Specialty Piece and Final Presentations

Hi all-

So the final project is upon us...for your last piece, you will be creating something creative, novel, and interesting that pertains to your business. This item should be a special promotional tool or giveaway that is specific to your business. In the past, people have designed:

1. Menus for restaurants
2. Take out bags and/or containers
3. Promotional CDs or DVDs
4. Hang tags for clothing retailers
5. Website (for this, you must make at least three functional pages)
6. Calendars
7. T-shirts
8. Packaging for a new product

And the list can certainly go on. Just think of your business, and what sort of thing would be a useful or entertaining giveaway for your client's audience. Be creative!

For your final presentation, you will be presenting the entire branding campaign you have made over the course of the semester. The presentation should be about 8-10 minutes. Think of this presentation as the pitch you would give to your client as a branding expert. You must be professional and persuasive! Sell us on the design decisions you have made over the course of the semester. You can present boards, or else you can use the overhead projector and do a "Powerpoint" type presentation. Your final specialty piece, however, will require that you make a board and a strong mock-up for it.

You will also need to write a creative brief to turn in to me that covers the whole branding strategy for your client, as well as specific criteria and rationale for each individual project. This design document can provide the basis for your presentation that you will present to us. In it, you should:

1. Define your client (who they are, what they do, where they are located)
2. Define their competitors.
3. Define your client's audience.
4. Define the industry and provide some facts and figures that contextualize it.
5. Define your client's strengths and weaknesses.
6. Define how your design strategy maximizes their strengths and differentiates them from the rest.
7. For each project, talk about how it will be used. For example, with your ads, where will they be published? For the self-mailer, to whom will it be distributed? For the specialty piece, who gets it and when?
8. If they have marketing materials/ a logo now, maybe show their "old" design(s), and then compare to your newer, stronger version.

Just think of every possible way you can make your case for your design decisions that you have made throughout the semester. Practice and put on a good show!

The days for this will be 4/28 (Wed.) and 5/3 (Mon.). We will decide today who will present on what day. Wednesday has some benefits, because you will have some more time to rework things for turning in your portfolio on 5/4. The following Monday is a good time, because you have an extra weekend to put it together, but you will need to turn in your portfolio for the review on the following day.