Identifying the Benefits of CSULA's graphic design program (Mon.)

The graphic design/visual communication program at CSULA has its share of benefits as well as its share of flaws. At times it seems that the negatives aspects of attending this program outweighs the positives aspects. However the program is not to blame, it is the students/department that must be held responsible. Affirmative action must take place in order to replace the negatives into positives. The students and the department of the design program have the power to make a difference. When developing a promotional video for the graphic design program, one must consider both positive and negatives aspects of the program.

Students should first evaluate and identify the negatives aspects of the program. One aspect is that faculty is greatly understaffed. At the time, there is not enough graphic design professors to help accommodate student feedback. Considering that size of the student body in this program, these professors tend to become highly overwhelmed with the amount of student/professor interaction. There is simply not enough time to help each student. It is up to the department to help make this change and bring in more professors. Another negative aspect in this department is the lack of lab efficiency. The computer labs have a shortage of computers available to the students and the printers are always malfunctioning. It is difficult to fit in labs hours at times. However this is a financial issue which, unfortunately, is out of the department's control. It is up to the school and the state to help make these changes. Lastly, the lack of student community. At times it seems that the student body is highly involved with the program's activities and events, however this isn't the case. Despite how well these students get along, there still tends to be a lack of student involvement. For example, CSULA design students tend to miss design events, they hardly to work together or work in the dept. studios, most leave right when class is over, most aren't involved with Aiga/Gauge, and they hardly critique each others work. These students lack motivation. Most design school, such as Cal state North ridge and Cal state Long beach have the sense of community, and not to mention with a larger student body. It is up to the students of CSULA to make this change.

However, despite these negative factors, we are trying to portray the positive aspects of this design program for our promo video. These aspects include creativity, professor feedback, individualism, work ethic, and growth. Even though this program lacks community, we can promote that it actually does. This might help promote the motivation for change and inspire future design students to build this community in which we lack. The idea is there, we just need to find a way to communicate that message to the audience. The goal is personalize and relate to the audience's desires and expectations when entering CSULA's design program.

Promotional Video (Feb. 29th, 2012)

Promotional web videos are an exciting internet marketing tool for businesses large and small. Like a traditional TV commercial, a promotional web video will advertise your business’s advantages to potential customers. Unlike traditional TV commercials, promotional web videos can be broadcast directly to your target audience for free through email, search engine marketing and video sharing sites such as YouTube. Producing a promotional web video doesn't have to be complex or expensive. With a little bit of planning, you can produce a promotional web video that becomes a priceless marketing tool for your business. (http://desktopvideo.about.com/od/videoprojects/ht/webpromo.htm)

However in this case, we are promoting our school's program; the CSULA graphic design/visual communication option.

Before preparing for a project like this, one must identify the goals for a promotional video. Before one can begin to produce a promotional video, one needs to think about what the ?video has to accomplish. Such as the - what is the targeted audience? what is the mood? what is the tone? and especially, what is the message? After doing plenty of research, we found the best way to approach a video such as this is to perceive it through the eyes of a college design student. Since this is a promotional video for CSULA's design program, the target audience is obviously potential CSULA transfer design students and high school students. The mood of this video should be exciting and inspiring yet with a comedic tone which can help relief an serious tension towards the program. The most importantly the message: "CSULA's design program will bring individuality within your work along with friendship/community." The idea is to motivate viewer/s with a video that gives positive insight in the life of a CSULA design student. Therefore this video must be developed accordingly through the eyes of a graphic designer. Here are some promotional videos that CSULA has already developed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkH_-mpzCXM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaCF0QHLzw8

These videos has given us some direction to how our video can be developed. However, since these videos are promoting CSULA as a whole, our video would need to be more specific (only focusing on the Graphic Design/Vis Comm program of CSULA.). We would need to take a more creative approach.

Final Formula 409 ads (Feb. 27th, 2012)

For the past few decades, Product Formula 409 has been poorly advertised and marketed.

The ads produced for 409 did not succeed in persuading their audience to purchase this product. The audience 409 targeted was mainly female between the ages 30 to 60 years old, which is the usual demographics for most cleaning products today. That being the case, our team decided to take a different approach, to target a new audience: young male adults.

Throughout our research, we discovered that most males between 20 to 40 years of age have no clue what Formula 409 really is. Therefore we decided to take the high road and target this specific demographic, mainly single men. Since most men in that age range tend to be a bit messy, we thought it would be best to capture the essence of those messy moments. In our approach, we came up with the concept that "Formula 409 is a guy-friendly product" and the message that "This is the product for you". Therefore in these ads, we decided to personalize this approach by using a young male finding himself in need for the product. We portrayed a young adult male finding himself caught up in a messy situation where 409 would be useful for him; eating diner, after a frat party, and during a date night (3 different situations that most single males can relate to). We show the male (left side of spread) reaching out of his messy situation towards the light side where the 409 bottle is focused (right side of spread). The aim behind this concept is to express the idea of reaching out of your male boundaries to get a hold of this product, to insist this isn't a female product. The text in the ad helps insinuate this idea by using expressing a problem, showing the resolution, and giving an answer to the problem. Problem solved. These ads insinuate the notion that males are messy, however, they don't have to show it, especially in front of women. These ads are meant to convince the male audience that 409 comes in handy for any messy situation, the idea that 409 is accessible and available to them at any time in their house hold.

At the time, there isn't many product cleaning ads in the American market that does a good job in connecting with a male audience. For this reason, we decided to take this different approach with the 409 ad campaign. Taking this approach will help broaden the audience for 409 and bring in a new wave of male customers. Personalizing 409 towards men is sure to increase male interest in this product and slowly but surely can persuade them to purchase 409.