Design Week 4

 Last week when talking about design, I brought up a very timeless style of tattoo- tattoo trends are constantly changing, typically having a handful of trends a year. In this last year, 2024, there has been a very popular trend of Cybersigilism, which I have discussed on these blogs before. Cybersigilism is a cross between tribal and fine line styles.

The visual appeal of cybersigilism lies in its ability to merge the sleekness of cybernetic designs with the depth of esoteric symbols. Tattoo artist Sydney Smith describes this style as incorporating "technological or mystical elements, creating a unique aesthetic that's both modern and ancient.". This style, as noted by a few news outlets has been increasingly popular with Gen Z as social media contributed much of its current hype. Apps like Tiktok and Instagram make it a lot easier for people to share tattoos, creating many new styles like this one.

The reason why I decied to write about this for my design discussion it because in this last week I spent a lot of time going in and reviewing some peers writing, and the 4 C's article to help better understand marketing- when dealing with such a gold mine of fast information and content sharing online, its important to stay in the know and move with the trends to have a better communication with viewers. While I am not a tattoo artist, I am a consumer of the "product" and now viewing the trend fluctuations with a different perspective from this class helps me better understand how you'd have to tackle certain aspects of campaigns. 

Already with the new year coming in, these styles that took the internet by storm are being phased out by newer trends- styles like Blackwork, dot work, and anime tattoos are making a resurgence, as they are preexisting styles coming back to light.

While doing my assignments and research it makes me curious how bigger companies try to stay with trends, something that can't be confined to just a demographic? As I still look into it, the internet provided me with this small infographic, which helps create a visual understanding- however I'd like to research on this topic even more.

Social Media Round 3

My idea for the third round of social media post was to sponsor the brands "blog" rather than to push for in person sales, while reviewing the "4 C's" article, there was a lot of helpful information throughout. One of the main points I took away from it was "Social Karma" where building up on your targets intrests will come to help you out later- while the blog the posts talk about are currently hypothetical, the idea was to encourage viewers to check the page out for themselves. The persona I chose for the both of these is "Mya" who loves animals- Scooters is a company that prides themselves on animal friendliness, dedicating August to pets, hosting events for pets, offering pup cups, and even featuring customers animals in the Barista newsletter. The two posts talk about a blog Scooters made for homemade dog treats.

Instagram:

Facebook:

Because these images/posts were less coffee related I added the Scooters logo into the bottom corners of each of the images to try and tie it together. Next time I would have liked to add an actual link to a blog into each of the posts.
 

Social Media Round 2

 For this set of social media posts, I chose to target one of my persona's as opposed to the two different ones I did last time. For these two posts I wanted them to have similar themes but still match the right aesthetic and tone for their respective platforms. Like last time these are Instagram and Facebook- for the persona "Joe".

Instagram:

While sticking in the theme of "healthcare" I wanted to create a post that would still encourage that demographic to check out the company, but additionally I wanted to push a less popular menu item like a Joe to Go. A Joe to Go is a large folded box that holds over 90 oz of coffee, so after some brainstorming I figured hospitals tend to bring in items for their nurses in the breakroom, or other nurses will do likewise for their coworkers.

Facebook: 

When previously working for Scooters, they often had events for healthcare workers, as that makes up a large majority in late night and early morning customers. These events helped establish the coffee brand in NPR Florida. Typically these events offered a free coffee and a custom made sticker for any healthcare workers who came with their work badges. 

Social Media

 For these two posts I used some help from Zeoob (layout), Canva (design), and Ibispaint (editing).

Instagram post:

For this post my target persona was for "Morgan" which is a more environmentally conscious person, many coffee shops try to improve their ability to help the planet, so making a persona to try and target this was my goal.

I went to the official Scooters page to see how they typically have things laid out, a long with getting help for their tags.

Facebook:

For the post on Facebook I geared more towards the persona for "Halli" and "Mya" to show more communities will be getting a coffee hut near them! Additionally for the Mya persona, a collage attendee may move locations often, building the knowledge of what states have Scooters can build brand loyalty.

Week 3 Creativity

 In my last creativity post, I was challenged by Indeed to try and write a poem- I used the poem as a small vent about my work schedule. This time around I wanted to try again, but not using the same prompt- but  a writing exercise to get me out of my comfort zone, this time I went to Inc, whose articles Ive used in the past for these types of blogs. 

Today I will be writing #22 out of their list of #32: 

Take 5 minutes to write a haiku (Japanese style 3 line poem with a 5-7-5 syllable structure) about your day or night.

For this, I wanted to go away from such a negative vibe and decided to write a haiku about my two cats, again, words are far from my strong point, so enjoy the silliness:

Grey and orange pair,
Chasing sunbeams everywhere,
Warmth and love they share.

