Memo

To: Dr. Greg Wickliff

From: Hazel Mynes

Date: 11/5/2018

Re: Project Assessment Memo for Flyer Ad

This project was enjoyable, but also challenging. The challenge came in the form of trying to
convert my second draft into the final draft in InDesign. I did my second draft in PowerPoint, so
I could have my basic info and layout to save as a PDF. I did this because my InDesign trial was
expired, and my son had to have emergency surgery twice this past week, so I was unable to
get to the school to use the Adobe products.

I began the project by sketching an idea I had after envisioning the flyer. The most difficult part
of the project was re-creating in InDesign what I had created in PowerPoint. This time, it was
not using the tools of the InDesign software that was the difficulty, but it was getting the same
look and effects that I had been able to design in the second draft in PowerPoint. For some
reason, the font and other colors did not come out as well, and the image when I tried to resize
it in InDesign was somewhat distorted until I figured out how to get it right.

The person that I created the flyer ad for is the same one I did the business card and letterhead
for, Monica-Wicker-Ramsay. She is an author, speaker, songwriter, recording artist, and
certified life coach, who wanted to hold a workshop related to her new book, The Identity
Crisis. Her organization is a non-profit ministry called ID by Design.

Graphics

The image placed in the middle of the flyer seemed to be distorted when I resized it. However,
I finally figured out how to make it place as the size of the frame that I had pre-sized to the
same size as the original image. I figured this out by, of course, Googling it! That fixed that
problem, but still, I don’t think the image looked as crisp as the original. One thing I failed to do
that I’m just now realizing, and which I had planned to do, was to add the ID by Design logo
and the social media icons to the flyer. I will update that.

Layout and Typography

Once I sketched the layout ideas, I envisioned what they could look like as far as layout and
colors. I chose the color pallet we had used for the letterhead and business card to have
cohesive branding. I began working on the placement of all the information and kept the bleed
we had established for the letterhead and business card.
I wanted to duplicate what I had done in PowerPoint on the second draft with the color
sections being opaque and discovered how to do that quite by accident when trying out some
of the tools for something else I was doing.

The flyer ad design has a curved shape in magenta from top down and the same reversed at
the bottom in teal. The image is placed in the middle between those two color sections, with
the author/main speaker (Monica) on the right and a stack of her books on the left. The image
has a mountain background in similar colors to the teal & magenta color sections, which also is
consistent with her book cover colors. The font is Minion Pro and is white in color at the top,
middle, and bottom sections, which contrasts nicely with the background magenta and teal
color and the image. There is one section of font in black that is placed in the intersection of
the bottom teal color section and the middle image. This placement makes it stand out and
gives some nice contrast between the middle and bottom sections.

Production Technologies

After I finished re-creating my design in InDesign, I liked my design, except the white font color
did not look a crisp as it did when I did it in PowerPoint. I lowered the opacity on the teal color
section at the bottom, hoping it would show up better. That didn’t help, and I really wanted
the opacity to be the same as the magenta color section at the top. So, then I tried changing
the bottom font color to black. However, I did not like that look as well as I did on my original
with the white. At that point, I went ahead and saved my InDesign file, and then exported the
PDF from that. When I opened the PDF, the document looked way better and almost like the
original PDF I saved from the PowerPoint in my Draft 2 document. I was so happy it turned out
that way, that I thought maybe if I turned the bottom text white again, maybe it would also
look better and be more readable than it was exported as a PFF. So, I changed that, saved the
InDesign file as a new file so I could keep the one with the black font at the bottom in case I
still wanted it, and then exported the new file to a PDF. It looked great! I did lower the opacity
slightly for that new file, but not much.

Feedback

At first, I was only able to submit one person’s feedback because I did not receive Ivy's
advertisement or flyer. We all drew names at our table, and I got Miriam and Ivy's names. I
submitted my feedback for Miriam when it was due. I emailed Ivy on Thursday and asked her
to send hers since I didn't receive it, but I did not hear back from her on Friday, when it was
due.

I also emailed Jeremy, our fourth person, on Friday and asked him if he would mind sending his
flyer or ad for me to have a second one to evaluate, but he did not send it on Friday, though he
had answered and said he would. I messaged you about this and told you that if I receive
Jeremy’s or Ivy's feedback, I would resubmit the info with my second evaluation, or if I couldn’t
do it in Canvass, I would email it to you directly. Today in class, I received Ivy’s rough draft of
her flyer, so I will give her feedback tonight and will send that to you also. She said she would
give me feedback on my design as the second person, but, of course, we already are already
submitting the flyers to you with this document, so I wouldn’t be able to implement any
suggestions from her.
Miriam had a few good suggestions, which I implemented in my design somewhat. She
suggested that I do two things: 1). Increase the font size a tad larger than the current setting
for the author’s book information and availability, and 2). Decrease the font size with the word
‘Speaker and Topic’ and increase the font size of the actual names of the speak and the main
topics for the workshop.

For the first suggestion, I chose to delete the information about the book and overlay it with an
opaque curved rectangle to highlight Monica Wicker-Ramsay as and author and the main
speaker. The original text was part of a graphic she had already had made before I began to
work with her, and I did not have the original file to manipulate it and make the text larger. I
felt that it was not necessary information anyway, since the focus of the flyer was the
workshop.

For the second suggestion, I decided to put the speaker and topic titles together and therefore
make more space at the bottom without having to decrease the font size. I also put the
speakers and topics together, side-by-side, so that also created more space around it and
made it look better.

Miriam also had a lot of good and positive feedback about my design of the flyer.

I was mostly happy with my project, minus the few changes I had to make in InDesign from my
original Draft 2 I did in PowerPoint from the sketches. I can’t wait to show the flyer to my
client, who I think, and hope will be happy and satisfied with them.