Creating a Direct Mailer

This week’s PR publications assignment focused on the creation of two direct mailers for OU’s recruitment services. This week centered on a draft of only the first direct mailer.  Firstly, I began my thought process by narrowing the focus of my audience to a specific stakeholder that would be impactful upon the institution and to whom I could effectively tailor the message on the direct mailer.  Therefore I defined this first stakeholder as a prospective student of the university with the following attributes:

• Urban Oklahoma High School Senior Interested in Design
• Qualifying ACT/SAT scores
• Ages 17-18

Following the mental trajectory of the past business card and letterhead assignment, I chose to create a Pinterest board to gain inspiration for effective design principles that could be utilized on the direct mailer.

To view this board click here: https://www.pinterest.com/anhautemess/university-direct-mailers/

Following my inspirational research, I completed a draft of the first direct mailer which can be seen below.

In order to create visual interest with my target audience, I decided to use an image of a student working in his artistic medium of choice.  Furthermore, I treated the image in a way that blocked out certain parts of the image so that the viewer would have to mentally fill in these portions of the photo.  In doing so, I hoped to subtly suggest a visual metaphor of blank spaces at the University of Oklahoma that could be filled by prospective students.

At first, I found this project a little outside of my comfort zone.  However, after utilizing the inspiration board and focusing my attention on a specific stakeholder, I felt confident in designing an informative and visually impactful direct mailer.