Over the past several months, I’ve been working at Meals on Wheels of Boulder as both a communications and marketing intern and associate. The mission of Meals on Wheels is to “bring health and humanity to the table” by delivering high-quality and healthy meals to locals’ doors.
This post is intended simply to show a little bit of my most recent work in its final iteration. I’ll link each project to the process blog post that demonstrates how the end product came to be.
Project description: create a large trifold self-mailing newsletter that updated donors on the status of our new building, asked for continued donations to the capital campaign, and informed about the number of new initiatives in the works.
Project description: create both all of the marketing material for a newly opened micro-grocery store within the Meals on Wheels of Boulder building to advertise the market to local residents and passersby AND the marketing materials to store within The Niche Market to advertise Meals on Wheels’ mission. This includes a flyer for new residents, a brochure explaining both what Meals on Wheels does and what the viewer can do to help, and customer comment cards.
Peaches inside. This is Kate’s favorite.
Peaches. Because the Niche Market is the peach store 🙂
Project description: create all of the marketing material needed for a pop-up sale offering Think Goodness Foods (Meals on Wheel’s packaged food initiative) quiche, soup, and pie. This included street signs, a “footer” newspaper ad, social media posts, a menu to hand out to clients, and labels for our new line of pies (more on these labels later). The theme was “picnic,” hence the picnic blanket background using Meals on Wheels brand colors.
Project description: create a card that reminds the Meals on Wheels appreciates them and needs their help to complete our mission. I’ve designed a few different cards for Meals on Wheels: a thank you card, a sympathy card, and a “someone has donated in your honor” holiday card.
Well, after a semester of planning, dreaming, and plotting, then another grueling semester of executing, back-tracking, testing, and changing, here she is. The Yggdrasil Project, my CTD (creative technology and design, the new name for our major) capstone project. My dad is kindly letting me host it on his website at the moment, here.
A very quick review of the intent behind The Yggdrasil Project: The amount people are willing to sacrifice to protect the environment and their emotional connection to the environment are logically and inextricably tied. However, there are times that we cannot get outside and connect with the natural world, and a reminder of both the beauty of our planet and of the threat it is under becomes necessary. The Yggdrasil Project is intended to provide both the carrot (amazing adventures) and the stick (the devastation humans have already and are continuing to cause) when it comes to protecting and treasuring our environment, as well as actionable steps that everyone can take to make a difference. The video below explains the project, both the intent and the process.
So, final and ultimate round of user testing: the panel of judges that I presented this to at the end of the semester. They had never seen the site before, and judged it entirely based off the miniature walkthrough that I had in my slides. Their largest critique was that the intent of the site was not clear. While they said that the initial navigation was obvious, they didn’t like how the stories, tips, and facts were non-linear and interwoven. In a final round of user testing, a user actually said to me, “I think there is an error here. This margin note took me to the same story that I saw before!” This indicates to me that while the non-linear, hyper-text style works for wikipedia, it doesn’t work as well here. I haven’t yet addressed these concerns, but I wonder if perhaps offering an on-hover preview of the linked article (like wikipedia) might help.
I still have some work to do (and a lot more user testing) on Project Yggdrasil, but it is on pause for now, while I finish up the rest of my education.
Working on a single project over the course of the semester is one of my favorite ways to implement what I’ve learned and critique how much further I’d like my skills to come. In my user experience design class, we had the opportunity to design the user interface of an app from the ground up. We began by brainstorming general ideas for projects that we were passionate enough to work on for a full semester, starting with problems that plagued our own lives. I decided that I’d love to work on building the UI for an app that focused on traveling and either linguistics or storytelling.
From here, we moved to our first round of user interviews. I spoke with six people that met the following requirements:
Traveled in the last five years for leisure
Age: 18-80
Traveler has played an active role in directing or planning their trip
After some intensive note taking, organizing, and re-writing, I found a few common themes in the information I gathered in my initial user-interview.
You can see the collection of my notes and ideation here, along with the questions I asked. From the interviews, I generated five “how might we” statements:
How might we encourage locals to an area to tell their stories to tourists?
How might we make a story-telling experience feel authentic to tourists?
How might we make a podcast of telling a local history/folktale feel like an adventure?
How might we make a folktale or history story feel like a lower price but equally high quality option compared to a guide?
How might we use storytelling, recording, and technology to help people recall their adventures?
Using the “how might we’s” above, I created the problem statement for my project. It is as follows: Travelers need a way to explore and remember local stories because these stories can be difficult to find and easily forgotten over currently existing media.