Out of the two styles of writing, the Haiku was way more intresting to write and posed a neat challenge with the three line rule, it let me have more creative thinking compared to the poem, in my opinion the lack of rules in a poem give to much free reign to what is and isn't a poem, which always makes me second guess.

 

Week 3 Design

 For this week I wanted to look into Tattoo styles- as one of the main artists I follow has been sharing a lot of history surrounding his favorite style- American Traditional.

American traditionally was built up strongly by early sailors, easily spotted by its timeless art style, bold lines, limited color, and simplified designs. The art of American Traditional tattoos is closely linked to maritime culture. Sailors, during their extensive voyages, encountered indigenous tattooing practices in various parts of the world, notably the Pacific Islands. Inspired by these encounters, they began to adorn themselves with tattoos symbolizing their journeys, beliefs, and experiences.

Even though the style itself is quite old, artists today love to revision the style and modernize it, typically by adding different subjects and adding to the color pallets. American Trad. Is also known outside of the tattoo world, being quite well known in the fashion industry thanks to Don 'Ed' Hardy, who was originally a tattoo artist under the notorious Sailor Jerry, but later dawned his fashion brand into stores. Sailor Jerry or Norman Collins, also made his mark with this style, having it styled onto all of his very popular alcohol brand- which even includes a free temporary tat in each bottle, typically of an eagle or the brands mascot, a hula girl.

 

American Traditional tattooing, often referred to as "old school," is a distinguished style within the tattoo art world, celebrated for its bold lines, limited color palette, and iconic imagery, and while its not a style I would favor on me, its intresting seeing how well adopted tattoo styles can get, even with the constant changes in trends.

Week 2 Creativity

 This weeks creative exercises I chose from Indeed! They posted a short simple article with about 18 different prompts to try, to help build creativity. This week I wanted to chose a more challenging one, that was less graphic based, or with no art, so I decided to try and write a poem- 

I don't think I've written once since middle school so please bear with me, the topic I chose was to reflect on my current work schedule, as it's been pretty brutal to juggle, especially with the holidays;

The days stack high, like gifts in a pile,
Each task a mile, no room to smile.
The lights blink fast, the music plays,
But I’m lost in the rush of endless days.
Then laughter calls, a soothing sound,
With love and peace, I’m gently found.

The holidays over, my spirit restored. 

Safe to say I am very excited for December to be over, but making a poem was quite hard, rhyming lines with the last is hard to do for me, but a quick video on YouTube gave me some pointers. While it was helpful to break out of my comfort zone- I did not find this exercise as useful as others.

Everyone have a safe and happy holiday!

Week 2 Design

 Like many others, I work in a very corporate chain, that has a brand that has been irrefutably successful. I personally happen to work at a Dunkin' and Dunkin' over the years has become very known for its merchandise, even before its competitor- the siren, even existed. For this post I confided in one of my coworkers, who was born and raised in the state where Dunkin' all started and has been working with them for over 20 years, her name is Tina. My inspiration for making a design post about this was seeing her collection (which unfortunately I didn't get images) and watching the brand change and evolve over the years.

Dunkin' in its earlier days released many types of coffee containers made for construction workers and tradesmen, so they could get over two cups of coffee earlier in the morning for cheaper prices, all while acting as advertisement in the wild- they fit about 30 fluid oz of coffee and sported a built in coffee cup on the top.

Dunkin' was still called Dunkin Donuts at the time and branded 3 official colors for recognition, pink, orange, and brown, a color scheme that made them stand out from the start.

However as time went on so did trends, the country moved towards more health conscience motives. Slowly but surely Dunkin' phased out a lot of its brown schemes and started sporting its new motto, "America runs on Dunkin" which became a very well know ad campaign. This started in 2006 to help further push their brand as "America's favorite". But still, the fast food health kick was still in full swing, so Dunkin' ended up dropping the "Donuts" half out of their name, to distance the association and to encourage people to look further into their other menu items, now including wraps, and egg bites.

Now, in 2024, a lot of the Dunkin' merchandise is very uninspired, copy and paste, and yet more expensive, majority of the cups they sell are over the $30 mark and can't even hold hot coffee. The brand now focuses more on collaborations and exclusive releases, recently with Makeup, shampoo, and even dog treats!

 

Looking into SWOT

 SWOT is an abbreviation used to help build a stronger and more strategic look into a company, that may help them improve on goals, marketing, planning, and revisions for upcoming quarters. SWOT stands for; Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

Looking further into the topic to better understand it, here are 3 sources that cover SWOT and help better understand what it is and how it may help a company-

Fit4Market

This article covers how SWOT applies to marketing, it goes over a few explanations of the term and what the term is also known by (Current situation analysis). Something that the introduction does well is explain the differences in how SWOT can be used "A SWOT analysis for a marketing plan is distinctly different to a SWOT analysis for a business plan in that each element you consider must be considered from the customer's point of view. For example, an element might include a "lack of funding". For the business plan this will have certain implications but how will the customer see this element? It may be that it is a lack of visibility due to the inability to adequately promote to your target market.". Going further into the article it breaks down each abbreviation into a description to better understand the letter on its own, and a few steps one can take to note the information within their company.

