5.2: A Taste of Tesla

For our final design project turn-in, we took our dummy newsletter layouts from Lesson 5.1 and adapted it to stories and photos from various news sources for either an external or internal public for a Fortune 500 company of our choice.

I made a small change of plans after looking for content for my Costco newsletter. Notably, there simply wasn’t much content to use, and what did exist was too long for a newsletter with 4 stories, plus images. Frustrated, I returned to the Fortune 500 list and decided to focus on Tesla Motors, known internationally for their ultra-modern, pure electric, luxury vehicles, since I knew a company like Tesla Motors must have plenty of news around it at any given time. To my relief, I found a variety of articles to choose from and many more photos.

I noticed they didn’t have much to say about their internal workings, but the chatter from external enthusiasts and investors fills news feeds. Naturally, I aimed for the external public, which shows a great interest in the image and progression of the Tesla Motors brand. I designed my newsletter, “The Tesla Report,” as a quarterly look at current events around the brand featuring photos of Tesla vehicles, both on display and in production, as well as a portrait of one of the lead executives.

Formatting a newsletter reminds me of the many documents I’ve had to format over the years, including the Writing Center Journal. Of course, we derive newsletters from newspapers, which calls for different formatting that prioritizes space efficiency over bountiful white space. I knew I’d still be determined to leave breathing room around the text, so I made the margins slightly wider than necessary. As for the overall look and feel, the aesthetic I chose for Costco fit Tesla Motors well—if not better than it did for Costco. I swapped the palette to Tesla red and kept the layout style in tact, aside from changing from the friendlier typeface, Gill Sans, to the tech-forward DIN Pro.

 

 

 

 

After further reflection, I began to worry. Since the project gave us the freedom to select our own articles, I used that power to my advantage in my design. I deliberately hunted for articles that suited my needs within the 3 page requirement. I’m not so sure I should have pushed it as far as I did, but hopefully (maybe) companies I work with in the future won’t give me lengthy articles for short newsletters. That sort of feeling emerges when I worry that I’m not properly challenging myself after all these years of studying design and that I’ll stagnate before I even reach 25… and that’s only a year away.

I always felt like I could be some sort of model designer, looking forward, charting new territory for people looking to branch out. I should probably give myself an internal break, and yet I feel like if I do, I’ll give up. I certainly don’t want to. I’ve known I was cut out for visual communication since I was in high school, and I’m not prepared to quit. Hopefully, I can stay optimistic as time moves on!

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Written for PR Publications course at the University of Oklahoma, Lesson 5.2