Once I had established a problem statement, I used storyboards to create a few user personas and better understand how and when a person might be using my app. Two of my storyboards are below (forgive the fact that all of my people look like little potatoes. I’m not the best pen and paper artist.)
Now that I had a good idea of the purpose of my app and the problem that I was trying to solve, I started by making rudimentary wireframes.
We did a small round of user testing with the wireframes, then moved on to higher fidelity prototypes. At this point, I started to pin down the brand image and design that I wanted for the app. I designed the logo, picked color schemes and fonts in line with the message that I wanted to send, and began picking example images.
I built a prototype in InDesign (which you can walk through, here), which I used in a final round of user tests. I got some good feedback in these tests, namely that the users couldn’t identify the purpose of the app from the first screen, the text on the story selection “cards” (visible bottom right) was too small and the cards themselves were too large. After a final round of changes, I had my “finished” user experience project. We produced a short video about the projects, walking through our process and demonstrating our final products, which you can view below.
One of the preeminent designers in the 1940s through 1950s, known as a Modernist
(A bit about Modernism: a set of ideas that span artistic fields ranging from architecture to furniture design to print design and advertising. Based on the key concept that function should dictate form and generally pushing back against the “excessive decoration” of previous artistic eras. One major component of Modernism in print design is the use of a well-organized grid.)
While Rand worked in a number of different design disciplines including (but not limited to) editorial design, book covers, and painting, he is perhaps most widely recognized for his work in logo design. He was responsible for the IBM, ABC (American Broadcasting Company), and EF (English First) logos. It has been said that his style shaped the visual identity of the modern tech company.
So what does he think?
Rand was very interested in the intellectual aspects of design, especially the intersection between design and commercialism. In 1946, Rand’s Thoughts on Design was published and influenced many contemporary and future designers. Rand (as shown in today’s reading) had strong feelings on the role and responsibility of the designer. He also wrote a substantial body of work including pieces on the role of the color black in design, posters, modern typography, and trademark design.
A brief overview of the video (Paul Rand)
Seek balance between form and content (Modernist ideology)
when form predominates, content is blunted
when content predominates, interest flags
“Graphic design” doesn’t mean much because everything you see is graphic (and it is all art).
The language/aspects of aesthetics: order, variety, contrast, symmetry, tension, balance, scale, texture, face, shape, light, shade, color
Don’t try to be original, just try to be good.
aesthetic = quality
Art is perfection of form, but no matter how perfectly you do things, they can always be improved.
A brief overview of “The Politics of Design”
The designer is in the world of sales. While their goal may be sales, their motivation is art “in the service of business” or to increase appreciation for a “familiar world.”
bureaucracy + ignorance = probably a bad design
You don’t often have a lot of good designs. Presenting a ton of “eh” designs to a client shouldn’t be the objective, though that can be expected by the client (or CEO). Quality > quantity
Designers are designers and can judge design. Everyone else is not and therefore should not.
The business and design sides can work together well under the conditions of mutual goodwill and trust.
The designer must understand the line between art and pragmatism and produce designs that are both innovative enough to be noticed and reasonable enough to be understood.
It is hard to place a price on good design and quantify the impact, but good design does have an impact and should be the objective.
A few questions
If art is perfection of form, but no matter how perfectly you do things, they can always be improved, then what is art?
Does Rand seem to primarily agree or disagree with the essay that we read, “The Crystal Goblet” by Beatrice Warde about the relationship between text and art?
What about on the function of typography in general (crystal vs. gold goblet)?
Rand says that art “deepens appreciation of the familiar world.” What is the danger of a familiar world? How can and do designers use their skills to deepen appreciation? What is the end result or objective of deepening appreciation for a familiar world?
P.S. Paul Rand and his wife (whose name is, coincidentally, Ann Rand) wrote a children’s book together, and it is very cute.
How do you feel about cards? I’m talking about the post or holiday variety. You know the ones–a nice beach and palm tree for a summer vacation, statue of liberty for New York, reindeer or tree or red and white box for the holidays. So on and so forth. Personally, I like getting mail (when it is actually addressed to me, not to “our dearest neighbor” or “resident”).
