Direct Mailer Drafts

This week we created another direct mailer based off of the first direct mailer. My first mailer was sent to an international student who had been accepted to OU, but still had not committed to coming. Therefore, I created my second direct mailer to go to the potential student’s parents. I wanted to create positive and encouraging messages to both, but gave a little bit more information to the parents, while creating a more visually pleasing, fun design for the potential student.

I have made the first design a little bit more creative, adding a texture to the front and back and making the OU logo a bit more apparent on the front. I wanted to appeal to the student’s fun side while also showcasing the actual campus and students because I thought that would be the most encouraging to persuade them to commit. Since the card is going to a potential student from China, I did not think they would connect as much with the football or sports culture and more so with feeling “welcomed home” or attracted to the campus buildings. It still seems a bit plain on the back, perhaps just not quite to the point I want it to be, so I will need to figure out how to keep the simple, fun design but add some more contrast or dimensions.

InDesign seems so much easier to me, it took me a while (and a good amount of help from my professor) to be able to work out my designs in Photoshop and understand or be happy with what I was doing. However, there is definitely more freedom in photoshop to manipulate the images and layer the different designs and creations. While InDesign is more structured and helps with the layout of things, Photoshop allowed me to really push my design to the next level and take things outside the box a bit more.

The first two images are for the potential student (first the front then the back – I was having trouble uploading a file the size of the front of this one, so I had to upload screen shot and lower the resolution to make it fit). The second two images are the front (first) and back (second) of the parents’ direct mailer.