Creating the layout

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In this post I will discuss my layout for the look book.

After looking at competitor Agent Provocateur, I decided I wanted my layout to look sleek and have a discreet element to it. The Agent Provocateur perfume bottles inspired this idea, I felt its understated exterior looked sleek, sexy and made a bold statement.   -->

I liked the way that the brand name and logo across the front of the bottle spoke for its self. This is something that I felt could be pulled off with the Victoria’s Secret brand name and logo. Even though the look book is advertising beauty, Victoria’s Secret is still a lingerie brand so I feel that it works to make the front cover more discreet. It was important the cover looked sleek because Victoria’s Secret is a luxury brand, so I wanted this to be communicated through the appearance of the look book. Victoria’s Secret beauty competitors are other high-end brands such as Agent Provocateur, Benefit Cosmetics and Bobbi Brown so it was important to have an expensive looking cover. 

 

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The first problem I came across when making this layout was that the images would not fit fully across the page because the page shape is square and the images were taken portrait and are rectangular. To solve this problem I made the background of all the pages dark and light pink, to reflect the Victoria’s Secret signature stripes. I feel this really works for the look book and fits in with the brand image. If I were to re-do this I would of asked the photographer to have a wider crop when photographing the shot so I could have cropped the image into a square shape in post-production.

I started off with a brief paragraph about the collection to introduce readers. I ended this with a question, “What’s your style?” to encourage readers to carry on looking and find the style that will suit them, I feel this also makes it more personal and relatable for the reader. I started off with the three core themes, very sexy, dream angels and VS pro because they are the main ones that would be sold all year round. The limited edition collections begin with winter because the press release gets released in October and therefore by the time the collection will hit stores in December.

I kept the layout more a less the same style throughout to remain consistent because I feel an important element to an advertising campaign is consistency. The writing on each page gives a brief description of the products and phrased it in ways it relates to the theme. For instance, on The Immortals page it reads, “Its no myth our bronzing powder will give you a natural-looking sun-kissed glow worthy of any goddess”. To get the Victoria’s Secret voice I used similar words, phrases and language as they had previously done when advertising their products. Using words such as provocative, fuse, smolder and seduce. Throughout the look book I chose text that would reflect the theme but was still clear to read. For this colours of the text I picked out colours from the images on those pages. I did this so the text and images with flow and sit well together on the page.

I placed an image that I had created by merging two separate images together and changing the colour to a sepia tone across the back page. These images are from back stage at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show. I did this because it adds to the beauty element and relates to the VS pro page in which there is a similar image.

This is the second draft my layout, after showing my tutor it was suggested that I changed the Grecian Goddess theme to The Immortals. This is a much more effective title without straying to far from the original theme. I also changed the colours of the limited edition colours to pink. This was because they are limited edition products so I had to make them look different to the other products that are sold all year round.