I guess a lot of other people must like getting mail, too, because boy, we send a LOT of mail. If we want you to donate: card. If you do donate: card. If someone donates for you: card. If it is a holiday: card. A few other random times during the year: card. It seems to me that we rely primarily on paper mail to drive our capital campaigns and fund-raise in general. (Maybe because there isn’t an unsubscribe button on paper mail… Kate told me that when ever she sends out a constant contact email, she gets dozens of unsubscriptions… Every single time. So you can definitely overuse email. I would argue that you can also overuse paper mail, but we don’t have the numbers to back that up. Besides, you know, the planet’s steadily increasing temperatures.) Anyway, we needed to give our standard donor cards and “donation in your honor” cards a refresh because they had our old address. I guess the marketing was also a little dark for Kate’s taste, so we are redoing the design instead of just swapping out the addresses. I’m totally fine with this–designing cards is really fun.
I’ve done two major projects that involved card design, but I decided to compile them both into this one post since, you know, they are thematically similar and all that. The first was towards the beginning of the internship, and I designed a thank you card for some one who has already donated. These are blank on the inside, so we have more freedom to customize the message. A few of my drafts are attached below.
My feelings on the above designs vary from “meh” (first and second designs) to “I guess this is ok” (second to last design) to “I loath this” (looking at you, last design). We landed on a lighter version of the first design.
Personally, I like it. I think it is pretty simple and clean, which is nice. It gets the point across, and it highlights our truly lovely logo.
The next card making task was a little fuzzier. We needed a card to give to donors to say that someone else had made a donation in their honor. This mostly happens around the winter holidays (Christmas or what ever you choose to celebrate in the “season of giving”). Kate initially just asked for a seasonal card that would say “someone has donated in your honor.” It was important for both of us to have a seasonal option that didn’t exclusively apply to Christmas. I made a few options on this premise (actually, way to many options. Like I said, making cards is super fun).
The last four are pretty obviously seasonal, while the first few could be used at any time. The very first is pretty darn close to the thank you card, but Kate wasn’t sold on any of the above designs. She decided that she wanted something a little more special and holiday-y and gave me copy for the inside as well, so it was back to the drawing board for me. I turned to my trusty source for lovely creative commons images, Unsplash, and hunted some good-feeling holiday agnostic pictures. Turning these into cards was a ton of fun. Not exactly stretching my creative brain, but such lovely images are always joyful to work with. I felt a little wacky making what are essentially Christmas cards in August, but I won’t complain.
We will be using the last version of the copy/inside for sure, but the outside is still up in the air. Personally, I am NOT a fan of the mixed standard and italic font, but it is a compromise: Kate wanted a handwriting, which isn’t really in our style guide. We know that we won’t be using the first outside design (the one with the bread) because of the massive knife giving off some truly odd vibes. Beyond that, though, I think any of the others are a possibility. I like the oranges/star cookie cutter/nuts image best, I think. If you have thoughts, let me know in the comments! (But don’t worry–I recognize that no one reads this, so I won’t hold my breath.)
Anyway, now that we are all excited for the holidays, happy August!
The Niche Market is your neighborhood market for local, healthy, and homemade products, coming soon to a corner near you! Or, soon-ish. Our opening has been pushed back three times already, now to a point where I will definitely be done with this internship by the time the market opens. And by “near you,” I mean “near you if you live in the Eclipse housing development off of the Diagonal highway and Independence road, but otherwise, not really near you at all.”
Despite all of the above qualifications, I must say that The Niche Market is adorable and I’m rather disappointed that I won’t be around to see it open. Maybe I’ll ride out some day and get some quiche or something. I don’t know. Anyway, The Niche Market is in the corner of our new building, and is essentially a tiny grocery store. It specializes in local Boulder brands like Izzio breads and farm-grown, seasonal produce, as well as selling our soup, quiche, and pie. It also has a very lovely mural of peaches on the South wall and a bunch of cute baskets to hold stuff, once we have stock. It is going to be adorable.
The Niche Market requires a couple of different marketing materials: 1. a brochure that will go in the market to tell market customers what/who mow boulder is, 2. a flyer to tell the new residents what, exactly, The Niche Market is, and 3. a mini-survey to make sure we are meeting the needs of our market clients as best we can.
Here are my sketches for the new residents informational flyer (objective: to offer residents information on The Niche Market and encourage use) and the “who is mow” brochure (objective: to inform residents and Niche Market customers about mow and encourage investment or participation):
One of the biggest learning experiences was with the brochure. At first, I made a purely informational brochure. It just talked about who Meals on Wheels of Boulder was and all of our initiatives. I didn’t feel very good about the brochure, though. I tried to think about it as if I were in the Market, checking out. What would make me grab this brochure? I would likely already have heard of Meals on Wheels, so don’t know that I would feel particularly compelled by an informational brochure. The first draft of the brochure is below. (They are in pairs–the first page has the inside flap, back, and front. The second page is the inside spread.)
