OSPS

In our IMDD class, we are helping the Junior DECA class with their big project called the One Stop Prom Shop. Their class needed some help, so they put our class in charge of the assembly to help promote it! Since there are 20 of us in our class, we broke off into a bunch of different groups where we thought we could help the most in. I am apart of the morph team. There are 12 people on the morph team, and we get to wear purple and silver morph suits! We all decided on doing a sychronized dance from various songs on Just Dance. We took bits and parts from seven different songs total.

My Business

A little while ago our class sent out business letters to ten different businesses to see if they wanted our design services. The business that responded was my mom's manicurist's business. She has asked me to design a business card for her, so I will be working on that for her throughout this week. I feel like this will be an easy design for me because I am more familiar with Photoshop now than I was when I first designed a business card a few months ago!

My Yearbook Designs

The most recent project that we have been working on in IMDD is to design two yearbook covers. The theme for this year's cover is "Every Ending Is A New Beginning". We were also required to put "The Cuyahogan" somewhere on the cover as well. Like always, it was a struggle for me to get started with this project. It took me a few days to get going, but then I ended up making these two covers all in one day! I am actually very satisfied with how each of them turned out! I'm not really sure how I even came up with these designs, but I'm glad I was able to come up with at least something for how much I struggled to actually get started with this project!

 

 

Black Friday

In less than 48 hours, it will be Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving that most workers can't stand, and consumers love. I will not be participating in Black Friday this year, and I actually don't mind that I won't be shopping this upcoming Friday because it's a little too hectic for me anyway!

The term "Black Friday" got its name from the sales going from red to black. When a store is in the red,  it's because they have spent more than they have sold. When a store is in the black, it's because they sold more than they bought.

There were three things that changed after Black Friday for retailers last year. One thing is that consumers like to buy online and in stores because a lot of people like to be able to buy things when convenient for them. This year, many stores are putting a lot of deals online and in the store. Another thing is that people like to buy what they want from their home. So, a lot of stores are giving out coupons online for in-store sales. The last thing is that consumers like to have a good over-all experience when they're shopping. If the consumers have a good experience, they are more likely to buy even more than they had planned. So having sales and opening stores at the crazy times that they do will help the consumers shop at the time they want, and still get all the discounts.

My Business Letter

Our latest project in IMDD was to create a professional business letter along with a letterhead. We were assigned this project because we are going to send our business letters out to to ten local businesses to see if they would like to use our design services. I'm going to be sending this letter to businesses that I am most interested in working with, and I'm excited to see what kind of feedback that I get!  

 

My Logo

Our newest project in my IMDD class was to create a logo for yourself. Just like most things we do in this class, I designed it on Photoshop. This is a project I struggled with a lot. You would think that it would be easy to design something for yourself, but it's really not as easy as it may seem. It took me a while to get started at first, but I am happy with how my logo turned out in the end. I decided to stick to the rose theme because that's what I have used for my business card and thank you card, and I really like how I can use a rose to symbolize my last name. I chose to use the color pink because that's my favorite color, and I thought that black and light gray would be nice colors to go with the pink. I chose the fonts that I did because I thought that they were both simple, but classy. I chose the supporting graphics that I did because I like the roses so much when I put them on my business card, so I thought they would look good with my logo too! I am quite satisfied with how my logo turned out!

 

My Thank You Card

In my IMDD class, we recently designed thank you cards on Photoshop. I already knew how I wanted to design my thank you card before I even started, so that helped me a lot! I really like roses because it ties in with how you pronounce my last name. So I actually even put roses on my business card as well! I feel like a thank you card and a business card should represent who you are as a person or your personality and what may interest you. I really like the rose design that I chose because of all the different colors! When I was making this, I wanted to make sure that my thank you card was simple, but not boring. I will be using this thank you card for professional purposes for this class. I am very happy with how my thank you card turned out!

