Thoughts on Unit 3.2
I felt like I had solid enough designs for my rough drafts, which made this week not too stressful.
I still feel fairly confident with InDesign, although I feel very amateur when I’m using it. I’m sure theres better ways to be doing the things I’m doing in InDesign, but the end result is the same.
I spent the better part of this week playing with one concept I had for letterhead. I just kept tweaking it and changing it until I had something I thought I liked.
After last weeks feedback on my business card, I selected Futura as FC Dallas’ secondary font. You will see this used in the body and the contact info in the letterhead. On Thursday – the due date – I made up my mind. I hated it. So I went back to the drawing board – literally. I grabbed some pens and scratch paper and started sketching out every idea I could think of. Just like with the business card for FC Dallas, I knew I wanted the letterhead to be clean, incorporate strongly the red and navy, and have some sort of sash or sharp line. I want to keep the sash/lines in all the designs for FC Dallas because in soccer crests it often is used to symbolize the lines on the field as well as the movement that takes on the field during the match. I decided a lot of my sketches were either too newsletter-y or too church bulletin-y. I narrowed it down to my top two and set to work on InDesign. Luckily it wasn’t difficult to take my previous iterations and retool them to create my knew designs. If we are being honest, I’m not really crazy about either of these two new designs – but I do like them better than my original. I think the third attempt is too heavy, and the second attempt looks too much like the French flag. Since I have the flu, and this is due in a couple hours, Imma go ahead and sign off and take the “L” this week. After some feedback, rest and vitamin C, I look forward to hitting the grindstone next week with fresh eyes. |
Thanks to the instructional video at the beginning of this unit, I was more than capable of doing what I set out to accomplish. I feel like I did a decent job of achieving that. After a couple tries, I finished with a product I felt proud of.
Again, my little experience with InDesign from high school comforted me and helped me throughout this assignment.
For the FC Dallas graphics I want to play off the navy, red and white that is so integral to the logo. Including the longhorn in some manner would be good too. I’d like the spread to be color driven integrating the three primary colors (red, navy and white in all of the designs).
It all just needs to relate back the the primary logo and the essence of the brand. It should connect back to Texas, Dallas and soccer.
The main difference of FC Dallas and the Cowboys is sport. Beyond that, their target audience varies a little as well. FC Dallas is able to sell tickets for a lower price than the Cowboys, allowing them to market to a larger audience. Their brand reflects this, focusing on being more youthful, fun and family-orientated.
The Cowboys’ attitude is more prestigious in a way that screams “We’ve been around for a while, we are big time, and you are our fan.”
FC Dallas should continue to build off this brand separation by continuing to establish themselves as a more youthful brand, with a focus on being for the entire community.
FC Dallas is one of the 22 professional soccer franchises in the MLS. Its mission is to continue the Lamar Hunt legacy by being the most competitive professional soccer club in the MLS, provide an authentic soccer experience to fans, have the best youth development system in the Americas, and become the preeminent sports and entertainment facility in our region.
Its competitors vary from day to day depending on the situation. Of course, in a very literal sense their competitor is whoever they are playing that day, whether that is one of the other teams in the League, or one of the teams they are competing against in the CONCACAF Champions League. Additionally, it can be argued that other main competitors are the other professional sports in the Dallas area. On a wider scale, they compete for media time from all professional sports in America, as well as European soccer teams in the EPL. Although FC Dallas’ values and attitudes are not explicitly spelled out externally, it can be deduced from their mission statement that they value success and setting the standard for soccer in North America. They mirror this with an attitude of excellence. |