Case study

Since the creation of the toolkit I have been working on my final case study. Below are screenshots of the piece, which I created in InDesign. My design was inspired by the work of the advertising team for the event. I used pull/ block quotes to summarize the pages with longer content.

The event held today went overall very well. We received many donations from students and faculty and from almost all of the concentrations.  

Off Campus Event: JPL agency tour

JPL Integrated Marketing Agency Tour

                On September 26th, about fifteen students drove up to Harrisburg PA to receive a studio tour at JPL Integrated Marketing Agency. I was excited to go because this is the first time I was going to see a company that was set up like this. The culture of the other studios I have been to are more creative based because the employees were mostly designers or developers. JPL has a lot more employees involved in the corporate side so it was very interesting to see how the groups interacted.

                From what I could tell during the tour there were creatives and business people spread out on both floors of the building. Each group was fairly separate but everyone seemed to collaborate at some level. On the second floor near where the developers sat there was a kiosk that had all types of devices, which were held up by Legos. When the main screen was used all of the devices followed, this allows the team to see how the site and different pages look on all types of screens. This set up was really fascinating, I wish we could have this sort of set up in the department because we are always talking about what our designs would look like across multiple devices.

                Reflecting back on the tour, the only thing I would change is the amount of designers we talked to. It seemed that many of them were not in so that made it difficult but I really would have liked to hear their thoughts about the company and work. Near the end of the tour the discussion of jobs and internships was brought up, they said that while they are often hiring; internships are very competitive. Our tour guide did mention that they do allow students to shadow and that most designers enjoy having students there. I thought this was very exciting and I may go back up to JPL with another student to shadow both the motion graphic and design departments to get a better understanding of the agency.

Toolkit Creation

Original Toolkit

During class the toolkit above was created in illustrator. It was decided that the content needed to be expanded on and reworked. We wanted to make sure that the future user would have everything they needed to recreate our portion of the event.

Redesigned Toolkit

Below is the screenshots of the redesigned toolkit in InDesign. Juan and I added more in depth content and tried to break it up into easy to understand chunks. We based our design off of the swatch colors and kept it simple so the content could be the focus of the piece. We choose to highlight important sections by bolding them so the reader can quickly get the gist of the page. We also made important content, like resource links, blue so the user can quickly spot them to learn more. The last section is the deliverables, which can also be found on the event site. 

Work on Deliverables

 Event day donation box signage

 

Above is the document created by my groupmate Jenna during class. We new we wanted to have the eight different sections and incorporate the arrow of the logo and the color schemes given to us by the advertising group (as seen in the document below). The size of the documents was based on the size of the boxes that were given to us from another classmate.

After seeing the boxes and how they may possibly be painted, I talked with the head of the advertising group, Levi. It was decided that it would be best for the background to stay white since that side of the box will most likely be painted white. To keep the design similar to that of the logo it was decided that the text stay the orange hue. Where the questioning came in was when we were deciding what color the arrow should be, since the inside of the box may be spray painted a blue that does not exactly fit into our color scheme. I felt that the light blue/ mint green may be a nice accent but Levi felt that it may clash so he thought a orange arrow may look better. I created both ideas in illustrator which can be seen in the screenshot below. I plan to present both to group and classmates on Thursday to receive feedback.

Pricing Stickers

Once the paper was ordered I downloaded the template that went with the labels. I had trouble bringing it into any program besides word, so I took a screenshot and brought it into illustrator.

Above is what the original template looks like.

Initially, we were worried about the size of the stickers compared to some of the smaller objects we may have donated. We came up with a few ways that we can suggested to the next group to solve that problem, they can either put smaller items in a bag as a bundle and sell them like that (so just put the sticker on the bag) or place these items in a bin and have the $1 sticker on the bin itself.

Above is a screenshot of the $1 and $1each sticker options. Within the document the stickers go from $1-$6. Below is a screenshot of the full document.

