Graphic Design and Advertising

Alright, winterim fair was actually last Tuesday, but it went well! I turned in all of my forms and winterim is officially over. I start regular school again on Monday. Here’s a picture of the three pieces I presented for winterim fair.

I want to thank Meren for helping me set up this winterim. I also want to thank Rod, Terry, Jack, and Amy for all of their time and assistance with my project.

(side note- sorry the entries are out of order at the bottom of the page. I’m not sure how that happened.)

I didn’t go in to Lesniewicz today, because they didn’t really have anything for me to do since I finished my project. So I spent the morning at home, working on my display for winteirm fair. I typed up a paragraph that explains what I did throughout winterim and also discusses each of my pieces displayed on the table. I visited Meren in the afternoon to show her my pieces and she approved. I also started working on my own evaluation of my independent study. Overall, it was a slow day, but I just wanted to make sure I was ready for winterim fair. Tomorrow I’ll put up pictures of each piece to show the final products of the month.

I think over the month of winterim, I learned a lot about graphic design. Going into it, I really had no idea what it entailed. I learned about the different ways to be involved in graphic design from account managing to actual designing. I also saw the professional side of those in the office. From day to day, it was fine to be somewhat casual because it was a small agency, but when there were meetings I was able to see how they conducted business. Explaining every detail in what you’re presenting is important, because you don’t want to client to miss any of the reasoning behind doing certain things. You have to explain why you picked a certain color or why you decided on a specific font versus another. All the details are important for the finished product to come together perfectly.

yayyy!!!! I just finished everything. It took almost three hours to put together and mount all three pieces of my project. For the logo, we just printed and pasted it onto some blackboard. The poster had to be printed on four different sheets, but they overlapped. So we had to cut off pieces and it eventually came together as a 17×22 inch poster. Rod carefully pasted each piece on the blackboard, because he prides himself on his ability to glue things down perfectly. This is actually a lot harder than it sounds…at least for me, haha. The brochure had to be adjusted because the flap section was just as wide as the rest, and it needs to be thinner so the brochure can be closed. We cut all of the edges with an exacto-blade ( i think that’s what it’s called) and then put it through the xyron machine which applied glue to one side.  Amy helped carefully paste the front and back together while Rod watched over her shoulder : )   And it’s done. I’m very happy. I’ll be showing it to Meren on Monday.

In the afternoon, I returned to Lesniewicz to help out with the photo shoot they were doing in their office for a client. They wanted blurred bodies moving around in the office, so we all had positions and we moved back and forth different ways. I had to rock forward and backward, haha. It really has nothing to do with graphic design; it was just funny to do for like 30 minutes.

Talked to Rod for a while this morning about my brochure. He pointed out a few things I might want to change and then said I should ask for Jack’s opinion on what to do with a somewhat empty page. I took it to Jack and he had a few minor things to change and some ideas about the empty page. Before cleaning it up, I went to a meeting with Rod. It wasn’t a very big or important meeting, but it was about website layout which I hadn’t seen much of. They talked about the multiple steps in creating a website and some features that help customers get what they want quickly rather than clicking around confused for an hour. After the meeting, we headed back and I started finishing up my brochure. Throughout all of this, I have learned that it is very important to have other people’s approval before you do too much. If you finish the entire product before showing anyone a lot could have gone wrong. You may think it looks good, but it might not be fitting the needs of your client. You always want to be constantly getting opinions. After finishing my brochure, Rod said we’d cut and paste it all tomorrow. I figured we would do it today, but apparently it will take some time.