Read Here!

Community Tool Box

Communitytoolbox provides a segment out of a textbook that covers SWOT, it has a few examples, and visuals to help take in the information. It covers why it was created why you should use the method, and the internal elements of the topic. In this article it provides real world examples for using this tool, which helps understand it. Towards the middle of the article there is some visuals provided to let the reader put down their own thoughts, here there is a segment explaining how the SWOT method is a simple and organized way of breaking down a companies internal and external pros and cons. This article could be more helpful printed out, to interact with some of the textboxes made for response.

Read Here!

SWOT Analysis Best Practices

In this article, it covers the several descriptions of SWOT, much like the other two sources, however, it also goes into how you further utilize the method into an action for your company. Afterward this article also explains how there are some downsides included in using this method and to be mindful when using it- "Threats in a SWOT analysis represent negative, external factors that the organization can’t control. These factors could potentially disrupt current strategies or even the company’s future. Anticipating threats requires a realistic, objective, and specific assessment of external challenges to be mindful of their potential impact on the organization and to take action against them before they negatively affect the business." The article has a clever way of using SWOT to evaluate SWOT, which I thought was a very cool detail.

Read Here!

Those were the three articles I found and read to help further my understanding of the topic, I tried to stay with .Org or .Edu to try and filter out any unreliable information. Out of the three articles I highly recommend the last one, it holds lots of information, and breaks it down in a very helpful way. 

Social Media Demographics

 Sources

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/social-media/?tabItem=5b319c90-7363-4881-8e6f-f98925683a2f

https://khoros.com/resources/social-media-demographics-guide

https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/

These are the three sources I consulted to give my cards a targeted social media outlook, these sources broke down what ages, gender, and race typically access certain sites.

About the sources 

Sproutsocial had the least amount of information but was still able to break down in percentages, who uses what. It focused way less on race and more on age, and how much time was spent on socials per day. Afterwards they go down and talk about how each platforms latest updates and what people looking to market on said apps need to be aware of.

Khoros broke down overall stats, generational usage, session times, and then broke in depth what ages and devices are used to access different social platforms, it also highlights how much shopping and website traffic advertisers typically get. At the end it included a graph for companies to see if a social platform was worth their attention, which helped me visualize for my own project.

Pewresearch had a much more professional layout, it included more social media, which were more popular, how they conducted the research and much more. This site has a lot of graphs that helped me decide what to label each of my cards, I believe we also reviewed this one in class. It breaks down by demographic so: Age, Race, Gender, income, education, and Party affiliation. This site had a lot of helpful information so I used this as my main source of information and had the other two as supporting the information.

Applying demographics to my persona cards

For me to be able to quickly refrence what group/social these personas would fit into, I quickly made a note on each image to refrence, before I decied ultimately what they'd use.

For Mya: Mya is a 20 year old women, looking at a few of the graphs she would be more likely to be on Snapchat, Instagram, or Pinterest- but because she would have a more rural life style I took away Pinterest, as that site typically is less popular. Most of the sources pointed that white women her age are mostly using the two I categorized her into.

White: 45% on Instagram 25% on Snapchat 

20: 76% on Instagram 65% on Snapchat

Community(Rural): 39% on Instagram 30% on Snapchat

For Halli: Halli is a 25 year old women, because she is also a photographer I included Pintrest, many of the sites suggested she would be more geared towards Facebook as well. Because she is more towards 30 most graphs suggest she'd be on Facebook more on Pintrest.

White: 70% on Facebook 37% on Pintrest

25: 68% on Facebook 43% on Pintrest

Community (Suburban): 70% on Facebook 37% on Pintrest 

For Joe: The oldest of the 4 cards, Facebook made a lot of sense, I could also see Joe using reddit or Twitter (X) according to the demographics. These sites are more male driven, with X being almost completely "gendered" as stated in Khoros.

Hispanic: 69% on Facebook 27% on X

29: 68% on Facebook 38% on X

Community(Urban): 67% on Facebook 22% on X

For Morgan: Morgan is more fashion focused and economical, so he was kind of an outlier to the demographic reports, but a person with these hobbies would use Instagram and Pintrest. Less than 19% of users on Pintrest are male, however his age group does fit in well with those who do use pintrest.

Black: 52% on Instagram 36% on Pintrest 

25: 76% on Instagram 43% on Pintrest

Community(Suburban): 54% on Instagram 37% on Pintrest

4 Personas

 In class we went over what a "customer persona" was, how it helps a company, and how it can improve a marketing campaigns target, reach, and impact. 

