Completed Newsletter

I was asked to design a Newsletter for a Fortune 500 company, thinking about a specific target audience who would be reading the newsletter. It was an assignment that proved more challenging than I expected. At first I was not excited, because I was limited on my knowledge about just how many companies fit the profile of a Fortune 500. After my first several creations of the newsletter, I found myself creating and deleting numerous times. I was frustrated because I thought putting the text and images into my newsletter would be simple, but it turns out you have to put lots of thought and detail into the most minute parts of a newsletter, including your captions, decks, subheads, etc.

When deciding what stories I would choose, I decided to base them off of the target audience of women ages 20 to 35 years who are sporty/athletic. I chose an article that was specifically about a Nike store that opened with a clothes line focused on women. I also chose articles that featured products that could cater to both men and women, and emphasized how Nike focused on designing the products for both men and women.

Overall, I learned a lot about how design can vary so much depending on the project you are creating. While our social media projects were focused solely on one specific image or logo we were trying to bring attention to, the newsletter assignment was full of several news articles, with lots of detail and information. I had to think about each article as it related to the others rather than individually. This was challenging for me because I like to focus on one particular item rather than several elements that work together to create one large item.  I would find myself trying so hard to work on individual parts of the newsletter instead of thinking about the overall theme and consistent elements I wanted to display throughout the newsletter.

I am glad to continue to see all of the areas of design I need to keep exploring and practicing, but I am also glad to see how much my assignments improve draft by draft.