Soft Drink Billboard

A Billboard advertisement for a fictitious soft drink was created using vector art illustration in Adobe Illustrator. The “Zestcola” advertisement was designed to have a simple message in an eye catching way. Bright colors and energetic shapes were used to convey positive energy and action. Lemon slices and the product name being squeezed out of a lemon slice indicate the citrus flavor of the soft drink. A bottle pouring liquid with organic shapes resembling liquid drips/drops encourages the viewer to quench their thirst. A product tag line of “Brighten up your day!” is a call to action. The “Zestcola” ad should catch the eye of any passersby. This advertisement is for a person of any age who is thirsty or looking for something to “brighten up” their day. The viewer should see the advertisement and then go out and purchase a “Zestcola.”

To achieve the planned design, I began by creating a solid pale yellow rectangle, which was centered on the canvas in Illustrator. Then, a photo of a pouring drink was placed onto the canvas in a new layer at a lower opacity and the pen tool was used to trace an outline onto a new layer. Using the curvature tool and the anchor point tool I gradually evened the outline out. Next, the outline was filled black to make a silhouette. This bottle silhouette was duplicated several times in different stroke and fill colors and layered beneath for effect. A photo with lemon slices was cropped and the image traced into a sketch art effect making a vector image. Lemon slices were duplicated, transformed and erased to achieve the desired look. Lemons were selected and color was uniformly changed using recolor artwork. A selection of lemon slices was also made into a hex pattern and used to fill an ellipse shape with lowered opacity. A photo of a hand squeezing a lemon was cropped and the image traced into a 3 color art effect making a vector image. This vector image then had to be edited by adjusting paths using anchor points and handles. Some anchor points were added or deleted to simplify and smooth out the vector image. Organic shapes resembling lemon juice drips were made using the ellipse tool, the pen tool, and the curvature tool. These organic shapes were then recolored. Lastly, text was added to the billboard. The text “Zestcola” was rotated and distorted using warp twist, then duplicated several times in different fill colors. The duplicated “Zestcola” text was given the scribble effect. The tagline “Brighten up your day!” was distorted using the arc upper warp effect and placed over the lemon slice pattern.