Direct Mailers, First Draft, Reflection

I’ve completed first drafts of both of my direct mailers for two different stakeholders.

My first stakeholder helped me define my second by showing me the characteristics, attitudes, needs, behaviors, etc. of my audience. I could find some similarities between my stakeholders, but defining my first helped me find it’s distinct characteristics that distinguished it from the second. My second stakeholder was African American high school students who have above average ACT/SAT scores.

My design changed since it’s first draft. I had too much activity occurring on one side, which I felt distracted my audience from a clear and concise message.

To me, Photoshop is ideal for editing images and photos, but InDesign is more geared towards the design layouts for web/print. InDesign lets you create a multi-page document, while in Photoshop I’ve created separate documents for each side of my direct mailers.  Photoshop has great filters, special effects and other editing tools for images/photos. You edit pixel-by-pixel, which is not the case for InDesign. Both are used to create/edit vector images/designs, and both are used for graphic design purposes.