Tone of Voice- Waterstone's Christmas adverts

Waterstone's Christmas Adverts

Tone of voice

In one of our lessons we looked at the concept of 'tone of voice', how images have a tone, which needs to be matched for their use.  For example there are many different images depicting 'Christmas' but their tone many vary. One may have a religious tone, another may have a friendly tone, another may have a childish tone. When designing we need to create the right tone of voice through our use of imagery. 

In our lesson, we were put into groups are asked to select a number of images, some colours and some typefaces that we would use to create a series of Christmas posters for Waterstones.

Our group decided to choose a number of wintery images and backgrounds. Our chosen colours were gold and light blue. We chose three fonts 'hello', 'champagne and limousines' and 'Znikomit'.

I then set about creating some posters and a formal invitation for the Waterstone Christmas party, using only the images that our group selected. These were the designs I created.

I wanted to  create a house style for all the posters. I went for a simplistic approach using the most striking images to pass across a message. The idea behind this campaign is the that of the idea that Waterstone's has a book for everyone at Christmas. This is portrayed by the baubal with the person's name on it and the tree branches, which could represent a family tree. The heart also expresses the idea of giving a gift they will love. I chose to use the words 'Get Christmas Sorted' portraying the idea that getting Christmas presents at Waterstone's is quick and stress-free.
I added a black decorated border to give the posters another dimension and to create a sense of continuity between the posters. The black decorative border also ties in with the colour of the black logo below. 

The next task was to create a formal invitation using the images that we had previously selected as a group.  These were my initial attempts which I was not entirely happy with. I felt that they were too dull and the colours not striking enough.

I then went back to the drawing board and came up with this design which I much preferred. 

I felt that the background image was much more striking and also I felt that the style fitted better with the house style of the posters. I like this final design because it is very simple but the background image is striking and bold. The heavy use of gold is also the right tone for a formal and expensive Christmas party.