Banner Work

I worked on the pop-up display banners today. They are coming along quite nicely, I think. The design style is a bit different from the style that I used for the other marketing materials. There are elements that I used to tie them together, but I think that these demand a lot more attention from the viewer. These were actually really fun to put together. I a
m not sure if they are the finished versions yet. I am waiting on Greg Oswell's critique and approval.

Pop-Up Display

Today, I began working on the Pop-Up Display that Oswell told me I could take a crack at. This is really a huge undertaking, and it's unlike anything I've ever designed before. I did a little image researching before I started to get an idea of what kind of things usually appear on these kinds of displays. Oswell showed me where the original file was so that I could see what the current display that G&A has looks like. Here it is:

Oswell also sent me a link to the website that he orders displays from: DisplayGarden.com. He told me that he wants to go with the PL-1 display and one of the banner stands, which I have not started on a design for yet. The dimensions are huge for the PL-1, so I had to tackle this project in a little different way. I learned that PSD files can only go up to a certain size before they have to be saved as PSB files. I started working with one of those, but things were going very slowly because of the huge file size. I switched over to Illustrator, thinking that it might be able to handle the size better, but I still had the same problem. So instead of dealing with the slow speed, I calculated a smaller scale size for the document, about 1/8th of the original size. I think that it would be best to use nothing but vector art for the display, so I began working in Illustrator at this smaller scale.

I wanted to do something completely different and new with this one, although still sticking with the basic style and components of the rest of the marketing materials to keep things in unity. I began with something that looked a lot like the insert that I designed before, but I thought that it was too simple and similar to the insert -- the display needed something different. I found examples of things that appealed to me on the internet and put my own spin on them. I also used some of the same artwork that I have used in the marketing folders. I am not sure that I am finished or completely satisfied with it yet, but here is the current draft:


I want to post the insert for the marketing folder on here again because it has been changed since I uploaded before. Notice the change in the light bulb, "Meet Our Bright Idea", and the background pattern.

Update On The Website

Oswell informed me today that there will also be more new content coming for the marketing folders. Also last week I began preparing all of the website files to be uploaded to the webspace. I created a Dreamweaver template from the index.html file and created all of the pages for the site using that template. The home page is uploaded, but none of the buttons will work yet. You can seen the website here.

A couple of things have changed. Oswell was so excited a few months ago to get the new website up that he put up this temporarily, which is also something that I designed:

G&A.com

Also, Oswell let me know that he and Gitter decided to go with the white glossy paper for the internal pages of the marketing folder. I was very happy to hear that because I think that the white glossy looks best.

RIMS Half Day Seminar Flier

Last Wednesday, Greg Oswell asked me if I'd like to put together the flier for the RIMS (Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc.) Half Day Seminar coming up in May. It was a challenging project assignment because I only had about 4 hours to work on it before it needed to be sent out. I immediately began brainstorming and researching to come up with ideas for what I was going to do. I visited the RIMS website to find colors and styles that would be fitting. I came up with a complimentary color scheme that I really like: variations of teal and a sort of burnt orange.

As soon as I could, I opened up Illustrator and began drawing. I used the pen tool for most of the design. It took a lot of patience to get all the details just the way that I wanted them. I used the smooth tool when I needed to fix jagged lines, but the smooth tool doesn't always work as well as just using the direct selection tool to fix things. The direct selection tool gives me a lot more control, whereas with the smooth tool you never quite know what you're going to get.

Once I was happy with the design, I moved on to the hard part -- the text. Oswell had given me a lot of content to fit onto this page, and it is quite a task to choose fonts and placements so that the integrity of the design is not lost. Surprisingly, this part took longer than it took to draw the graphic portion of the flier. I visited a website that I often use to find unique fonts called DaFont.com. The fonts that I ended up using were Niagara Solid, English, and, the most commonly seen, Trebuchet MS.

Fortunately, I did not have to try to replicate the sponsors' logos because Oswell had copies of them for me to add to the flier. There is some content left out of the flier because the information was not confirmed yet, and the file was going to be sent to someone else for that content to be edited. For this reason I included the fonts that I used in the folder where the AI file was saved so that the content could be edited with those same fonts. I was very happy with the way that this flier turned out. If I had more time, I think I could have done even more with it, but it is possible that adding more could have been too much.

Here is last year's flier, which I did not design:


Here is the flier that I did design:

More On The Marketing Folders

Here is the new version of the marketing folder cover including changes that Greg Oswell asked me to make. He had me change the glow on the light bulb (which also had to be applied to several other things), add some content, and change the pattern that I had been working on before. The back did not change.

Oswell also gave me more content that he and Greg Gitter have been working on to add to the internal pages of the marketing folder. I think they look a lot nicer and much more complete now. I am awaiting possibly even more content to add soon. In addition to adding new content, I also fixed the logos on four of the five pages so that it is in exactly the same place on each page.



Oswell took me to a paper store to pick out the paper that we are going to use for these internal pages. We took many different samples, and surprisingly, they let us take all of them for free! When we got back to the office we tested all of them, printing onto them to see what they would look like. Some of them (the ones with a greater weight) would not even work in our printer. The one that immediately caught my eye was one of the white glossy papers.

