My previous blog posts reference the work that I'm doing for OU Recruitment Services. Understanding who my stakeholders are and why they're important has been at the heart of this assignment. In order to create handouts that are applicable to my audience, it's necessary for me to reach them with both logic and emotion.
My first handout was designed for prospective transfer students who might be interested in OU. I selected this audience first because I wanted to design for someone other than a prospective student straight out of high school. From there, I simply envisioned who would have a large amount of influence over where said prospective students choose to attend school. Parents tend to have an abundance of input with this decision, being that they are often the ones funding the continued education, so it felt appropriate to target them next.
With both designs, the beginning was a bit rough. I had an idea of where I wanted to go creatively. However, no solid plan existed yet. My work began to truly evolve and find its final form as I added more information to the design. I played with fonts, colors, and image placement to find what would look best while maintaining a uniqueness. I tried to not be afraid to make mistakes. Instead, I observed what I didn't like about what I was doing and did my best to make changes as I saw fit. Pictured below are images from the rough draft of my second handout, which is designed to influence parents. I'm continuing to gather information and facts about the university, all of which will be posted on the back side of the direct mailer. Furthermore, it's my intention to find the perfect photo to place on the front of the card.
Additionally, I've found that it's fairly easy to manipulate photos in both InDesign and Photoshop. InDesign is more layout based, so I tend to optimize it for more layout based assignments. This is especially true for projects that have multiple pages or elements. Photoshop, on the other hand, is oriented towards singular designs. It's required that you create layouts separately in Photoshop. This isn't the case with InDesign, and that's just one of the reasons why I prefer to that particular program.
When working with Photoshop, my best piece of advice is always going to be relying on trial and error. The more that you experiment with what each icon does, the more comfortable you're going to feel with the entire program itself.
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