Final Project-Designer's Choice

For my final project I knew exactly what I wanted to do.  My cousin, Eric, is getting married in June, and although all the specifics aren't set in stone yet, I knew I could produce a peice to present to my cousin as a sample for their wedding.  After some thought, I decided to design a program to be handed out to guests as they arrive to the wedding.  I already had 2 photos of Eric and Maggie, his fiance, that I knew would be perfect for the program.

           PROJECT SPECIFICS

• 12'x18' (2-sided)
• Bleed 1/4'
• Margins 1/4'
• Folded piece (12 total "pages")
• Target audience: guests that attend the wedding
• Call to action: for the guests to keep in remembrance of the wedding

Even though I knew what I wanted to do, I drew up some thumbnails...

After drawing some thumbnails I still felt strongly about the wedding program idea.

I then made a fold up dummy for my project. This made it easier to look at when setting up layout in InDesign.  Here you will see the dummy unfolded.  You will see two sides.

Side 1

Side 2

This project was a lot of fun for me because it was something I could be proud of and potentially mass produce for my cousin's wedding.  Here i will provide a copy of my price quote to mass produce 300 pieces trimmed, scored, and folded.

It would cost me $301.25 to print 300 finished copies, which means $1.00 for each copy.

Here I will provide pictures of my final project:

(cover)

Direct Mail Project

Thumbs

On Left: Front Side

On Right: Back Side

I decided on creating a direct mail piece based around a diamond company.  The purpose of this direct mail piece was to thank a "customer database" for business with the diamond company.  I also provided an offer of 10% off any purchase if they brought the mail piece in with them.

Rough: Front Side

My final product however, did not contain the right side of this rough.  I actually trashed the idea of thank you (name) and used this space for the address.

Rough: Back Side

My target audience for this piece was male and female.  The front side of my mail piece would remain the same for each target.  However, the back side will change.  The name will change in dear (name). And depending on the gender of the name, the image will change. An image of a watch for the male audience and an image of diamond earrings for the female audience.  I had to write up specific instructions as to what image went with what name and so forth.

I chose black, silver and purple for my color scheme.  I picked these colors because purple is associated with royalty, which to me, I think jewelry.  Silver, symbolizes jewelry of course, and black as my background color so the purple and silver both pop out at the eye.

This project was a little confusing at times, given all the special instructions, template format style, and certain things that would not work with variable data, such as drop shadows.

Newspaper Ad

For my newspaper ad, I decided to advertise the new Shellac Nail Polish.  This is a nail polish that is guaranteed to not chip or smudge.  I used a fake salon name, "Tips 'N Toes", and provided a phone number and address and my call-to-action.  This was a newspaper ad, so everything was created in an InDesign file, using black and white.  I used different size fonts and some words in all caps to keep the ad interesting, since it was all black and white.  I also used a 12 pointed star polygon with the words "Walk-ins Welcome!" inside of the star in reverse type.  This drew attention to the eye, but not enough to be distracting.  I did however, learn something important in this project.  I used an image of nail polish that I found on Google (I know, I know...) in my file, so the quality of the image was terrible.  I now know that using Google images is unacceptable.  For one, being that I had no permission to use that image, and two, Google's images are low resolution.  High quality images are 300 resolution.  I learned the hard way with this mistake, and won't let it happen again!

Brendan Murphy Symposium

Source: funxionology.blog

Brendan Murphy is living the dream of any college student.  He worked himself from rock bottom, all the way to the top of the success chain.  Murphy, from Dublin, Ireland, did not pay much attention in high school.  He says this was a big part of why it took him so long to start college.  In Dublin he worked in advertising and print production.  He came to PSU in 1985 with a track scholarship and didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do.  Given the experience he had, Commercial Graphics was his chosen career path.  Murphy said Commercial Graphics was his safety net in case he was injured in track he would not have wasted a year in college.  Pittsburg gave him an appreciation for typography.  He now works for Lippincott in New York.

“Nowhere leads to somewhere” –Brendan Murphy

Murphy has inspired me to pay attention in school and learn to do the things I love to do: design!  I too, did not start college right after high school.  I was unsure of what career I wanted to pursue, and I was unsure if I had what it takes to get the grades to be successful at whatever it was I would pursue.  Although I’m now a year and a half into college with a chosen degree, I still have my doubts.  Murphy’s presentation gave me a new sense of power and success.  If he can do it, so can I!  If you love something, go after it!  With a lot of hard work and dedication I can start a career and hopefully be as successful as Murphy.

Gap Logo Fiasco

Source: The Atlantic

Last week GAP posted a new logo on their website, without informing anyone about doing so.   This outraged many people, causing them to post ugly comments on Twitter, Facebook, and on the GAP website.  The new logo change is black Helvitica type “GAP” and a blue box that is offset and behind the P.   What was the reasoning behind the new logo change?   Well it was said that they wanted to create a new logo to coincide with the new modern line of clothing they are coming out with.  I understand where they are coming from, but this new logo looks cheap and does not appeal to my eye.  The old logo, however, is classic.  It’s simple enough, yet elegant.  This has been the logo for GAP now for over twenty years.  Such a drastic change to a company’s look is not good when no one is aware of this change.  This upset many paying customers, investors, competitors, and even potential employees.  There was a 2% decrease in sales after the logo was changed.  Not to mention, many upset fans.  The outcry from the public had quickly put GAP to work on updating their site to inform people that this was their idea, but they wanted more input and ideas from people.  I think this was just a way for GAP to pull themselves out of what they had created, but it settled everyone down a little.  This should be an example of what NOT to do for other companies.

Notepad Synopsis

(I didn't get the actual notebook printed, so this is only a proof)

My recruitment notepad is a vertical 5x7, 50 sheet black and white notepad.  My target audience is high school students.  After developing my word matrix, I began to have an idea about the graphics I would include on my notepad.

            I decided to create a vector graphic, and I did this in InDesign.  I created a flower that I placed on the left hand side of my notepad.  I chose simple elongated vertical swirls to represent the stem of the flower.  In the top left hand corner of the notepad I created the flower.  I directed my target audience toward the female population of high school students, but did not create a graphic that would oppose the male population.

            At first, I placed my text on both top and bottom of the notepad.  “Graphics and Imaging Technologies” at the top of the notepad and “www.pittstate.edu/git” at the bottom of the notepad.  After class evaluations, I got a few comments from classmates that both should be placed at the bottom of the notepad and aligned to the right side of the notepad.  Arranging my text this way looked a lot better because it just looked too busy with anything at the top next to the flower.

            I left the rest of the notepad blank for writing purposes.  I was going to fill in lines on the notepad, but I realized that this would not be a good idea, as everyone has different sized handwriting.  This concludes my recruitment notepad for Graphics and Imaging Technologies.

Notepad- Thumbnails

These are the 10 thumbnails I created as guidelines for my notepad composition.  I created 5 vertical thumbnails and 5 horizontal thumbnails.

Notepad-Word Matrix

I was assigned to create a recruitment notepad for the Graphics and Imaging Technologies Department for PSU.  My target audience was high school students.  I aimed toward the female population of high school students.  This is my word matrix.