I did a little research on best practices for writing brochures, and the internet consensus is that you really need to drive a strong hook on the cover of the brochure and maintain it throughout. Basically, if people aren’t constantly drawn in by either the design or information (or, ideally, both), they will throw your brochure in the trash. This led Kate and I to do a total redesign with more emphasis on why people in The Niche Market would want this brochure and a strong call to action.
Text overlay over a human face is really hard.
The boring version
boring version inside
Peaches inside. This is Kate’s favorite.
Peaches. Because the Niche Market is the peach store 🙂
I think we are going to land on the peachy design. I don’t object to this, though I do find the peaches a little sticker-y. I’d prefer to redo the full-image and overlay one so that it looks… better and use that. But, I think we want a lighter aesthetic, which that isn’t. So peaches are probably the best shot.
On to the new resident flyer! The objective of this flyer is just to introduce The Market to the residents of the community, so they know it exists (it isn’t easy to see from the street or outside the building, which may prove to be a challenge). I made a few different designs:
We landed on the design below. I was pro-peaches as our second image, but our grocery manager pointed out that we don’t want people to think it is just a peach store. I see where she is coming from, but what is more Colorado than palisade peaches in the summer? We decided on the design below because we really wanted a photo with a Colorado fruit/veggie in a crate. The market has super cute little wooden crates and baskets, so it was important to try to incorporate that.
I also made comment cards. We can’t offer that much variety or stock in a market of this size, so it is really important for us to know what the customers like and don’t like. Thus, we shall have comment cards by the checkout so folks can tell us what they think. I have designed a few surveys in the past, and I know a little about survey best practices from external personal research (aka a design podcast). My tiny amount of experience was helpful, but creating the survey in a way that pleased everyone was pretty challenging. My first draft looked like this:
The grocery manager, Stephanie, pointed out that suggesting that the experience was terrible isn’t a good idea. We changed the language to “dissatisfied,” but kept the layout the same. Then, she told me to flip around the words so that 1 was amazing and 5 was terrible, so the customer first saw the positive option. While I think that showing the positive first is a good idea, I think making a 1 “amazing” and a 5 “dissatisfied” is a bad idea. I know from experience that people don’t tend to read, so with something like this that they will be filling out quickly (and likely with their arms full of groceries) it is good to stick with convention. And the convention is that 5 = good, 1 = bad. I thought about flipping the scale, so it started at five and counted down to one, but that is also unconventional and potentially confusing. We reached a bit of a compromise–smiley faces.
Now, you can’t tell from the above image, but this is only a quarter sheet of paper; the font is all about 9 point, and the lines expect people to be able to write legibly at what would be like… 7 point. So not going to happen. But they wanted a quarter sheet with all this copy, so here we are. I think they’ll figure out pretty quick that this isn’t going to work well.
Anyway, the opening for the market has been pushed back several times now, so I don’t know when The Niche Market will actually be operational. I’m thinking I’ll be gone (since “gone” happens in t-10 days), but maybe I’ll go over and check it out once it is open.
Hello. Did you know that we are in the middle of a pandemic? Some people don’t seem to be aware of that. Meals on Wheels of Boulder has been using social distanced deliveries and pickups for our volunteers since March, and we are *supposed* to wear masks at all times when in common areas of the office. Some of the upstairs office folk don’t all of the time, but we are supposed to. They also are supposed to wear masks in the kitchen, but sometimes it is about 100 degrees in there, and they are running around and leaning over large ovens, so I’m not sure what percent of the time they are actually wearing their masks. So, as of a few days ago, I think our COVID policy was a solid C+ reaction. We were trying, sort of.
Over the last few days, we’ve had a couple of odd and not super great things. First, volunteers (some unmasked, some masked) have been just wandering upstairs or into the kitchen to find the volunteer coordinator. Second, two of our volunteers reported that they were experiencing COVID symptoms (and did the right thing by NOT coming to help). This spurred a few emergency meetings and inspired someone to ask the question, “what if one of our three chefs gets sick?” Well, the other two could cover if one got sick, but according to the chefs, if one of them was sick, the other two probably were as well. So if one of our chefs is sick, we have to shut our kitchen. It is hard to cook and deliver hundreds of meals without chefs or a kitchen, so that would essentially put us out of commission. As of right now, the back up plan is… don’t get sick.
Now, these are all good questions to ask and important scenarios to consider and plan for. My question is: why are we doing this in July? When I started in May, I guess I just assumed that there were already established plans for all of these situations. I didn’t realize that the plan was “don’t talk about it and maybe it’ll go away.” (Note to self: when working during a pandemic, ask the questions. Make sure there is a plan. Don’t just assume that the people in control are prepared. Exhibit number one: the whole country.)
