DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

American Studies Minor Rack Card

 

Context

This rack card was completed as part of our client project in the Center for Undergraduate Publishing and Information Design (CUPID) Studio class. This assignment was meant to provide real-world experience working with a professional client. I collaborated with three other students to produce the marketing materials for Elon University’s new American Studies Minor, and we were in constant contact via e-mail and face-to-face meetings with the director of the American Studies Minor. The purpose of the rack card and digital posters was to get Elon students interested in what the minor is about and to provide the necessary information for when the introductory class is offered. Therefore, the audience was limited to Elon University students. Overall, this project gave me the opportunity to meet with a client, to determine what he wanted and how we could reach those goals, and to revise documents based on his feedback throughout the process.

 

Rhetorical Strategies

The collaborative process with our client, the Director of the American Studies Minor, began with an e-mail requesting a meeting to discuss his expectations and goals. After the initial meeting, my group and I came up with a statement of work and a preliminary schedule for what we would complete. The statement of work included the purpose of the marketing materials, the scope of the project, the schedule for completion, and an indicator of success. We gave the statement of work to the director to make sure that we were all on the same page as we started our project.

 

We first produced the rack card, which gives a general overview of the minor. The front is meant to show that the American Studies Minor is a compilation of classes from several different departments. We included this important information to tell students that they may already be on the way to the minor and encourage them to look into completing it. For the front, finding eye-catching pictures was difficult because we could not use photos that were copyrighted. We took the opportunity to provide more in-depth information on the back. Our client was very specific with what he wanted included in the rack card; we had to incorporate the classes needed for the minor and the subjects that would be studied. We put the course requirements at the top and used a patriotic white and red theme to separate the different sections in order to make the chart more readable.

 

It took several conversations with our client and revisions to settle on this rack card, and this communication that we established was helpful in designing a logo and digital posters, as well. Although we had a responsibility to our client, we were also being graded for our work, and this project became very interesting as we had to learn how to navigate our professor’s and our client’s opinions. At one point, our client wanted a logo that incorporated the American Flag and several pictures into the letters AMS. We could have easily complied with his request to keep him happy, but we decided to politely explain to him that it would be hard to see the pictures in the logo. Instead, we produced two separate logos using visual rhetoric and our knowledge scale. We delivered two final logos that we felt satisfied with, and we were able to appease our client by compromising and giving him the final choice of the two.  

 

Reflection

This was the first client project I have ever done, and it was immensely helpful. I was designated as the correspondent with our client, so I had plenty of practice keeping in touch with him, sending him our drafts, our revisions, our final products, and relaying to the group what he wanted and how we could balance that with effective marketing techniques. Not only did I learn how to communicate with a client, work with several other students, balancing our individual ideas along with the client’s ideas, and design marketing materials, but this also was an opportunity to practice meeting strict deadlines. The digital posters were actually displayed around campus, and I was proud to see our work served the Elon University community that I was part of.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.