Alright, I have definitely learned a lot. I feel a lot more comfortable now too. It only took thirteen days, haha. Rod was in meetings most of the morning, so I sat down and brainstormed for my brochure. Up until this point I’ve been clueless as to what my logo, poster, etc. should look like. I pretty much ran with the ideas Rod and Terry could come up with. Not today. I decided I wanted to use the arrow in the logo to bring together the brochure. I used the pictures from poster and the headline type from the poster. I wrote all of the copy of course. Amy set me up with a few blank pages and helped me put the arrow in place, then I worked. I worked for about two and a half hours, stopping occasionally to get Terry’s opinion. The only problem is that in the photos the faces are a little orange…I think this is because they are just comp downloads. I think I might just have to use them that way…I’m not sure. I will figure that out tomorrow when Rod comes in. I’ll also figure out how to sign off on the back. Once I get his overall opinion and approval I will be done. I’ll print a copy, mount the logo and poster and be done.

I can’t believe it’s already day 12! I also can’t believe that there are only 17 days total. Winterim seems really short this year! Oh well. I finally selected all of my photos for my poster and put them together so they fit. Terry pointed out some edges of the photos that needed to be cropped because they were distracting. I think I was so glad that I had all the pictures and that they fit that I didn’t really notice the edges. I also used photoshop for the first time this month and used it to cut people out of photos, leaving white silhouettes ( it just took me like ten minutes to figure out how to spell that, haha). I centered  the four photos on a 12×18 inch page and put my headline on top with the logo on bottom. It was complete. I like it a lot. It’s creative and interesting looking, but still looks clean cut and not too complicated to understand. Rod found me some sort of paste on easels and told me they’d help me mount my logo and poster on black board for presentation. I’ll print my brochure and taadaa! Presentation ready. It was a very productive day and I’m happy with the results. Now I’ll spend the next four days mounting and putting together the brochure.

After arriving this morning I began searching through stock photos to find the right images for  my poster. It was rather difficult, because it’s hard to find photos of young people wearing the correct clothing AND facing the camera directly. The illustrations were been pretty easy to find though. After doing that most of the morning, I found out that the pictures hadn’t been downloaded correctly. I then found out that they would all have watermarks so I had to get pictures from another website. I found all the photos I would need on the new website, and then began putting them together…it looked awful. They didn’t fit and I had no idea how to make them fit. I was not pleased and I knew I was just wasting time so I went to Rod to ask for his opinion. Terry came in and we basically brainstormed a completely new idea. This new idea involves much less time and confusion and only four photos, and I personally like the idea even more. I spent the rest of my time picking the four photos and figuring out my presentation. I’m going to need to buy a tabletop easel or two to hold up a few things and then I’ll have some copies of the brochure I made to lay out on the table. I’m not really sure what else to put up…or how I could put anything else up. If you have any ideas, please comment!

Spent most of the day messing around with paintbrush and different fonts to make my logo look more student directed. So far, I don’t really like anything. The arrow looks cool on its own, but it just doesn’t fit with my logo. I talked to Terry about the new ad idea, so I’ll be using stock photos and illustrations. It seems like that is going to take a lot of time, but luckily I have all of next week to get it done. It’s going to look great!

Since I don’t really have much to say about my day itself, I think I’ll talk about what I learned a few days ago which was a branded house vs. a house of brands. You almost always want a branded house. This means there is basically an overall logo for the company and each specific product can have its own look as long as it still fits in the brand of the company or “house”. For example, all of the BGSU colleges are part of a branded house. All of their designs fit with the overall BGSU style, but they can have a little uniqueness. A house of brands would mean that each product has its own look and you really would have no way of knowing if they were from the same company at all. If all of the BGSU colleges had extremely different looks for their brochures, ads, etc, then people would not understand that they were a part of BGSU. They would look like a completely separate college off on their own. It is better to have an overall branded house, because people will see the same logo and style again and again and will be more likely to remember it.

So this morning there was a conference call. I’d heard all about everything they were discussing so Rod pretty much said missing the call wouldn’t really be missing anything. This morning I also saw some work Jack did for BGSU. He did a cover and spread for the college of business and now he’s doing one for the college of technology. They have to be different, because they shouldn’t look exactly the same, but they have to look good together and fit under the overall BGSU style. There are little things you can do to reach this goal. It was interesting, because I couldn’t think of much he could change to please everyone. He managed to do it. Little changes in thickness of lines, fonts, use of ribbons, and color choices (he added a color that was based off of an overall BGSU style, but wasn’t used anywhere else) really helped give it a unique look. He also blurred background and put focus on a person’s face to show that the individual mattered, which went along with the tagline they came up with. I’ll be interested to see what happens when they present it.