Ok, mini-rant over. MOW is actually doing pretty well on the COVID front. Most of our volunteers are super strict about social distancing, our office has a really rigorous cleaning regiment that involves both a professional crew 2-3 times a week, and an employee every day disinfecting commonly touched surfaces. We have a massive kitchen, so the chefs are usually more than 6 feet apart. So, we aren’t doing badly. We just didn’t have that “what if” plan in place. And we still really don’t.
All of this is to say that we have just created and put up a bunch of signs telling our volunteers what they are expected to do (sanitize their hands, check their temperature, don’t come upstairs unaccompanied, and please, please, please wear a mask. Also, don’t feel good? DON’T COME).
I like the signs, so I thought I would share them here. We had to do a lot of iterating on the language, which was interesting to think about. When I first designed the signs, I put a bunch of information on them that didn’t make sense with where they would actually be placed (for example, the sign on the door said “ring the bell and come in”. Then, the sign in the lobby said “please ring bell, sign in, wait for escort,” etc. but by the time they are inside, they have already rung the bell.) It was also an interesting experiment in walking the line between trying to be friendly and welcoming, providing all the necessary information in a way that was clear and not too text heavy, and being really insistent that the person follows our instructions.
Here is what we ended up with:
So there you are. We now have some signs to support our plan of “don’t get sick.”
Stay healthy out there, everyone. And please, wear your mask.
There are a lot of hard things about the pandemic. I’m honestly in a good place and have no right to complain about anything, as life is a lot harder for most other people than it is for me. This being said, I’m going to wallow in undeserved self-pity for a moment. Forgive me.
It is that time of the summer where Boulder gets a little more humid and smells like blooming Linden trees, all of which causes a sharp jump in my homesickness. Home, in this context, being my family up in Canada. I start having dreams about the airport and drive from Detroit, over the border bridge, through the woods, and into Bayfield. I dream of the moment, cruising through the dusk, when we turn off the highway and onto main street. We always open all the windows so we can feel the breeze of the lake and smell the Linden trees. I’ve done this pretty much every year of my life, and I really, really want to do it this year. I should be getting on a plane in three days to go home, to go see my family. But no. There is a pandemic, and the US isn’t doing so well. Understandably, Canada doesn’t want us creeping across the border and messing up the good thing they have going. I get it. But still, it hurts to know that I cannot see my family for…well, however long this lasts.
All of this is just to say that the pandemic makes things hard. It makes life hard, it makes connecting with community hard, it makes feeling less alone hard. This project will, hopefully, give some people the chance to make some or all of those things slightly better for a little bit. After all, what is more summery and enjoyable than a picnic? And, added benefit, it is really easy to socially distance while picnicking with friends.
So! Meals on Wheels is hosting a “build your own” (or “build a perfect”—I haven’t decided on the best language yet) picnic parking lot sale!
The details:
We will be selling (for sure) our quiches, soups, and (hopefully) seasonal fruit pies.
Date: Saturday, Aug 8th (hopefully a week post-opening of The Niche Market)
Time: Either 9am-1pm or 9am-12pm. Kate and I couldn’t remember what we actually landed on.
Location: both the Age Well Center parking lot at 909 Arapahoe and our new building’s lot.
There was definitely a point in this meeting when Francea (the CEO and executive director) asked me if I had any event planning experience. I pretty much wanted to start crying, but that didn’t seem like a particularly impressive response, so I choked on a laugh/sob and said, “Oh yes. Unfortunately, I’m in charge of planning the CU Cycling Team’s mountain bike race every year.” I left out the part about how it is a nine month long nightmare and has taken probably two decades off my life. But hey, a parking lot picnic event can’t possibly be worse than that, so I guess I’m now a part of the event planning committee!
I’ll be working on a few different marketing pieces for this project:
a 1/2 page newspaper ad (never done this before)
a 1/4 page newspaper ad (this is also new ground)
maybe a banner? (more new ground)
signs/menus/some sort of hand out or something that will allow drive up customers to pick flavors before they get to the ordering tent (this has been a problem in the past—more on that later)
social media posts (I know how to do this one.)
We want the design to be kind of fun (maybe picnic table cloth themed) and (obviously) to attract a lot of people.
