Francine Galea

This course provides a practical understanding of what it takes to art direct multi-media advertising campaigns. At the beginning of the course you will develop, or be given, concepts in response to a brief. Once you have an approved concept, you produce a layout or scamp to indicate where headline, visual, text and logo are placed. You then develop a finished solution on a Mac combining all the relevant elements in your layout. In doing so, you will absorb the basic principles of visual communication while learning the value of branding a product through art direction, colour and typography. You will also learn how to present to your creative director and your relationship with him or her will be discussed. The importance of combining words and visuals will be stressed, alongside advice on how to work as part of a creative team with a copywriter. You will also learn how to give your work the best production values in terms of photography and illustration, all sourced from the internet. The focus of the course is to generate good, strong ideas from various briefs and then produce the advertising in Photoshop or lndesign. If you do not have these technical design skills, you will be teamed up with a student who does. Finally, you will be advised on how to compile a compelling portfolio comprising five or six campaigns that will help you to attract the attention of advertising agencies. Individual idea generation is strongly encouraged, but if students do not have their own ideas, they will be given ideas to work with as the only way to produce great art direction is to work on strong advertising ideas. Also, students will be encouraged to have their own product/brief ideas for various mediums including digital/online. This course can be taken in isolation or as an excellent follow-on from the Introduction to Advertising course. The course is aimed at anyone who is interested in the concept of originating and producing ideas on a Mac within the advertising agency environment. No previous experience is necessary. All of the projects will be finalised on Macs, so therefore some basic skills in Photoshop or Indesign are an advantage.

Francine Galea has over twenty years of experience in advertising, working as an award winning art director/copywriter at a number of agencies including Euro RSCG, Saatchi & Saatchi and Grey. She has operated across all creative media including TV, radio, press, direct mail and web-based advertising.