Thursday, December 16, 2010

Final Project-Dept. Brochure

Folded Dummy - Rough Draft

5 pages of thumbnails

Final PDF
(TOP: 1st pg fold, back, cover)


This is a 16in by 7.5in 2 fold brochure that promotes the Graphics & Imaging Technology Dept. at PSU.  This is a mail piece that is intended for high school students.  The cover and first fold were intended to be simple so that when the piece was opened it would pop with color and text.  The inside pages give information about the department including a list of classes and a list of jobs that are prepared for after graduation.  The back part gives contact information and leaves room for an address label.
Photo Credits: 
Backgrounds- Ideas Go with freedigitalphotos.net
Pictures- Malcolm Turner
 

Magazine Ad

Rough 1

Rough 2

Thumbnails
Final PDF Full Page Ad

Final PDF Half Page Ad

This is a two part magazine advertisement for a brand of vodka.  There is a full page ad and a 1/3 page ad that correlate.  The name of the vodka is Frais, which means fresh, so the ad needed to reflect this meaning.  This explains the simple design with a great amount of white space.
Photo credits:
Green Leaf Photos- Francesco Marino
Bottle Photos- Paul of freedigitalphotos.net 
 

Variable Data - Direct Mail

Rough Draft

Thumbnails

Thumbnails 2

Final PDF Version 1

Final PDF Version 2

This direct mail piece provides information for a vacation resort.  There are two versions: 1 to target females, and 1 to target males.  The female version is in a pink duotone with flip flops and a beach scence in order to promote relaxation.  The male version focuses mainly on golf.  For each version, the text stays the same while the address, name, and pictures change accordingly. 
 

Newspaper Ad

Thumbnails

Rough Draft

Final PDF
This is a newspaper advertisement for a custom tattoo shop.  The size is 4in by 3.75in and one color.  The target audience would mainly be college students.  The ad would be ran just once but since there is no date, the design could be reran whenever needed.



Monday, October 25, 2010

Note Pad Project

The assignment was to create a design for a note pad that was to be distributed to high school students:

WORD MATRIX
The word matrix served the purpose of brainstorming what the target audience (high school students) were interested in.

THUMBNAILS
5 vertical and 5 horizontal thumbnails of different ideas of how the note pad could look.

ROUGH DRAFT
The rough draft shows the exact size of the notepad as well as the margins and placement of the design and text.

FINISHED PDF FILE


When designing the notepad, I knew that it needed to not only catch the eye of high school students but also make the department seem appealing.  The main idea I had was to convey a sense of imagination, freedom, and simplicity with my design.  High school students are young and have the need to express themselves.  Using the word "create" as part of my design urges the person to scribble whatever they want all over the notepad.  Part of being in the graphics department is having the ability to be creative.  The design being positioned on the top of the notepad allows a person to have more blank space to use.  Also there is confining lines no worry about writing in.  I wanted the scrolls and circles in the design to express the opportunity to grow and be creative with the Graphics and Imaging Technology department.  The scrolls stretch across the page showing the growth.  In order to help promote the department, I placed the scroll design to end around the name of the department to draw the eye across the logo and focus in on the important information.  Also, the circles are large and then grow smaller which helps pull the attention to the focal point of the text.  The font American Typewriter was used because it fit well with the simple creative theme.




Sunday, October 24, 2010

Gap Logo: Old vs New


Changing a logo overnight would cause some commotion among customers but when you have had the same logo for over 20 years, people just get angry.  In my opinion, Gap should have never changed their logo.  From a design perspective, the new logo just looked horrible.  The boring black Helvetica font and the tiny blue gradient box made the overall appearance seem cheap.  Even though the original design is uninteresting, with a blue box and plain, white text, at least it looks as though it was created by a designer instead of someone just using Microsoft Word. 

Gap made a huge mistake by switching their logo without warning their customers.  With the amount of brand loyalty that this company has, the customers are the ones basically running the show.  They are the reason it is successful so changing something without their approval is actually just not courteous.  It was interesting to see how much effect the social media had with this case though.  Gap has over 700,000 Facebook fans that all wanted to express their opinion.  I think this new technology is great, especially for companies because they get instant feedback on their products and performance.  Gap was able to see the negative response to the new logo and fix it before too much damage was done.  Before social networking, it may have taken much longer and their sales would have dropped much more drastically.

If Gap wants to take their company in a new direction and have the logo be a part of that then they need to do something completely different.  But they don't need to make it look so forced that they are stepping outside of the box .  No pun intended.