Collegio Ad Project

Our third project in Digital File Prep was to come up with an ad that would be something that could be printed in The Collegio, PSU's school newspaper. I decided to make an ad for my dream coffee house that Pittsburg so desperately needs.

My target audience is pretty wide and includes college students, coffee lovers, Pittsburg area residents, and people who are looking for a place to relax with a good book or conversation. This coffee house would serve many different social classes within the Pittsburg community, since coffee and related drinks are not expensive high-end products.

The "call to action" of my ad was to entice the viewer to come into the coffee shop and want to become a fan on the official Java Bean Facebook page. By "liking" the page, customers can keep up with what is happening The Java Bean, such as daily specials, discounts, and the live music event calendar.

Below is the creative process that led me to the final product:


Word Matrix/Brainstorm


Thumbnail Sketches


Rough Sketch


Final Ad



Our budget on this project was $100.00. The rate quoted was $4 per column inch.

My design measured 5.75 inches x 6 inches, which translates to 3 inches x 6 inches in column-inch dimensions. (5.75 actual inches = 3 column inches)

To calculate the total cost of the ad, I multiplied the 3-column inch width by the 6-inch height, which came to 18 column inches. I then multiplied that total by $4, which brought the total ad price to $72.00, which was well below the $100.00 budget.

Brendan Murphy Symposium

On Friday, our class had the opportunity to attend a symposium with Brendan Murphy, who is a graduate of the GIT department of PSU and now works for the Lippincott branding firm in NYC. He had lots of interesting information to share.

One thing that stood out to me was that a huge part of designing is writing. He said that he spends 75% of his time writing, 5-10% drawing, and the rest of it in training for different projects. He also said that he is eternally grateful to his tech writing instructor. I don't think Dr. Hermansson was there, but I'm sure she would have appreciated that comment. Not that I
don't always pay attention in tech writing, but I will most definitely save my notes from the class for future use. I will appreciate more the writing assignments for Digital File Prep., as well.

One of Brendan's early and most important projects was his redesign of the universal symbol for handicapped people. He designed it so that the wheelchair was not representative of the person, but rather the person is more independent of the chair. I think it was a brilliant idea, and, apparently, so did a lot of companies such as Walmart, who adopted the symbol for their stores.

Another thing that stood out to me was when Brendan said that the following line can sum up the process they use for designing: "Nowhere leads to somewhere." That inspired me because I dread a blank slate at times. Sometimes I feel like I don't have a wall off of which I can push myself and gain some momentum, but this simple line gave me some hope that something can come out of nothing.

Brendan also said that we should "never fall in love with the technology because it's always changing." I'd never stopped to think of that before, but it's true. Today, we have Adobe products, computers, and a plethora of other instruments to help us in the designing process. However, in the future, the way that we go about the art will be different. We need to hold on to the core principles of design so that we can succeed, no matter what medium we are using.

Among Brendan's interesting tidbits was the fact that places like McDonald's and Cinnabon use "pumped-in smells" to attract customers. I always smell the fries when I pass by McDonald's, but I never stopped to think that they could be exaggerating the smell for my sake.

Brendan also told us that some companies are in the process of creating scents for companies along with the visual and verbal elements of brand identity. I'm anxious to see how that type of concept will be implemented.

One statistic that he mentioned when asked was that he has had scenarios where they created anywhere from 300 to 3,000 thumbnails for one logo project. Sometimes it takes that long before coming across the right one. To a student just getting started and learning the ropes of design, that's quite an overwhelming concept.

Another great piece of advice he imparted to us was to read as much as possible outside of our own specific disciplines and to realize that general education courses are just as important as our major classes because they help us to be well-rounded and give us the ability to relate situations all over the board to our own areas of expertise.

One of the final things he told us is what makes a company a good company is how much you invest into it. I'm sure he meant not only financial, but also physical, mental, and emotional. The time spent on a project will most definitely show in the final results.

*Brendan Murphy photo source: funxionology blog.

Gap Logo Redesign

Photo credit: Vanity Fair.


I personally think that the whole Gap logo ordeal has been taken far past the realms of where it should have been; however, it really is to be expected because when one person gets outraged about something in the news, it seems to be contagious. Someone reads the online comments of this angry person and agrees with them, and it blows up into something quite ridiculous. However, that's not the focus here.

I believe The Gap was justified in trying to freshen up their brand identity a bit after sales fell; however, it shouldn't have been so drastic. It would have been a better idea to go with something similar to the old logo, just spiced up a bit. Something completely unrecognizable and unfamiliar was just an all-around bad choice, considering how most people don't like change and take comfort in all things familiar.

The new logo choice was very simple, not necessarily a bad design, just really pointless. Unless they were trying to send a message about The Gap simplifying things, it honestly did nothing other than prompt me to "borrow" the idea and insert my name there instead for some Illustrator practice. It's actually been fun and may have started a narcissistic hobby.

But, again, I digress.

I can understand the choice of Helvetica because it's pleasing to the eye. It is pretty much everywhere and has proven itself to be effective, though slowly becoming the new Comic Sans. However, The Gap has always been a little classier than just an everyday clothing store. Their prices are higher than other stores, and I, personally, haven't really ever shopped there for that reason. Perhaps they are trying to make people think that they are becoming more affordable and decided to incorporate an everyday-type logo.

The addition of the square to the end of the word was a strange, yet simple choice. They could have used a more interesting shape, but if simplicity is what they were after, then the square was appropriate.

Of course, along with a complete overhaul of brand identity comes a huge financial cost. They'd have to replace tons of things such as signs, banners, redesigning of websites, fliers, and lots more. Whereas, if they were to incorporate a newer, yet still familiar logo along with the old one, it wouldn't cost quite as much because the new logo wouldn't have to be absolutely everywhere right away. In order to keep your brand identity fresh and to keep attracting new customers while keeping the current ones satisfied, cost will always be involved; however, it can be kept to a minimum if the campaign is done right.

Perhaps now The Gap should work on something more familiar to their loyal customer base, yet still a fresh idea that will attract new shoppers. I'm personally glad they scrapped the logo, though. I was afraid that World War III was about to erupt. Over a logo.

Notepad Project Synopsis

Word Matrix


Thumbnails


Rough Sketch



Final Printed Proof

Because the final product was going to be a notepad, I needed to use as much white space as possible (for the functional part) while still making it appealing to the audience. At first, I somewhat cluttered up the page with borders and graphics. After the critique, I realized that I didn't need all that much going on for it to be effective. I removed one of the graphics and the unnecessary borders around the words, and the layout was a lot cleaner.

I also gave my design some direction in my choice of graphics. I edited one of my concert photos in Photoshop in which the guitarist was pointing his guitar in the air and made it into a plain black and white image that almost looked like a vector drawing. I placed it right beneath and to the left of the wording across the top of the page so that the guitar was pointing to the words and would lead the viewer's eye to them.

I chose the guitarist graphic and rock theme because I felt it would appeal to the majority of the intended audience, which were high school teenagers. I chose Skia font in small caps because it went well with the theme. The small caps also gave it some balance. I made "Rock Your Individuality" a little bigger than the rest of the text to gain a little bit more attention since the viewer would most likely already be looking for the PSU Graphics and Imaging Technology and website information. I wanted to be sure that the phrase across the bottom would be a little more dominant. I didn't use any gray or faded black tones because the stark black throughout went along with the rock theme as well.

All in all, it turned out to be a simple design, thanks to the critique. It served the purpose of a notepad because too much clutter on such a small page would make it a lot less appealing to the target audience or to anyone, for that matter.