Friends Interational
A social enterprise saving lives and building futures for marginalized families and youth
Brief
Friends International is a social enterprise based in Cambodia. Their vocational training restaurants are some of their most famous avenues of outreach, as they are rated very highly on TripAdvisor.
My Role
I worked on a new version of a magazine advertisement for the vocational training restaurants.
20 hours
Objectives
- Compete with other elements and ads on the page to attract the most attention
- Come up with a new design direction for subsequent promotional materials for the next year
Tools
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
Previous Advertisement
From the previous advertisement, the main change they wanted to make was to have more succinct descriptions of each restaurant and introduce a new direction for the subsequent year's design.
Proposed Versions
To start off, I created a similar version to the original that used pictures from each restaurant. We chose pictures of people to convey that these restaurants are not only about food; they are about helping marginalized youths.
A fallback conservative version
When I was analyzing the other competing advertisements in the magazine, the ones that stood out to me the most were those that had a clear focus visually. So for the subsequent versions, I utilized only one picture that has a main visual focus on food, but still had the vocational training students and teachers in the background.
Version emphasizing a traditional Cambodian dish (fish amok) with workers in the back
Version showing student and teacher interaction to highlight the vocational training aspect of the restaurant
Final Version
The final version that was chosen for the magazine was one where the teachers were facing directly at the camera and offering the food. Advertisements that make eye contact with the viewer increases engagement, and was thus more effective in conveying the vocational training aspect of the TREE restaurants.