New Pattern Design

After spending quite a bit of time working on a new pattern, here is what I've come up with:

This is the original pattern that Greg said looked like skulls. I didn't see it until he said something to me, but now I see it every time I look at it.



This is the first pattern that I tried after Greg asked me to change it. I emailed this one to him and Greg Oswell, but Greg Gitter told me that he didn't like it because he could still see the skulls. Oswell suggested I make a pattern with the diamonds from the G&A logo, which I thought was a good idea.



Here I played around with the diamonds and took out the "skull" design completely. This one still didn't look quite right to me.



Here is a pattern that I tried with just the diamonds from the logo. It's very simple, and I thought a little too simple, and not at all the look that I was going for.



This is the pattern that I wound up favoring over all of the others. It is more simple, but still interesting to look at, and it has an elegant quality that I have been trying to achieve with the marketing materials for G&A.

I emailed the last two patterns to Greg Gitter and Greg Oswell to review, and they both agreed that they liked the second one better. I spent a little longer applying the new pattern to my previous designs.

Meeting With Greg Gitter

This morning I had a meeting with the president, Greg Gitter, and the office manager, who I work closely with, Lisa. We discussed several things, mainly that I will be able to work more hours as an office assistant once the semester is over. Greg told me that he's very happy with all of the work that I've been doing, and he has been looking over some of it. He mentioned that in the baroque-looking pattern I had made, it looked like skulls. Somewhat jokingly, he told me that he didn't want to give people the wrong impression about the company. He asked me to fix it.

I will be working on that for the rest of the day. I have a few ideas to try that he might be happier with.

Marketing Folders

I met with Greg Oswell today to discuss the graphics projects that I have been working on. I showed him a couple of different versions of the marketing folder that I have had time to work on in the past couple of weeks. We decided on one that he definitely favored over the others. That one looks like this:

We have also been in the process of deciding on the best way to present the inside content for the folders. I designed a layered look that he also really liked. We were going to try to created the pages with tabs that looked like folders so that it would tie into the website, but we both decided that we liked the other layered design better:

I am waiting for him to get back to me now before I work on these anymore. He told me that he and the president of the company, Greg Gitter, are going to discuss and draft more content to add to the pages in the folders since some of them are somewhat empty.

More Website Work

I spent my time today working on a Flash animated menu for the website so that we could use the buttons I designed with sub-menus. I had a hard time finding tutorials online for this, and I was kind of on my own. Finally, I got to the point where I had the buttons animated correctly, but I had no idea how to apply action script to them so that they would actually function as buttons to navigate around a website. I emailed the marketing director, and explained this to him. He told me that if I was not able to get the Flash menu to work with my buttons, then we could settle for the spry menu in Dreamweaver.

By this time, I had concluded to myself that I somewhat favored the look of the spry menu over the buttons that I had designed. The spry menu really looks nice, and it works just as if it was created in Flash. I finished adding the spry menu to the site page, but I ran out of time to work on anything more today.

Marketing Insert

This is sort of a progression of the design process that I went through in order to get to the final image that I was satisfied with for a marketing insert. This insert will be laminated and put into the marketing slicks/folders that the company hands out at conventions, etc. The next project will be the folders themselves -- coordinating them with the inserts. The images at the top are the final product. They have now gone to the marketing director who will print them soon.



This was the first draft of the inserts that I did. I wasn't happy with how dark and dreary they look. It's also lacking a lot of depth and intrigue. It actually looks a little messy. I wanted them to look a lot more professional. The company deals with a lot of lawyers, so something more professional and elegant looking will gain them more respectability.


Here they started looking a bit better. The deeper red is an improvement from the lighter color I used originally. But these still look very dark. Almost depressing.


Ok, so it was time for an almost completely clean slate. I drew the background patterned image with the pen tool in Illustrator and created the whole pattern myself. The website that I've been working on has this same beige color, which is easier on the eyes than white, so I added that in. I played around with several different ways to show the title. Here I was almost finished, and ready for approval or criticism. The marketing director and I printed out some samples. I was not happy with how dark the beige looked, so I lightened it up quite a bit. I also didn't like the light blue that I used -- especially with the lighter biege. It didn't pop enough, so I darkened it. Oswell requested that I fix the light bulb and pants on the vector portrait of the president of the company and make the text on the back larger because it was a bit too small. After touching these things up, I was very satisfied and happy with the end results.

Website Design

I have been working on a website design for the past month or so. I have a basic concept and design finished, and the marketing director, Greg Oswell, and the president Greg Gitter both love it and want me to continue to work with the current design. Oswell and I have been working together because we have been having some trouble creating menu buttons with pop-out sub-menus that are animated. We learned how to make an animated menu using spry, but we haven't been able to configure it so that the appearance of the buttons looks the way that we want it to. We had a meeting on February 6th, and during that meeting we decided to start working with Flash to see if we can create more customizable animated buttons. I will post some images of the design process soon.

I have also been working on some marketing materials that I have saved images of throughout the design process. I will be posting those images soon as well.