Dairy Joy Brochure

For my brochure assignment I did a menu for Dairy Joy. Dairy Joy located on Rt. 177 in Weston, Ma is where I have worked for almost 5 years. It is a small clam shack type of place with soft serve ice cream, the best burgers around, and fried seafood. Dairy Joy is very well known locally and is even a destination restaurant for those who live further away. When Professor O'Connell told us we had to make a brochure in QuarkXpress, I immediately thought to do a menu for Dairy Joy. Dairy Joy does not have a take home menu, or a website so customers often express their frustration in that the only way they can see what we are serving is by coming and looking at the boards. This assignment was a lot of fun for me because Dairy Joy has been such a big part of my life. I have been going there since I was 5 with my family, and working there has given me some of the best summer memories.

What I wanted to achieve in this assignment was representing Dairy Joy as best I could in my designing of the brochure. Who knows, maybe if I did a good enough job we can start having take home menus!

The most challenging part of this assignment for me was the formatting. It was hard working with just an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper that is split into threes. It took some getting used to after doing such a large poster project. Though we could use grid lines and borders to divide up the space, it was still hard trying to create the design I had imagined in such a small space. Another frustrating I faced was that I could not remember all the prices of the food. Though my menu is missing items and types of food, I was mad at myself that as an employee of such a long time I had trouble remembering the prices of the food! (This was more of a personal frustration than a design frustration, but still, just thought I'd share!)

I enjoyed almost everything about creating this brochure. It was fun learning more things about the QuarkXpress program, and it was fun doing a project on something that means so much to me. I enjoyed creating something that does not already exist. It was really fun to find pictures of the food and building and create a menu that could someday be used!

I am most proud of my final project as a whole. I struggled at the beginning with where to place my images and text boxes. It was hard to find something that was practical and aesthetically pleasing to me. I am really proud of how the final turned out, looking at the images above the balance of text and pictures seems perfect to me =)

If I had more time for this project, I would have gone home for a day to take my own pictures of the place. I would have used a complete menu with a correct price list. That might have been going all out for this project, but it sure would have been fun! Overall, this has been one of the most enjoyable assignments for me.

Matchbox 20 Soundslide

My SoundSlide project required taking my PowerPoint project and putting it into a new program. This program made it capable for me to post my slide show in my blog! The goal of uploading my PowerPoint to soundslide was so that I was able to have it on my blog and also have the work I did with the Audacity program online. I wanted my audacity to be perfect, I used the beginning of the song "Unwell" by Matchbox 20. I think my final turned out really well =). My goal was to use audacity so that my final did not sound like it had been edited. I also really wanted to learn how to post a slideshow online so that I can display to other people my hard work.
The most challenging part of this assignment was that I missed the class on audacity, so I had to fool around with the program on my own to figure out what to do. I had some help from my classmates but reading their notes and trying to figure it out is not as easy as taking my own notes in class. I had never worked with the audacity or soundslide programs before so that was an added challenge.
What I enjoyed most about this project was being able to share my slide show with music to whoever reads my blog! (Not sure if that is a lot of people, but I could always start sharing this link with friends and family outside of my Commm class)
I am most proud of figuring out somewhat on my own how to use these programs. Missing an ecomm class puts you fairly behind! Note to self: Don't miss another.
With more time, I would have experimented more with the audacity program and maybe not just used songs by Matchbox 20. I am glad I now know how to work that program so if I ever need music mixed again I can do it on my own!

Poster

I am currently in an Advertising class and a Consumer Behavior class, so having an assignment that dealt with how to attract attention was really fun for me. In my classes, I learned about how marketers make their product appealing to certain customers. Advertisement has alot to do with how well a product sells, or how many people go to an event. This project we had to "advertise" an album release party. My goal in this project was to used what I learned in my other classes along with using the functions of QuarkXpress to create an eye-catching poster. In my design I wanted a dark background with brighter font colors on it. I wanted to use a picture of the band so fans can relate to it, and I wanted to limit the amount of text because a student passing by this poster will most likely not stop to read the fine print. I executed my poster in a simple lay out and chose to use a gray scale type background to keep it simple. Since yellow draws the most attention, I wrote most of the important details in either yellow or green.
The most challenging part of this assignment was that it was in a new program, QuarkXpress. Learning to master this program was pretty difficult because it is less self explanatory than Photo shop or PowerPoint. Learning a new program requires more time than using a program I am already familiar with. Because of this, I spent a lot of time in the lab perfecting this project. Another challenge was making a layout that was aesthetically pleasing but still conveyed the information directly.
Though I said learning the new program was my most challenging aspect, I also found it the most enjoyable. What I like most about this class is learning how to use programs I had no idea even existed. Once I figured out how to use QuarkXpress, I became quite the fan of it. I found myself getting really excited when I finally figured out certain aspects of the program I had struggled with before. I am also proud of my final product of the assignment, so seeing my progress is another thing I liked most about this project.
I am most proud of learning how to use Quark. When I first started using it, I thought I would have to recreate my whole idea because I could not figure out how to use Quark so that it produced what I wanted it to. After I finally stumbled across the right tools I was looking for, I was very proud.
With more time, I would have done two drafts of this poster and then picked out of the two which would be my final. I feel like if I had made two completely different posters, I could have combined my favorite attributes to make a poster I was in love with. Many of my ideas I had to scratch and redo, so making multiple posters would have allowed me to do all I wanted and then make a final that incorporated all my favorite parts.