I spent the rest of the day working on arrows and fonts to make my logo look  more student directed and fun. I learned more of the tools illustrator has and basically just got to play around with different things. I’m not completely satisfied with anything I did though, so I’m hoping Terry will have some ideas. I’m going to spend the afternoon looking at different arrows in other logos and planning out my poster. I have to figure out what outfits need to represent each section and the illustrations that should back them. I also need a headline. Once I’ve finished this, I think I’ll have the cover for my brochure done!

So the morning was spent working on my logo and it’s finished! Well….sort of. I picked a pretty basic arrow design out of a book to put in my logo and I had been working out the fonts for a couple of days. When Amy came in, she put me at one of the open computers and pulled up Adobe Illustrator. My first challenge was figuring out all of the different buttons. She explained everything she thought I would need, but it was difficult to remember it all. Luckily, the one key I always remembered was undo (command z) haha. My logo was pretty simple, so I put the W in the arrow, picked a font, typed interim next to it and wrote my tagline underneath. It all went pretty quick.I called Amy and Rod in and asked what they thought. They decided that the space was too big between the W and the i because of the thick arrow. After tossing around multiple ideas, we decided to just use a thinner arrow. We then made the W smaller and refit everything accordingly. After fixing that, we realized that the circle had somehow become an oval (my fault, but it’s okay because i’m learning =] ). So Amy helped me fix that and then Jack came over with multiple ideas about how the arrow should be pointing. We ended up lengthening it and then shortening it and trying to level it with different parts of letter (the top of the W, the top of the i, etc.). Personally, I don’t think it made a huge difference other than making it look more clean cut. I could barely tell the difference, but when Terry came in, he knew exactly which one he liked. I’m guessing this comes from years of experience. Terry also said he liked the italics better on the top, so I switched the top and bottom fonts. He came back in and said they should both be italicized to match. I was then free to move on with color. Jack sent me the official colors used on the MV logo, and I played around with those. I told them which one I liked best and Amy agreed. We changed one color for readability purposes and then everyone was happy. I emailed it to Meren and then went to get lunch feeling very proud of my completed product.

Meren is sort of my client though so I had to get her opinion still. She liked the design and I explained my reasoning for the arrow, circle, etc. Her only thought was that it should be more…almost playful. It’s directed to students so it should have a younger feel rather than a corporate look. She suggested changing the font a little or giving the arrow more style or flair. I thought her points made a lot of sense, so i’ll be working on finishing that before beginning my poster or brochure.

Today I spent the morning at Lesniewicz Associates mainly following President Rod Frysinger around. He gave me a lot of information today and I hope I can remember it all. One major thing I learned today was that nearly all  of the issues that come up on a day to day basis in an advertising firm are because of communication issues with the client. It’s important that the agency gets a clear understanding of what the client wants the product to look like and sound like and what reaction they want out of the consumer. The firm needs to know what is the main focus of the product. If the client doesn’t give good input, then the agency has to assume. They may assume incorrectly, so the client is unsatisfied and the project must be adjusted accordingly. It saves a lottttt of time if the client knows and can explain what they want…but that doesn’t happen very often, so much of the stress of the business is caused by the client. This all makes perfect sense, I just hadn’t thought about it before. Most of the morning was spent looking at products and figuring out how to fix them to please the client. I gave input on a fact sheet layout. I met more of the staff, including Mr. Lesniewicz and looked through the company’s portfolio which included brand identities, advertising and promotions, new media design, corporate literature, annual reports, packaging, and some special projects.