For the newspaper ads, one of the larger challenges is that Francea wants all of the options/flavors printed, which takes a lot of space. I’m still working on figuring out how that will work best. The reason that this is necessary is because we usually do an Easter quiche sale and, obviously, this year it was a socially distanced drive-up sale. The sale went great, and we sold out of pretty much everything, but apparently there was a mindo problem: most of the customers were about 95 years old and couldn’t remember what they wanted. So, they’d drive up to the ordering tent and have to park there for 5-10 minutes while someone read the options aloud to them so they could ponder. This caused a traffic jam out of the parking lot and part of the way up Broadway, so we’d really like to avoid that. Hence, we will print the options (sushi ordering style) in the newspaper AND have something else (not sure what yet) at the lot but before the ordering tent for people to decide what they want.
This is really a long chunk of text to explain a really simple project. Maybe I’m putting off working on it so I can write, instead. Huh. Well, I guess I’m done procrastinating for the moment. I’ll update as things progress.
Update July 25th:
A few things have changed in this project, like the size of the ad, the location (several times), and the general logistics of how we want to run the sale.
First, the ad size. At first, I was told “quarter page.” Then, it became “half page on Friday and maybe a quarter page on Wednesday.” Then, “maybe a half page both days.” Finally, “there is this cool, non-traditionally sized ad that they run as a sideways 1/3 page banner.” Of course, I don’t have measurements for any of these ads… I learned that newspapers use “column inches” instead of normal measurements, so the quarter page ad was marked as a “three column spread” by 7.08 inches. I did a lot of googling to try to figure out what exactly three columns was in inches for the Daily camera to no avail. Finally, I pleaded for help, and Kate just emailed the guy who works for the contract ad agency. He got me all the dimensions that we needed and off we went.
Here are a few of the quarter pagers:
Ah, another major change–Francea pointed out that “picnic sale” doesn’t make any sense because (according to her) normal people don’t eat soup and quiche at a picnic. I totally would, but I guess I’m not normal. We agreed to change the language, though we weren’t entirely sure to what. My ideas were:
What we already have: “Build your own picnic” Parking Lot Sale
Summer Sale
Celebrate Summer with us
Healthy, easy dinner
Easy-breezy dinner sale
Quiche, Soup & Pie Sidewalk Sale
Quiche, Soup & Pie Drive Up Sale
Summer Sidewalk Sale
Fast & Healthy Dinner Sale
Effortless Summer Supper Sale
Simple Summer Supper Sale?
I was trying to use language from stuff like Cooking Light to inspire the feeling of “easy, healthy, and summery.” We ended up settling on “Quiche, Soup & Pie Pop-up Sale”. This change in language was incorporated into the banner ad, but we decided that we still really liked the light, color, and playfulness of the checkered table cloth, so we kept it. Here are a few of the half page ads with the updated language.
One thing that was really important (and really challenging) in this design was that we really wanted people to be able to use it to order (like a sushi menu–you know, where you fill out the boxes with how many California rolls and such that you want). This involved using REALLY WAY TOO MUCH TEXT. But, hey, what can you do? The quiches were the biggest stumbling block because I felt that it was important to have a brief description with the name of the quiche. Ham and cheese is pretty self-explanatory, but Cajun… not so much. This way too much text problem exists (as you can see) with the half page ad, so when I was told that I needed to shrink it by about two inches, I nearly screamed. The banner ad (two inches smaller) looks like this:
Francea had a few thoughts on the banner ads above, most of which involved adding more text. I understand all of her edits, but man, it hurt to add more text to this novel of an ad. Anyway, I think this is what we are going to end up with:
I also made this into a graphic for facebook, a header for Kate’s constant contact newsletter, a real estate-style sign for the sidewalk, and a flyer, all of which are below.
This parking lot sale has had really a lot more design work than I anticipated, but it is kind of cool to work on an intense and extended event project. There might be a few more components, but I think I’m mostly done. I’ll update with t images of the newspaper ad in print (if I can get my hands on one) and photos of the sale itself (since I’ll be one of the runners).
Until next time, cheers.
Update August 6th:
Jokes. I thought I was almost done until yesterday, when I went into the office for a “half-day.” I expected to do an interview with a volunteer at 10, then be gone by noon at the latest. Nope. As I was walking down for the interview, Francea told me about a half dozen tasks that needed to be done and things that needed to be designed and printed before Saturday. Kate is out right now, and we didn’t want to bother her, so some stuff I didn’t expect fell to me.