To the left is a 'blank' document I created. The document still has the logo's arrow on it but I left the number space blank incase we do not supply a price high enough for a future user. This will give the future user the ability to bring the pdf file into a program and edit it themselves or just handwrite on the printed out stickers.

Retail group: progress

During our last meeting we broke up our gathered research topics and researched over the weekend. My content was looking at how to make sure the retail space and signage was taking into account ADA and people that are colorblind's needs. Below is the content I found and included in our joint document.

We plan to have two drop points in the art building, in the office and the design lab. We chose these locations because they can be monitored so we can be sure that items are not removed by students. On the day of we decided that having a box for each category/concentration of supplies would be a good idea so the supplies can be organized from the start and they would be ready to sell each spring.

ADA

http://www.ada.gov/business/retail_access.htm

While we do not need to worry about some of this since our academic building is accessible we do need to make sure that the space we layout has large enough walkways for people with disabilities to maneuver freely. Have signage lower to the ground and in higher locations to make it easier for all customers.

Pricing

If the group heading the selling portion in the spring intend to sell the items, and not give them away for free we suggest they base their prices off of other consignment shops. This is rate is about 30%-40% of the purchase price.

We feel the best way to display pricing would to be place colored stickers on each product, along with organizing items by price. Then it was brought to our attention to think about people that are color blind, so I found this resource (http://www.colourblindawareness.org/business/. I feel that our best bet is to write/type the price ($2,$5, etc) on the sticker. This will lessen confusion and make pricing understandable. We also intended to create signage explaining the color/pricing system but since the price will be included this signage is unnecessary.

Today during class the group started to work on the problem of what the bins should look like to store/hold the supply donations on the day of event. Another student has cardboard boxes that she can receive from her work that are gentle used. Our plan is to spray paint them and add signage/labels stating which concentration the contents are for. We felt that reusing the boxes worked into our projects idea of repurposing and reusing. We did not feel that we would be following our own ideas very well if we were running around buying new bins to hold the donations in.

Much of class time was spend coordinating with other groups, especially the advertising and installation groups. This is because we have to check that what we are doing fits the look and feel of what the advertising team wants; we also need to make sure we are not working on the same documents. We need to be sure that we are not taking jobs from the installation team when we work with the boxes.

To keep these groups separate we have worked out that the installation group is handling the "drop boxes" up through the day of the event and my team will handle the boxes for the main day of donating. My team is also designing the price stickers for the future sale of the items and signage for the day of boxes.

Today we bought the stickers that will be used for pricing. They are Avery 1" diameter circular labels (6450). I chose these because it was the smallest size I could find in an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet and the package came with so many labels. The label paper is almost capable of going through laser and inkjet printer which I felt was an important quality for the labels.

Good 'Ville Retail Group Deliverables and Notes

I was in the Retail group for deciding on Deliverables and below is the copy from our group google doc where we decided what would be needed and needed to be done.

This was based off of the idea of having a campus wide event with dorm furnishings.

Retail Deliverables

Pricing guide (based on color sticker systems?)

-would need to purchase stickers

Table price signs (ex. $5 table, $10 table, etc.) or signage explaining color coding system? in case of misplaced items

Retail floor plan/space layout design (once location is secured)

Welcome signs for user/audience

Check-out signs so the user can find it

(check out should probably be near the door so no items walk)

Drop-off signs (maybe small vs. large item drop-off)

This group will need to decide hold the signs should be held, in stands, in table stands, taped to the table, taped to the wall.

Other items needed for event day

Tables

Cashbox

Change

Calculator

Bags (collect from volunteers, find elsewhere?)

Boxes (collect from Dining?)

On-site hours signage

During class we wrote our lists on the middle room's whiteboards. Below is a photo of our list.

Project Revision!