 

The New Junk Food

I read an article about how carrots became the new junk food, and a company called "Crispin" came up with the idea of changing the packaging of baby carrots to help make carrots more appealing. It all began with commercials and advertising, but when that didn't work, they decided to do an experiment to see where kids would look when they are trying to find a snack when they get home from school. Most kids would end up looking in the cupboards or the pantry.

So since kids are more interested in eating junk foods, Crispin decided to do the exact opposite of what everyone else was doing by making baby carrots the "new junk food" instead of being the antidote to junk food. Now in this wild world of carrot business, Bolthouse Farms are in a dilemma on how to boost the sales of carrots once again!

Branding and packaging has played a very critical role in this carrot success because of how popular branding and packaging are in the marketing/business world. The new packaging of baby carrots definitely makes the carrots look more appealing because it makes them stand out more. If a person might not necessarily eat/like carrots, they still might choose that package of baby carrots because it's appealing to them. The packaging of a product may even help a kid see that eating carrots can be a good thing, and not a punishment! Just because something is healthy doesn't mean it can't be something that is appealing to the eye. Packaging really can have an affect on consumers and their purchases.

This article that I read was not something that sparked my interest when I was reading it. I am not a big fan of carrots, and this article did not really change my opinion on how I feel about them. I do not like carrots, and that's how it will always be. However, I liked Crispin's packaging idea, and I truly believe that the packaging of a product really does have an affect on someone if they are deciding whether to purchase the product or not. The new niche in the industry would be finding out who is starting to buy those carrots since the new packaging is really only directed toward one general audience.

Brands at the London Olympics

When I read the article "Brands Winning Big at London Olympics" I inferred a lot about brands, sponsorships, and different terms such as the halo effect and brand equity.

Social media can be threatening to sponsorships. It can be threatening because it is big business, and a large profit comes from sponsorships. Companies spend a substantial amount of money to put their product in the high profile events such as the Olympics so that they are seen as "winners." Traditionally, that hasn't included social media. So, if social media takes over how people see the advertisement from the sponsorship, it will affect the profitability of the event since they may never see the sponsorship.

The halo effect is when one company tries to benefit from the positive influence of where they are advertising, and not really trying to prove anything. It's like people watching Dr. Oz because he comes across as healthy because of all the things that he talks about on his show. During the commercial, a product may be advertised and assumed healthy or worthwhile just because it airs during a show that promotes a healthy lifestyle.

Brand equity is where a product has immediate value based on it being well-known. An example of this would be the Martha Stewart brand. Whether it be her magazines, her goods sold at Macy's, or her paper crafts at Hobby Lobby, they all exemplify her impeccable taste and attention to detail.

Nike's "Make it Count" campaign was not an official sponsor of the 2012 London Olympic Games. Instead, they took a different approach by opening a huge Nike store near the Olympic venues, and advertising with with athletes all over the world in sporting events. Nike did what they had to do to advertise and make it appear "Olympic" without the official sponsorship and the rings.

I feel that there should be laws to protect the sponsors because it protects their investment. Advertising is a constantly changing industry, and the more creative you can be to make the most of your advertising budget should be promoted. 

IMDD

Interactive Media and Digital Design is a class made up of 20 Senior high school students, that involves a little bit of marketing and a little bit of digital design.

There is never a boring day in this class because there is always something that we can do such as, an email assignment, a project, etc. One of the very first things that we did in this class was make professional emails. Then we learned how to make business cards. Each person in our class was assigned to make a business card on Photoshop for a Senior Deca student, and for ourselves. Recently, we have started to make a thank card for ourselves on Photoshop as well. For our first project, we had one partner to work with where we had to make a professional presentation on Prezi for a photo scavenger hunt. Our teacher for this class gave us a list of marketing terms, and then we had to go out and take a photo of each term so we had an example of what each term is. Now we are starting to learn how to blog, and that's what I'm doing here now - writing my very first blog.

I highly recommend taking this class if you ever get the opportunity because I have already learned so much in the course of the past 5 weeks, and I can't wait to see how much more I am going to learn throughout this school year!