I did the stuff (perhaps more hurriedly than I would like), but it all got done, which is the important part. Let’s see if I can remember the stuff: 1. a “warning” that stated that the soups were a trial product and invitation to give us feedback, 2. some changes on the runner’s order forms, 3. directions for the quiche, pie, and soup (with images), 4. printing and cutting the directions and just printing the runner’s forms, 5. fighting with the labels. So, so much label fighting. We need labels for all of the pies because they are brand new. I designed a pretty ok label (rushed, again). Finding the photos was the hardest part. In the future, I’d love to submit some photos to unsplash. Among those, perhaps I’ll make and photograph some pies, because there is a massive dearth of non-apple pie imagery.
Now, these are not the labels that we ended up using. When I tried to put these labels onto the template that I downloaded from the label paper company, they didn’t print right. I really don’t know what was wrong…It seems like the company did their best to make a foolproof product that ended up impossible to use. Can’t really say how that happened, but there is something wrong somewhere in the system–my hypothesis is that the template and exporting from illustrator aren’t playing nice, but I’m not sure (as I tried printing directly from illustrator, and that went even worse). So, I ended up redesigning the labels in publisher, since we had a working publisher template for a previous year of this same label paper.
The template worked, but the design always printed too small. With the brown bar, it was painfully obvious that the label wasn’t printing correctly. Solution? Figure out the template and make it work with my design? Nah. I took the easy way out and just changed the design. Take away the full length bar and it is way less obvious that the label isn’t a perfect fit. We ended up with this:
This is the blueberry pie label. I have to export each of them from publisher as images and it takes forever, so you only get the one.
As you can see, it is the same general concept, but with a line instead of a full brown bar. I’m not going to lie, I know it isn’t the most wonderful beautiful stunning thing ever, but 1. it is way better than the current labels for both the quiche and the soup, and 2. when I showed it to Francea, she said, “Ok, I guess this is temporarily fine until we can get a real designer to do it.” I recognize I am a design intern, but man, that stung more than a little. I’ve been told a bunch of times by a variety of people that I should just give up on art/design. And I usually quit for a while, then end up back here. I don’t know what that means about me.
Anyway, the other stuff I designed isn’t special at all (paper with words, really), so I won’t bore you by adding it here. Back to the original message of “done for now. I’ll try to take some photos at the sale.”
I mentioned that there was a design in the root project two (journey brochure) blog that I was really excited to work on, and this is it! The past mow marketing team created this lovely booklet of recipes, super brief interviews, and information on the company. It is a work of art, but it is very dark, which isn’t the aesthetic we are currently trying for. Anyway, the line breaks in this little book are one of our (my and Kate’s) favorite design features. They are lime green (mow green, which is actually a very hard color to work with) and have tiny stylized radish icons on the end. Or maybe turnips—it is hard to tell the difference when the icon is smaller than my little fingernail.
Anyway, since we love this tiny radish line so much, we decided that it could be fun to integrate something similar into the building journey map brochure. When the booklet was published, the building hadn’t been started yet—it was still “underground,” like a radish/turnip. Now that we are above ground, flourishing in the light of day, we decided a food motif besides a root vegetable might be more appropriate. I’ve got a few ideas, but I don’t know what will stick yet! Once I finish up all the designs, I’ll add them here and update as they are refined. When they are added to the journey brochure, that’ll be updated in the complete project two blog post.
Update July 10th
Last week, I spent some time building these little fruit lines, and they make me so happy! What a fun project. I think my personal favorite are the peaches, though I like the mangos a lot as well. I also like the strawberries. Yeah, this was a fun little project.
Apples and lettuce! These are probably my least favorite, but still ok.
I sent the “fruit lines” (I know, lettuce isn’t a fruit) to Kate, and she liked them as well. She and Cynthia (another mow employee) decided that the apple might be best to try in the journey brochure, since it was mow green and looked the most comparable to the radish.
Mango and strawberry lines. My second favorite. I like the mangos, especially.
While working on these lines, I focused on keeping them simple, trying to incorporate our colors, and making it clear what fruit/food was being depicted. One thing I was really torn about was the stroke style for the lines. I used a tapering line, but I think I may have done better with an even line (no styling). I’m not sure.
The peaches! These are my favorite. I think they are pretty cute and I could use mow yellow and green.
I’m pretty happy with how the fruit lines turned out, though I’m less happy about how they were incorporated into the brochure. I’ll talk more about that here. It was really nice to dabble in a bit of iconography—I haven’t done that for a while, and I always forget how much I enjoy it. There are certainly frustrating bits (for example, the internal scream when you move a node handle and it just messes everything up. Or you move one anchor, and the nice, symetric shape you’ve been working on vanishes into chaos), but overall, I find making icons to be rewarding and enjoyable. Hopefully, I’ll hunt down more of these sorts of projects in the future!
