The video is also edited to the beat of the song and shows a different range of videos, showing his skills to future employers and flexibility.
Overall I can now see from analysing and viewing other people's materials what is considered professional and what isn't considered as professional. I have also gained some inspiration for my own designs and will use these as something to refer back to when making my own professional material to promote myself to others, universities and future employees.
References
YouTube. (2017). Dave Edwards: Filmmaker - Showreel 2015. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tawdZqDCKsc [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017].
YouTube. (2017). Shawn Bu Filmmaker Showreel 2014. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQxdM5Wx9zg [Accessed 4 Oct. 2017].
YouTube. (2017). Alberto Martinez - Filmmaker ShowReel 2014. [online] Available at: https://youtu.be/nqx6O1ghssQ [Accessed 5 Oct. 2017].
