The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones is a story about the afterlife. It's the story of a young girl, Susie Salmon, who is brutally raped and murdered by her neighbour and then watches her family deal with her death from heaven, and also comes to terms with her death herself. It's an unusual story because the person telling it is dead- something i've not come accross before. It makes it more sad because you get to hear how she is not only missed but misses people herself. It's usually the family you feel sorry for, but she has been taken away from them too.

  Although the murderer is known to the reader from the beginning, the book is almost like a murder mystery/crime novel as it follows the investigation into finding the killer and how her father tries to uncover the truth. Rather than wanting to find out who the murderer is you're desperate for him to be caught before he gets away.

 Another interesting thing about the book is the description of heaven. Its not a religious heaven- there's no god and Susie's heaven is different to everyone else's heaven. There are other people there so it's not an individual heaven but certain things change as to how Susie wants them to. She can also move up into a larger heaven, like a promotion, as she grows.

A film version of the novel is coming out soon and I'm really looking forward to seeing it to compare how I saw the book to how the film makers percieved it. From the trailer I think the heaven is quite similar to what I envisioned but teh characters look quite different. It's not a book I thought of as havig potential for a movie but I will be interested to see how well it works.

How to Get Your First Job in Advertising by Dave Trott

I recently had a talk on TV advertising from Dave Trott, a well known art director of many famous and award winning TV adverts. He showed us a selection of adverts form the 80's which he chose because he said we would never have seen them before and therefore would have no pre-judgements of them. He told us a good advert must first have impact and then communicate a persuasive reason to buy the product.  When writing an advert you should first find the persuasive reason to buy the product and communicate it with impact. I found this very interesting and useful.

 The adverts Dave chose to show us were played in pairs, and these pairs of adverts were for the same or very similar products but from different brands. After watching each pair we discussed which one of teh worked and which didn't. We were told never to look at an advert and say 'I like it' or 'I don't like it' as that is a subjective view. We should always look at an advert objectively and say 'It works because..' or 'It doesn't work because..'.  As we went through the sets of adverts we began to identify the reasons why each advert either worked or didn't work. As Dave explained to us, an advert needs to give you a reason to buy something. It seemed obvious but after watching these adverts, we saw that many big brands run adverts that don't actually give you a reason to buy the product. The competitors then seemed to follow with an advert which would give you an actual reason to buy the product. 

When looking back on the talk and trying to recall the adverts we saw, the ones that I remember most clearly are the ones that worked and with these adverts I remember the reason to buy that product whereas I can't even remember the message from the other adevrts. For example, we were shown tow adverts for the same products from Nike and Reebok. They were slightly different in look like all trainers, but had pretty much the same benefit. The Nike advert, I recall, used a celebrity basketball player to advertise the product but gave no real reason to buy the product over other brands. The only reason you might buy them would be that they are 'cool' because so and so wears them (or is payed to wear them). There was no real persuasion.  The second advert was the advert below, from Reebok. It's a funny and surprising advert and therefore has impact: you will remember it, but it also communicates a good persuasive reason to buy Reebok's air pump trainers: they fit better. 

After this talk I look at TV advertising in a completly different way. We see around 20 minutes of advertising per 

hour of TV we watch but when you try and remember one that youve seen recently it's quite difficult. The ads that

you remember, have impact and give you a good reason to buy the product and therefore you also remember what

the product was.

Dave Trott gave us a copy of a short book that he wrote n the 70's: How to Get Your First Job in Advertising . It was 

published by Campiaign and Marketing last year when they set out to publish a series of key pieces about the 

advertising iindustry that are worth preserving and celebrating. Although it was written over 30 years ago the ideas are 

still relevant and blindingly simple. It took only about 15 minutes to read unlike other huge, fat advertising books but I

learnt more from it in that short time than I have from any other book. It tells you how to approach advertising in such 

a simple way with simple rules that shoudln't always, always be obeyed, but usually work. For example 'if your selling 

a cheap inferior product, you say 'Why pay more?', whereas if you are selling an over-priced, expensive product, you 

say 'Buy the best.' You always give the best reason to buy the product. Don't sell it on price if the price can easily be 

beaten and don't sell it on quality if it's a poor quality product. If you want people to remember you're ad, give it impact. 

Simples.

A murder mystery in reverse- A Secret History by Donna Tartt

I've just finished reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I read it in order to respond to a competition brief from Penguin which was to deisgn a new cover for the book, to bring it up to date. The current cover is certainly in need of a re-design. It's very boring and, added to by the fact that the word History is in big letters on the front, looks very much like a dull history book.

The book is in fact a murder drama, or what has been described as a murder mystery in reverse. It's not a particularly exciting one, and rather slow moving, but the characters are intiguing and unusual and there are some scenes of violence ad drugs to spice things up a bit. Being a murder mystery in reverse is quite interesting because you already know who is murdered but you don't know why or how. And at the beginning of the book you can't work out if it's one of the main characters and if so why they would do it. Once I had found this out though, i got a litle bored and hence I've only just finished the book. I also found it hard to get inspiration for designing the cover of the book. I was interested by the  drug themes running through the book and the growing mass of  lies and secrets that the group had to keep within them. I thought about using hair on the cover to represent this as hair can be used to find out if someone has been taking drugs but paranoid people trying to cover this up sometimes resort to shaving it off. I made me think of the extent the group went to with their lying and trying to cover up their crime. I did some drawings for this but it looked too decorative and not dark enough for the book.

I looked at the winners of the cover deisgn competition and this one that came joint third, made the best cover I think. The imagery reminds me alot of the sort of images the book created. The boy covereing his face with the deer's head, respresenting the mystery and lies and also the deer that they remembered from the woods on the night of the crime, and also the woods in the background which features quite a lot in the book.

It's not a book i'd say you must read, as i wouldn't say its particularly exciting and it's quite hard to read and a bit slow but I don't feel it was a total waste of my time. I was perhaps a little disctracted by trying so hard to notice themes and strong images to enjoy it.