From this discussion we decided as a class that attempting to create an event in this short span of time with finals coming up would not be the best idea. We felt we still had to execute some piece of the event because that is the only way to truly figure out some of the bumps in the road. With this thought process we decided to do a smaller scale (just the art building and gathering art supplies) and strictly focus on the donation portion. We will store the goods we receive in a closet in the art building. We will still create and print all of the needed signage so in the beginning on the spring semester all of these elements can be handed off to the president of the Graphic and Interactive Design Club so they can attempt to execute it based off of our suggestions and guidelines.

New groups

Now that we have a more direct goal we moved into deciding on groups and how many people should be in each and what the deliverables will be.

Above is a photo of the group breakdown. There are 8 groups in total.

• Social Media -2 people
• Advertising & Marketing -5 people
• Website Design -2 people
• Public Relations (PR) -2 people
• Installation Group -2 people
• Staff & Space -2 people
• Wayfinding -2 people
• Retail -3 people

In the photo the names with the stars are the leaders of each of the sections.

These groups were decided by each student writing on a piece of paper their two top groups they would like to be in and including reasons. Then the papers (seen on the table in the photo to the left) were collected and names were placed into their top pick slots to see if the groups evened out. The only group with an overflow was Web Design, those individuals' papers were read aloud anonymously and the class voted on the best candidates for the two slots. The other individuals were able to get there second choice.

I am the leader of the retail group. Before the end of class we met up and I explained the bullet points of the retail groups original list further since I was part of the original research. Then we each shared some of our ideas for the execution of certain ideas. 

Good 'Ville Research Groups

For our final class project we decided to choose the topic of Campus Goodwill. From there we started to brainstorm groups and what needed to be accomplished. We were placed into groups and from our Tuesday to Thursday class had to research our section and report back.

I was in the physical space group. During class we came up with a lot of different locations we could hold a thrift store event including:

• the student memorial center multi-purpose room
• one of the campus gymnasiums
• Brooks Gym
• Pucillo Gym
• Possibly Gerhart Hall

Our next item to identify is locations we could use if we needed to store goods; we thought of storage units and possibly closets on campus.

We had to think of transportation of goods and budget.

Levi also thought of the idea to use a dumpster system, similar to the salvage army.

After brainstorming we all took elements to research and prepare to present to the class the next time we met. My topic was Gerhart Hall; I needed to find out what it currently was being used for and if there was any space that we could borrow. Below are my findings that I presented to the class.

Options:

Gerhart Hall

After going to the location and speaking to the desk attendant, I learned that all of the space in Gerhart is planned to be occupied by the spring semester. Currently the University is removing found asbestos from the building. Then it will be home to the offices and labs of the Anthropology and Archaeology Departments. The houses they are located in now are slated from eventual removal because of the proposed expansion of the McComsey Parking lot.

So my findings showed that Gerhart was not an option for our project. 

After hearing all of the presentations we started to gather information and figure out the concrete facts. Below is a photo of the notes I took and the whiteboard where the notes were originally being taken. During this process we also heard and voted on the name of this operation/store/idea. The two popular names were Ville Treasure Trove and Good 'Ville, but when it came down to a vote, Good 'Ville won.

With this information we came up with 5 teams of people to carry out the next steps. The groups were:

1. Advertising
2. Retail
3. Wayfinding/Cost/Partners
4. Staff
5. Space/Physical/Transportation

The jobs of these groups were not to start the actual work of the project but to figure out the responsibilities and deliverables of each group.

This information will help us decide how much man power is needed for each section.

Presentation

Below is screenshots of our presentation document. Sam initially edited down the content and came up with the color order. From there I figured out the layout and and header design, then Kelly sat with me to rework the content to be sure it flowed.

We create it in illustrator and exported as a pdf. The presentation focuses on the overall need, impact the project would have and our process as a whole. During our presentation we received positive feedback. The main comment made was that we should include how we came to the conclusion that that a print brochure was a better idea then an app or other electronic media. 

We came to this conclusion through an interview we had with an adult worker originally at the Galley. She told us about how frustrating it was when students were ordering and on their phones, so we felt that an electronic approach would not work or be supported by the dining staff.

In future iterations of the presentation and case study, this information will be included.