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.