Final Project

• Intention:  I created this piece for the PR Ad Club to leave behind as a thank you with businesses that we visit. Also we could use it for recruitment at PittCares.
• Target Audience/Call to Action: I wanted to aim at college students interested in graphic design and advertising. I think I did that with the choice of typography and prominent use of our logo on the front. I want the consumers to visit the website, possibly join our club. This is a promotional piece to help get our club name out there so hopefully they show up to support our events and causes as well.
• Price: The price was 32 cents per copy, going up in random increments its $16 for 50, $64 for 200, and $320 for 1,000.

Publication Ads

The cost and specifications for this ad can be found at: http://www.menshealth.com/mediakit/adv_rates.html
&   http://www.menshealth.com/mediakit/adv_prod_02.html

The cost was alot higher than I had expected. For the full page ad it costs $186,455 and for the smaller ad it costs $80, 180.

Also, some additional info on what File types they will accept- They only want CMYK PDF x1a files between 200 and 400 dpi with Type 1 fonts. No True Type files will be accepted.

Direct Mail Final Piece

   Here you see the finished product. In earlier blog posts I specified the purpose and target audience, as well as displayed thumbs and roughs.

Four States Regional Technology Conference

   My FSRTC experience started out....a little........confused. I was expecting the "session" that we were supposed to attend, to be a speaker or something of the sort. So I sat in on what I thought was going to be a presentation about graphics, engineering, or plastics technologies. Instead, I sat in on a presentation about Unemployment benefits. Well....I took notes anyway (let's hope I never have to really collect on these benefits). If anyone wants some notes on unemployment I have them, but for now I'll just stick to the rest of my experience with the session.
   After I was thoroughly schooled on unemployment, I went out to look at all the booths set up for presentation. First I stopped at the Industrial Technical Services Incorporated booth. My dad, an electrician, and a home improvement junkie, loved the info on this equipment. Larry Bowden briefly explained their Speed Sander, which is a huge sanding machine that can do entire sheets of plywood in a snap. He more thoroughly went over the Saw Stop product and showed me a video about it as well.
     The Saw Stop is a safety mechanism for saws that operates off of electrical principal. The blade on a Saw Stop carries a small electrical signal, when skin contacts the blade, the signal changes because the human body is conductive. This triggers the safety system. "An aluminum brake springs into the spinning blade, stopping it. The blade's angular momentum drives it beneath the table, removing the risk of subsequent contact. Power to the motor is shut off." So as boring as that may be for some of you, its a very useful safety tool. There is one table saw injury every 9 minutes, and 10 table saw amputations every day. Instead of a missing finger, you come out of the ordeal with no more than a papercut!
    I moved on to the Dimensional Innovations booth where I found som interesting concepts and also some very well done print pieces. I am going to try and emulate their printed pieces format for portfolio projects. I could explain how awesome this company looks but you would be best served to check out their website for visuals. http://www.dimin.com/
    I stopped at the Lego Education booth to talk to Bill Gill about the "toys" he had on the table. I didn't realize that Lego had such advanced robotics as they do. They have projects up through the college level for aiding teaching. Mostly we talked about how the education is implemented around the state of Kansas, and I found out I was one of the first guinea pigs of the project when I was in middle school in Hutchinson, KS. We got off topic and talked about people we mutually know, football, but the bottom line, really nice guy. Now I'm getting off topic as well.
  To conclude, what started out as a confused experience turned out to be an interesting, educational one. You never really know what's out there until you go see these things, talk to these people and experience it for yourself. The opportunities in our industry are more vast than I think I will ever fully know.

Direct Mail Thumbs & Roughs

I know, I know, the quality sucks on my thumbs and roughs displayed here. I'm going to try and get them scanned in if I can instead. I  made some different versions, placing the logo in different places, breaking up the logo into type and beard individually, etc. Eventually I decided upon two, the short abrupt, attention getting copy, or the letter style. If at all possible in my final draft, a combonation of the two is my goal. I really want the reader to see the large copy and be interested in....what the heck is this beardmail I'm receiving? and to read into the details more. The real goal is to drive them to the facebook page. There is just too much explaining to do on a single direct mail piece. The target audience isnt just male college students. The beard crowd appeals to certain groups of people. A large majority of college males are interested in excercising their new rite of passage in beard growing. A large concentration of these burly men can be found roaming the halls at the tech center, construction majors, automotive, wood tech. The quote"manly" profession majors. But one cannot overlook the bearded creative people. Us dudes sporting the beard in graphic design, and advertising are relavent audience members as well. However, the purpose extends past the face warming quality or manly image of most machinary inclined guys. The creatives will see it as a statement about their style, or unique look more often than not. Or to say...."sure, I paint pretty pictures, but don't forget I'm a man. See, I have the beard to prove it!" One cannot zero in on just the male crowd either. I'm not saying you'll see a bunch of women toting a stache with pride (except for the fake ones being handed out at Novembeardfest), but there are women out there that like a bearded man. Careful consideration must be taken into the copy and style of the ad, as to focus on the key demographics while not excluding the outlying ones. An approach that is creative, funny, and manly at the same time, while also letting the girls know about the social aspect of the event would be something to bear in mind.

Brendan Murphy

I have finally gotten this into a file format I can work with copying and pasting. Probably could have just rewritten the (expletive) thing already. Oh le well.

    I actually didn’t attend the symposium, so the credits for notes go to Anna Bahr.
 From her excellent notes, and what I have read about Brendan, he is a very inspiring individual. The quote that Anna wrote down from his speech that really struck me as important, was “nowhere leads to somewhere.”  His story is a very non-conventional one, and at some points in his life, he, or people around him may not have viewed him as an immediate success. As he puts it “I took the long way around.” This rings true with me, as any start to a new school, town, or program that I have had, I have started virtually at ground zero, with nothing. Starting these new chapters of life is always hard, and they always provoke change. In that change, I have always seen the most creativity come out. His story of “nowhere leads to somewhere” is inspiring because of the lack in fear of failure. In a way, his company reflects this. “We don’t define people by their disabilities—we define people by their abilities.” This sort of optimism seems to be Brendan’s outlook as well.
    Another interesting, and also inspiring element about Brendan, is the fact that he was in the very same seat as I am right now. The opportunities I have graduating from this university are the same as anyone else’s, it just depends on how I learn my craft. “When you’re trying to get established in your career, the craft that you learn is essential.” Although Brendan started college later than most do, and saw success later in life, he still saw success indeed. What really inspires me, is the fact that he spends so much time writing as compared to the time he spends designing. I can relate with that, as I feel I can be more effective designing after communicating my thoughts down on paper or computer screen. Once I have established the message I am trying to send in long form, I can then pair it down to Brand=adjective.This is the sort of work Brendan does with restructuring a brand, and even a conventional logo like a handicapped sign. To think a company like Wal Mart adopted a whole new way of identifying designated handicapped spaces and objects from a
design that a Pitt State Alumni created, that’s exciting. This guy really just reiterates the fact that it doesn’t matter where you come from, or how long it took you to get there, if you’re doing exceptional work, people will notice. With education in graphics from Pittsburg State, no job or opportunity is out of reach in the design world.

small ad