Advertising and Marketing Unit Study and Lesson PLan

This unit was really fun. It included some media literacy and graphic design, and we also talked about symbolism in words and images.

The children had three main assignments as part of this unit: 

• Design a personal logo
• Design a business card or stationery using your logo
• Design and print out a print advertisement OR Redesign a favorite book cover

The design process was harder than the children anticipated (Sam kept sending them back to iterate again and again, and when they protested he just told them how many times HE has to iterate on professional designs before he's done!) but they really learned a LOT from doing these assignments. Even the simple task of figuring out how to adjust colors and settings to get a really nice glossy print was good for them. I'll show the finished assignments in another post (here and here).

Sam helped out a lot with the graphic design stuff, but we also learned a lot from the books The Non-Designer's Design Book and Go: A Kidd's Guide to Graphic Design. Those were my two favorite books from the unit.

We went on a field trip to Temple Square in Salt Lake City, and looked at the different symbols on the exterior of the Salt Lake Temple. (We talked about what the symbols meant the day before the field trip.) I used the symbols in this article, and printed out a little worksheet so the children could cross the symbols out as they found them. Everyone had fun with this, even the youngest children (with some help from me)! Here's the checklist we used:

A few more related links:

This vintage ad browser is kind of fun

The children loved this! You can make a font out of your handwriting. You have to make an account first, but then your first font is free. Here are some samples of our fonts:

(Here is the original "Marilynhand," if you're curious.)

We thought this was fun too, even though it's quite dated. A children's show talking about some of the "tricks" advertisers use to get you to buy their products.

A lesson plan for older children about persuasive techniques in advertising

We really liked these articles about color theory, brand identity and color in marketing: Part I and Part II

This show about gendered marketing was interesting. You might want to preview it first (if I remember right, there were a few slightly crude comments, but they went over the children's heads).

Some of these funny print ads were good

Monte Python's String Sketch is a classic example of how to sell something that seems useless :)