At about 12:30 I went to lunch and then headed over to school to meet with Meren. I was there for about twenty minutes. We talked about what I’d done that morning and discussed potential project ideas for my final winterim presentation. She then gave me an article and a worksheet and sent me on my way. I read about the basics of graphic design and learned about image vs type design. I drove around town looking for examples of each and filled out the worksheet with what I’d found. I also looked for designs that communicated effectively and logos that created a strong brand such as target, monster, and nike. I was glad to be out of an office and it was interesting to really study the things I see everyday.

I spent the morning with graphic designer, Jack, at Lesniewicz. He talked to me a little about how graphic designers really can’t feel as though they’re the best. He talked about how every project is a completely new project, so no matter how well you’ve done with others in the past, each one is a new adventure. This was really intriguing to me. For some reason, I always figured that once you were good, you were good. I also learned about how to make unique designs that still fit in the same  “family”. When you have a design already for a booklet, you want the brochures to match them to a certain extent, but still be unique. We talked about embellishments and I noticed different techniques he used while putting together a cover page. Just being able to watch a designer at work gives me ideas about my own work. I also noted that to come up with creative outlooks on designs, artists do a lot of word association. Though the company is using the word one way, their logo or design can express it through another idea. For example, there was a business with the name Roach in it. It had nothing to do with bugs, but they used a roach in the design, because it helped clients remember the name. Thinking of different ways a word can be used will help expand my creative abilities.

I  also spent the morning looking through a magazine called Communication Arts. I went through about two and a half issues. The first had all sorts of design from logos to ads to websites. The second was all different forms of advertising like posters, billboards, commercials, brochures, etc. Jack told me that exposing myself to good design would help me weed out the not so good designs. It was interesting to watch him work, because he was working on multiple different designs for the same product. He would work on one and then get sick of it and move on to another. He’d go back and eventually threw out a few because he decided they weren’t good enough. They were barely half done, but when he’d narrowed down a few more, he called in other designers to critique. He wanted to make sure that what he was doing would fit what the client had been asking for before he actually finished the product. They told him he was right on track, but it helped to refocus him by reviewing the client’s desires.

In the afternoon, I went back to school to talk to Meren. We discussed the worksheet I had completed and then talked some more about logos and my potential project. I learned that logos need to be simple, because it must be able to be duplicated. Also, it could be printed in black and white at some point, so color shouldn’t be a main focus. If a logo can be printed small in black and white and still be understood, then it passes these tests. This is to make sure a logo isn’t too complicated and is easy to understand. We also discussed me beginning my project by creating a logo for my winterim experience. I could then advertise my winterim experience through posters, brochures, etc. She recommended I start by going to Barnes and Noble and looking at some logo books, which I did. I read the logo section of D.I.Y. be Ellen Lupton and began reading the Logo, Font, and Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga. The former gave a simple list of how to begin creating a logo. Basically, start by listing off characteristics or attributes that relate to your goals for the logo, then find symbols or words that can represent each. The last step is simply to combine a select few of them in many different ways until you’re satisfied. This is a pretty broad procedure, but I’m going to try it. I’ll be returning to Barnes and Noble to continue with the Logo, Font, and Lettering Bible because it looked really interesting.

Sorry these posts have been so long, but I have a lot in my head that I want to be sure you can understand.

This morning I had a long discussion with Mr. Frysinger (my sponsor) about…well….lotssss of things. Many of the things I learn about graphic design are related to what is going on in his world. If a client has some sort of issue, he will explain it to me and how he can fix it. This is a very broad way to describe our conversations, but it works. Today, he talked about getting into the career of graphic design. It’s a very competitive area and it can be tough to get your first job. He also told me that keeping up with pop culture no matter how old you are is a great help since you are potentially marketing to people interested in pop culture. This seems simple enough now, but over the years, it won’t be as natural to keep up with it all.

Another thing we talked about was my project for winterim. After talking with Meren yesterday, I narrowed down my topic a little more and decided to basically “sell” independent studies. I’m trying to convince students to do one next year. I’m going to gather information on independent studies by interviewing students who have done one and the teacher who organizes them all. I’ll then be presenting this to designers and my sponsor and beginning the creative process. I’ll be making a logo, a brochure, and possibly an ad. I have to have all of my info from interviews by friday! It seems way too soon and I’m rushing already, but I guess this is real life! I’ve been working on my questions for interviews and emailing people I may want to interview since lunch. So excited!

