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All images in this blog are the personal work of Megan McFall. Use them by permission only and give credit to their creator.

Friday, December 17, 2010

My final Project

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My final project for this class was a challenge.  I created a deck of cards that would use the remainder of my check list and work as gifts for my family.  After I was unable to get a price quote for producing mass quantities of my magnetic book, I had to fall back on something else.  So, I chose something that was useful and I thought I could use variable data. 
I started this project with 28 cards and the box.  That was 2 suits of 13 cards, plus two jokers.  I was originally going to have the symbols for the cards be done by variable data, however, I realized this would have taken a lot more work for the printer.  Instead, I created the shapes and substituted them in myself.  This brought my “pages” total up to 55.  (52 cards, +2 business cards + 2 Jokers).
One of the most fun parts of this project was also the most challenging.  I hand drew the face cards to use as my bitmap images.  I had to start by sectioning off a rectangle for my image area, then drew the face of the character, then copied the image and taped it on the opposite side.  This gave me two identical “shoulders”.  I filled one in, then copied and taped again to create the final product.  Then the whole image was scanned in and corrected in Adobe CS5 Photoshop.  Here I manipulated the color and direction they were facing (so that I could make then 4 suits) as well as shrunk the size so that they would fit on my cards.   I did this process with all three cards.   
The logo was based off a logo I made my sophomore year.
I really enjoyed working on this project, however when it was printed I found some problems.  First, I had not set up an individual document for the back cover of my cards.  I talked to my printer about this and he pulled it out into a new document.  The printing process wasn’t difficult after that.  However, when I got my cards I was severely disappointed.  I had asked for my cards to be cut to their 2”x3” measurements.  When I got them back they were almost 1/4” shorter than I’d asked for on both sides.  I had also had to make a guess on the width of the box because I didn’t know how thick the cards would stack.  The box is just a little bit too thin. 
I do not have the money at this time to re-print my cards, but I will probably adjust it for future use.

Direct mail



For my variable data project I decided to look up fun activities and deals Disney World in Florida, USA is holding for guests.  My two demographics were boys or girls around the age of seven.  Each category got a customized postcard with a Disney Princesses cover or a Pirates of the Caribbean cover.  As I only received permission to use the images in class, and not to publish them publicly the images are not on my web page. 
The inside of the card was to be made out to “Her majesty” or “Deck Hand” respectively and in the “quip” section the child was invited to be turned into a princess or pirate by participating in programs offered in the theme parks.
I chose a scrawling script to make the letter look a bit more hand written, yet in print so that early readers could pick out wards in their very own letter to themselves. By putting a picture on the back that may appeal to the audience, and by encouraging the children to get their parents help online, I made them an important part of getting the advertising to work.  Children, even more than mounds of direct mail, can be very convincing. 

Newspaper Adds

The final small add
The final large add
The critiqued small add
The critiqued large add



With the newspaper project I was just trying to put together an add campaign. I didn’t feel like I needed to make it about a real group or display what sorts of games they actually played, however my peers saw differently.  They wanted me to stress the sorts of games actually played by my friends; not chess or poker, but Fantasy games.  I took their advice, and you can see the difference it’s made in my adds. 
The characters in the final adds were drawn in Illustrator, the text done in InDesign.  I hadn’t really considered stylizing text so that was also very different after the critique. 
The small add is 1x3 inches, the second is 2x3 inches both to be run once a week for two weeks to fit into my “budget” of $100.  I chose to run long adds because most adds are vertical and I wanted to do something that would theoretically catch the reader’s eye.  The add was never published in the newspaper.
I didn’t really understand what I was doing before the critique, so I am very glad to have been able to have the comments of my peers.  I felt like this add improved a lot after our in-class discussion.