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.