Change is Everything: VDM

Getting AntlerShed Out

For the direct mail assignment it was really a struggle on how I wanted to assemble this piece. After looking at multiple examples I still hadn't got a set idea on what I wanted to go with. Of course the way it works with many design pieces after looking over my roughs it really hit me, I wanted to send people something that really portrayed our photography skill set. So I decided to go with a flip mail piece. The direct mail piece will be a 5x7 horizontal set that will fold open to tell people a little about our skill set with design and photography.

Here are my sketches:

After look over my sketches I realized that I really liked the layout of the second rough. The way I will portray this in a fold will be that I will be standing in the foreground in focus on the cover, and when you flip up the front cover my colleague and I will be reversed. Now this will be the version that new companies, and people trying to gain identity's for themselves through design will get. The other version will have Devin standing in the foreground and that version will be sent out to our photography customers seniors, family's, etc.

Although vague these are my roughs:

This is the front cover for the design customers

This will be the back of the front cover, or the top when you flip the card.

This will be the inside portion for our design customers

And finally this will be the back portion of the mailer

Keep in mind these are only my roughs so some things might change when it comes to the final piece but this keeps my ideas in line. Although vague this gives you a small idea on what I am going with when it comes to the direct mailer.

The Name of the Game is Change
You will notice that my roughs look nothing like my final draft. As I've come to learn within the design world change is the name of the game, things are never done until the customer is happy with the design. I went through an enormous amount of change with this project but ultimately ended up with a design that I love.
After really sitting back and taking a look at my rough I just didn't feel that the folding design would gain me anything more than a basic front back design. So my original target audience was going to be family and seniors. Mainly targeting the females within the house hold, because in my mind if you could win over those females you could gain the business. This was my ultimate plan going into on screen critiques.
These were the drafts that I made up going into critique day:

This was the second front cover that I designed:

After designing these in my eyes I loved this look, it went with my original mindset of targeting the female audience.

However, in business you gain an edge by doing something different. After critique day my eyes were opened on seperating myself from my competition and creating something away from the normal. From my previous blog my logo has an edge to it, more leaning towards a male appeal so after direction from my colleagues I decided to CHANGE.

I went from trying to target the female audience I decided to switch my target audience to target the male and female crowd. So with this in mind I really did struggle on the way I wanted to portray this mailer. I knew for a fact that I really wanted to emphasize our photography skills with this mailer, trying to gain those family portrait and senior clients.

After completely redoing the design process I came up with my final mailers.