Portfolio
A compilation of graphic designs, press releases, newsletters, and handouts for Public Relations Design
01
Collateral Material- Feb. 13th, 2023
Given creative freedom to pick a local business or company, plan out their brand image, and successfully roll out branded letter heads, envelopes and business cards. A local nail salon, La Fleur Nails, in Norman was my top pick. The target audience would be college aged girls who are generally high maintenance and like to feel pretty with their nails done. The objective of my work is to make girls aware that there is a salon close and cheap that is also luxurious and trendy. This was the first true project we did in InDesign or Photoshop. Skills utilized in this project were definitely creativity, decisiveness and compostition planning. What I learned from this experience is that it is so important that people can see your brand image consistency even when your logo isnt explicitly there. Think of McDonald’s, red and yellow or the ‘M’ arches.
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02
Mailers + Handouts - Feb. 27th, 2023
When doing research for mailers and handouts, you have to first decide on a target audience. A shot in the dark is not an effective shot at all, and it makes significantly more sense to first pretend you are the target audience, what would you want to see? Add things that make it interesting, humorous, and most of all consistent with the brand and its reputation. For the two mailers, I had two different target personas. The primary target audience is potential future OU students. Specifically highschool seniors in surrounding areas. The secondary target is the potential future students parents. The people who do the guiding, who leave lasting impressions on their children.
03
Social Media Campaigns - March 3, 2023
Social media campaigns are one of the more forgiving campaign platforms. Rather than basing it off professionalism, it is based on what's trending, who the target audience and what will best be recieved by them. For my Facebook post, I leaned into something less graphic and more inspirational. For my Instagram post, I used more graphics. I photoshopped graphics onto fake iPhones and made it super interesting to the eye. This helps younger people not swipe right past your post. The objective of this kind of social media content is to get people entertained and educated. By highlighting the amentities and amazing experiences of other students, it can be easier to show a prospective student that Norman is a great place to make their home during college. Technology utilized, obviously InDesign and photoshop. I also used Pinterest to scour the internet to find other social media posts that caught my eye. I really enjoy the pop of color but also sticking to the brand colors.
04
Newsletters - March 22, 2023
This was the prerequisite assignment to the e-newsletter. This campaign essentially is a longer, individual segment story of one of the few stories in the e-newsletter. An individual newsletter may involve quotes, events, pictures, side notes, and much more. Brochures and e-newsletters are compiled off the premise of a printed physical newsletter. My target audience for these was women from the ages 20-40. Not very many pickup physical copies of anything anymore these days. I do think that with the right design and composition, it can be so intriguing that you have no other choice but to pick it up and read it. The overall difference is that an E-newsletter should contain less random wording, and more graphic design layers.
05
Brochures- April 3rd, 2023
Brochures are meant to guide the readers’ eye through the pages in an interesting way. For the Ulta brochure, it was imperative to achieve that ‘fun and playful, yet chic and appealing’ approach to ultimately gain the adoration of our consumers. My target audience would be the primary target persona, women ages 18-30, but I really do not think a physical handout is as effective these days as it used to be for that demographic. If anyone sees a paper handout they more often than not, ignore it. I think this specific campaign type would be best utilized with an older generation. I think someone older would appreciate something like that and what it has to say more than someone younger with a shorter attention span. In this assignment, it was imperative to format and compile all of the information in a specific way. I learned how to properly and effectively create a spread, where all of the content pieces were in a specific order based on what the desired look was.
06
Powerpoint - April 7 , 2023
Powerpoints require a slightly different approach than the other deliverables. They are less formal, more “to the point” and often have pictures, graphics or other features that make it visual. What is nice about this format of campaign, is that you can easily cater to whatever audience you are targeting because of how versatile it is. You can insert videos, pictures, link to websites and external sources, as well as animate the project. It can be a really helpful platform when trying to educate or distribute information in a really specific and detailed manner. It can be more visual rather than long paragraphs and wordy text. Having a powerpoint presentation allows you to easily display information in ways that would be rather difficult in plain text. For example, arrows and side notes are commonly utilized in the powerpoint platform. We learned how to add notes in powerpoint, which can help the writing process and further keep the writer on track. Not only do powerpoints leave out the unnecessary information, it only highlights the key facts and information.
07
E-Newsletter - April 17th, 2023
Making Newsletters for Ulta was fun, it was something new and something I have a lot of interest in. Its become a crazy trend on social media to find the best makeup products for the best prices. This is why people love social media so much, is because it keeps things fresh and interesting without having to do a bunch of work. To make the best plan for my approach, I decided I would re-read all of my past work and pick the most interesting few sentences from them all. What other way to get people to click to learn more than if it is an interesting headline? The target audience for the Ulta newsletters would be 16-25 year olds who use tiktok and base their purchasing habits on what is ‘trending’ rather than buying what they like. The target audience for beauty products used to be centered around mature women. As time goes on, the target audience gets larger and larger, meaning more and more young girls are being influenced to wear makeup, and mature clothes and it kind of makes people grow up quicker.
Reflections
How can color, size, font, and other characteristics change the composition of the content?
This semester, one of the biggest pieces of advice I have learned is to plan things out in a very detailed way. The amount of times I had to go back and correct my work when using Photoshop and InDesign is ridiculous. I like how we have been utilizing paper rough draft copies as it allows for more creative freedom.
Target audience & stakeholders
Aiming a shot in the dark at your stakeholders can be a huge mistake. Not clearly deciding what direction, what niche, and what ideal desires your target audience has been a huge failure of past pr professionals. Trying to appeal to everyone means that you won't nail any of your target audience right on the bulls-eye. It is best to pick a direction and stay close to that. That allows you to totally encapsulate your audience with your content.
Powerpoint & email marketing
It is imperative that your brand image is consistent across all profiles. It would not make sense for your email marketing subscription to incorporate a purple logo if your brand colors are grey and black. Everything is relative to what kind of niche and market you are targeting. The kinds of wordage, slang, and overall dialect are so important to each individual audience. Especially formatting, you have to reformat for each different platform or things can turn out wonky.
Another thing I found interesting is the process of formatting an e-newsletter. The captions must be relatively short and concise to keep the attention of readers more efficiently.
How to: business branding
Relating back to the last point, having a consistent flow between pieces of content supports your professionalism. When things have spelling and grammatical errors, do not make sense, or do not immediately give off their brand aesthetic. The ultimate goal is to get people to be familiar with your brand without even having to see the logo. Mcdonald's is red and yellow, you see it and immediately think of the brand without any logo because of how well they branded themselves.