My spoof ad mocks the popularity and weighty price on the beats by dr.dre headphones. I took photos of my girlfriend to mock the beats ad with the girl bombarded by paint wearing the headphones. In this instance, I used photoshop to add money and blur as if it was raining money for dre. Instead of the typical beats logo, I’ve taken the color theme and adapted it to a money sign instead of a “b”. This piece was made as a magazine page. The second medium is a photo of a rooftop taxi cab advertisement. I’ve applied a slightly different version to compensate for the longer format and added the slogan, “being cool isn’t free”. In both versions, there are dollar bills walled in the background with dr.dre edited onto them.  I’d say the subjects in the spoofs are the headphones/logo and the secondary subject would be the girl. She is smiling as if the headphones are bringing her pure joy while making her feel great. The raining money is there to indicate that serious money is involved. Dre on the bills brings some comedy into the piece but more importantly, because the logo is different than the beats, the picture of Dre also helps viewers spark the realization that this is a beats by dre spoof.

My decision to spoof beats by dre flourishes from my love for different high-quality headphones, speakers, and amplifiers/receivers. There are a decent amount of really solid headphones you can get for the price of beats, some at a higher quality that requires an mp3 device with a nice headphone amplifier. I have no hatred towards beats or dre, only respect if anything for his lyrics and productions and thrive to help new artists. The spoof compares pretty closely with some class mate’s work; beats are a popular brand, and most people choose a popular brand or company of some kind. Some chose technology related spoofs so those are similar to a degree.

The purpose of this spoof is to make people realize that just because beats are heavily advertised and sold at Best Buy and Apple, it doesn’t mean they are the only headphones and certainly not the best bang for the buck. I’m also saying that a large part of these headphones is paying for the name and getting them to look cool. It’s sometimes rare to see someone actually listening to them as opposed to draping them around their necks or heads in some crazy way. Even further though, for the head-fi/high-quality audio community, the beats are nothing more than a joke due to the knowledge of true sound power and quality. Beats have a tendency to break or snap easily due to their plastic design, so it’s average audio quality with a not so great build quality for a fair amount of money, when compared to competitors.

I am pretty satisfied with the final turnout. It was definitely a learning experience. The most potent thing I realized from this project is how intertwined design is with photography, especially for things like commercial/advertising. I also didn't realize how difficult it is to model for this type of photography, in was pretty comical at times. In hind sight, I would have gotten a higher quality camera and tested out a few more locations to photograph and different lighting. The flash in the picture messes with the background some. It was also difficult to work with limited background space for the taxi cab, but compensating with the dre dollar bills and a gradient and slogan with the inclusion of the girl and headphones gets the point across, which I think is the first most successful part about a spoof ad—understanding. Second would be perfection of the design elements. Overall, I think my design elements are done pretty well, but I wasn’t fully satisfied with the outcome. I think the beats headphones would have been better to use for the photo and altered the logo from there. I mainly say this because there are too many colors going on; in the origin ad, it is a grey/red/white theme and it just looks better when there’s less colors, it’s more simplistic and effective. I am satisfied with the print out though, the colors look great and everything is visible. I like the taxi cab spoof, I think it was a cool idea to put it on a taxi or bus, and it looks very believable. The printing process can be a nightmare sometimes, so I feel good that I got everything sorted out and ready on time. I got discouraged for a short time after taking the photos and initially trying to adapt the elements to a spoof ad. It just wasn’t coming together well for some reason, but I was able to work through it and I am much happier with the final outcome. I think the most important thing is that it looks pretty finished. There aren’t any blatantly obvious huge glitches or design errors for the untrained or unfocused eye. Overall good learning experience for this project.