I’ve typed up my questions, emailed everyone I want to contact, and organized my ideas for graphics. I can’t put together a graphic until I’ve talked to the “client” and better understand how they feel about their product. This is really exciting though. Once I have my information, I’ll have a meeting friday morning with Terry, Ron, and Jack to help me organize the information and prepare to make it a logo. I’m a little nervous since they obviously understand the whole process better, but it’s up to me to ask the right questions and word the answers I get so that they can be used to advertise. Everyone is very nice though, so I’m sure it’ll be fun. There is also a meeting with BG tomorrow that I will most likely be attending. This will be my first time actually attending a meeting with a client. I’m sure I’ll learn a lot. Around eleven this morning, I went over to school and interviewed Ms. Blackburn, Sr. Lluch, and Mrs. Spychala about independent studies. I also received one email back from a student answering similar questions. Hopefully I will get the rest soon. I’m going to meet with Meren at around two and then spend the rest of the evening organizing all of this information.

So I collected all of my information and organized it and had a short meeting with Terry in the morning. We talked a little about logotypes (logos based on the typography rather than an image) and he sent me on my way. The rest of the day, I worked with different fonts and styles to make a logo for winterim independent studes. I came up with a few ideas which I will be showing to Meren soon. In the afternoon, I traveled with Terry and Ron up to BGSU for a meeting where they presented a design Jack had recently completed. It was good to see them in a very professional setting, since around the agency things are pretty casual. It went very well and because they had done such a fantastic job, they got more work. It was interesting to hear the client bring up many of the little things Jack, while designing, had discussed with me: colors, corners, ribbon, individuality. They took a wild, fun design and made it more businesslike. There’s another meeting with BG on Tuesday which will be similar, but for a different person.

Another monday. I had another meeting with Terry and I got some logo ideas from him and Rod. I realized that I had previously had really no understanding of a typebased logo. Now, with that all cleared up, I can actually work on the fonts for the logo. We also discussed winterim a little, so that Terry could understand the whole experience better. Once it was more clear, he came up with a vague vision for an ad poster. I spent the rest of the day trying different fonts to see how they looked and coming up with a headline that would work with my poster!

I spent the morning reviewing my project with Rod. He set it up so that I can work with a designer tomorrow to put all of my plans on paper. He recommended starting on the layout and fill of my brochure, so I wrote up everything I wanted to be in the brochure…it looks like a lot. It’s about a page and a half. I wanted to explain what winterim is, what students’ options are, what winterim fair is, and inform them that financial aid is available. I was sure to focus on the benefits rather than the features, which is what Rod told me about last week. When selling a car, you want the customer to know that it has heated seats, but what is going to sell it is explaining that the seats will keep you warm. Heated seats is the feature. Being warmer is the benefit. So when discussing on campus winterims, I explained that being on campus gives students the structure they are used to and the teacher supervision necessary for some students : ) When explaining out of the country trips, I also played off of the teacher supervision as well as the getting to experience another culture and being immersed in a foreign language. Networking offers the opportunity to live away from home for a while and meet new people. Lastly, independent study gives deeper knowledge of a subject as well as a lot of responsibility.

After finishing the copy for my brochure, I went to lunch and then returned to leave for another meeting in BG. They presented the same product to the same group, but added one person. His response was different than the others, because he took a while to respond. It was silent for a few minutes while he scrutinized every detail. In the end, he really liked it all, but the first few minutes made everyone a little nervous. I also realized that you really need to have good concepts and reasons why you do everything you do. Any color, word, corner on the page could be criticized, so they’d have to be able to back it up. You can’t just say, it looks good, it sounds good, it works. There has to be multiple reasons why it’s the best you have. Thinking about that is making me consider the logo I’m currently working on. I need more concepts behind it.