Circling back to project two. I got this project around when I started at mow, but was so overwhelmed and befuddled that I decided to wait for more info before I started it. So, what is this about? Well, it is a “journey map” of the new building that is filling a few different roles. (Naturally. Apparently, filling multiple roles is just part of being in a small non-profit.)
The objectives of the journey map are: 1. To replace a grand-opening for our building. 2. To show the linear progress of the building from when we broke ground several years ago to the final product today. 3. To ask our donors for the last bit of money that we need (on the scale of several million dollars). 4. To show all the new initiatives and cool stuff that we are working on in our new building.
With all of this to pack in (and a letter that is over a page from “Francea”—Kate actually wrote it), the journey map will be rather large. We are planning for a six panel folding brochure that is 11 by 18 inches. I have been working on some initial designs, but I haven’t landed on anything I love a lot yet.
My current designs are below, but I do think they could all use some work. This is a complex project, and I’m really interested in using how the brochure folds to layer information. I just haven’t figured out how to do that gracefully yet.
Update June 30th:
So a few details have come to my attention in this project since I last posted. First, I somehow managed to switch the front and first inside panel, which means that we either have to fold it so it opens with the “spine” to the right (rather than left, like a normal English book) OR we have to put the cover design on the inside. So, really not great options, here. Of course, the other option is to, you know, change the design.
Beyond the folding issue, there is another, more substantial issue. This is supposed to be a self-mailer (ie you fold it up and put something in the middle, then put tape tabs on the open seams). As you can see, the designs above are not, in fact, equipt to be self-mailers, as there is no designated space for a stamp, address, or return address. This is a somewhat significant problem, as it is very difficult to mail something without those rather important features.
So! I have a new design, and I’m working on a second (an aspect of which will have its own post because I’m really excited about it!). The first of the new designs, which fixes the bizarre folding issues and is a self-mailer, is below. Also, I suppose I should say that the reason I’m calling the folding issues “bizarre” is because I created my wireframes by unfolding an existing brochure that we had and looking at how the panels folded and unfolded. I really don’t understand WHY my old designs didn’t fold correctly, as they were exactly based off of that existing brochure. Then again, I’m not exactly known for my outstanding three-dimensional visualization skills… so I’m sure my brain got twisted around somewhere, but I haven’t figured out where yet. Thus, bizarre.
I’ll add the next design later, as well as updating as soon as I have the final version of the above design (without placeholder images).
Update July 10th:
IT IS DONE! Whoo-hoo! Kate should be sending it to the printer as I type this. Very exciting. I’ll be glad to see it in print, though I certainly have some nerves about that—did I get the bleeds right? Is it going to fold OK? Did we choose a good paper? Are the fruit lines going to show up alright, or look pixelated? Is the text going to look too big? Too small? So, while I am very happy we are sending it to the printer, I am still a touch concerned.
This was a monster of a project. We were initially going to send it to one company to be printed, and another to be mailed, but after really a lot of back and forth, we decided to print and mail with the same company. It was just too complicated.
Oh, and remember how I was perplexed about the orientation of the address bar above? Well, yeah. There was a reason. I wasn’t crazy, and it was upside-down. The printer pointed that out, so I fixed that (among a number of other things).
So, from the design above, I’ll upload a gallery of images (in order) that show the progression to the final. The caption under the image kinda tells you what the difference is between that image and the previous one. Just an FYI, this isn’t even all of the versions. There are a few more I didn’t even bother to upload. Iterative design, I suppose. I made some fruit lines, which ended up in the final design. I haven’t made up my mind about them (cute or kitschy), so if anyone out there (all of the astounding 0 people who read this blog) has any feedback, let me know.
All the fruity lines!
All the fruity lines!
I can use fruit as stickers. Neat.
More apple stickers!
Maybe I should tone down the apple theme…
I guess lines are classier than stickers. Huh.
What do you mean the address is upside-down.
I guess I should add those images.
Because brown labeled boxes are just not that cute.
What do you mean Francea thinks that is too many stairs? I like stairs.
So, after all of this, what did we end up with? The final file that we sent to the printer is here:
This was an interesting project. It was a lot of fun, but definitely a challenge to fit in all of the different aspects and components. I think I learned a lot about how to design a brochure and self-mailer, and I’m pretty happy with the light colored, minimal aesthetic. Are there aspects that I could be more pleased with? Of course. But overall, I’m eager to see it in print, and I think it does a good job of both summing up what we’ve been up to, and asking for the support we need to pay off our building. I really hope that it brings in more than we spend on it!
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