A customer persona is a quick summarized card that poses as a real person that would be or could be in the marketings target audience. It covers their age, gender, location, hobbies, goals, frustrations, and adds a small bio to help better understand. This helps out reach to the people viewing the content on a more personal level.

For this week I was tasked with creating 4 persona cards that my brand could use. 

Morgan: I created this card for those who are more economically aware, Scooters has been pushing for less single use plastics and donated used coffee grounds to support local farmers in fertilization.

Joe: This card was made to apply to those who work late nights, a lot of the customers at Scooters come because they're open earlier than most, many tradesman and nurses work these hours and need their coffee.

Halli: This card was made to show someone who may be from a competitor, like Starbucks or Dunkin, how would my company go about also applying to this brand and bringing in new people- in her card she is looking for community, which is one of Scooters missions.

Mya: Mya's card is very dog friendly, which is one of Scooters main drives as they offer pup cups and Polaroid walls of customers pets at many of the locations, and also have a pet month to encourage people to celebrate their animals.

These cards make it easier to know who you are targeting in your post, it keeps the information organized and better to refrence as opposed to staring down a list of stats and outliers. One thing I would add to this, would be "fustrations" I saw another classmate use this in their cards and it had a lot of useful information- I'd also include what the preferred social media platform is, as Scooters primarily only functions on Instagram and Facebook, knowing their consumer base better could help them point their attention to a site their community uses more.

SMART Goals

Scooters SMART goals and Mission Statement.

Mission Statement: To create an amazing experience for each life we touch.

 SMART Goals:

1. Increase current social media followers by 20% on focused platforms, Facebook, and Instagram. Achievable in 6 months.
2. Enhance post engagement within same timeframe as follower increase goal, gain shares and build interactions to promote brand loyalty and community- push for 15% 
3. Encourage more to download mobile app. Utilize targeted ads, influencer partnerships, and exclusive social media promotions.
4. Use social media tactics like contests to both gather information, and draw in new customers, winning prizes can include Scooters products to encourage the winner to refer others.
5. Collaborate with influencers online to promote brand visibility, and encourage new customers to visit in person stores or get online traffic to website.
6. Launch more seasonal, and exclusive flavors/items to compete with other competitors, push both in person marketing at stores ("would you like to try out LE flavor") and marketing campaigns online.
7. Introduce a "featured barista" program in stores and online, encourage customers to highlight employees and build connection to consumers.
8. Launch sustainable packaging initiative. Partner with eco-friendly suppliers and phase out old stock.
9. Introduce app exclusive "meal deal" to encourage more traffic to stores and online orders.

  

Week 1 Design

 Finding people to learn from online has become easier than ever with the internet being so readily available, anything from tutorials, brushes, livestreams, etc. are majority free or low cost to find and access to build ones knowledge and skill in graphic design. On this weeks post about design I wanted to highlight some of the people online that help me navigate software (including photoshop, canva, etc.), give inspiration, and help reinforce good strategies to putting a piece together.

Kel Lauren

Kel Lauren is primairly a merch designer for indie music artist, they rose to popularity on YouTube for a series where they would redesign existing companies as if the brand had hired them for mockups and a series of merchandise, Kel would reimagine these corporates into more modern and "indie" brands. Kel is based in Portland Oregon. 

This was my first ever introduction into graphic design, and the work they did really inspired a lot of the work I did then and even now! Sometimes I go back and rewatch a lot of their older videos while I design. In these videos, while they aren't explicitly tutorials, they contain many of their shortcuts, and time to time they'll walk the audience through some of the processes. I highly recommend binging some of these videos.

 

Elliotisacoolguy

Elliot is a graphic designer who mostly does work for YouTubers and creates merchandise for other online content creators- His page is sourced around creating lighthearted videos and combining comedy and designing, like Kel, he doesn't often create just tutorials but walks through some of his processes and shows others how to access resources. He does also offer online courses.

Company Info: Scooters Coffee

 The company I researched was Scooters Coffee, which is a popular drive-thru coffee hut founded by Don and Linda Eckles in Nebraska around 1998- The couple spent a lot of time on the west coast and here grew a love for the very common coffee huts all around the area. Their goal initially was to bring this same love and experience to the Midwest, where the coffee scene was incredibly limited.

The company strives to get more personable and close to its customers and aims to have incredibly fast service without sacrificing quality or the customers experience. Their tagline "Amazing people, amazing drinks, amazingly fast".

Currently the company has over 600 locations and has been rapidly growing in the south through franchises and expanding their warehouse reach. I personally have worked for this company before, both as a barista and in social media, and it's starting to get a cult following, not only in its hometown, but now throughout the country.

S)  This companies strengths are its ability to connect with the customer, and the brands ability to grow throughout the country/

W)  Its weaknesses lie in it's competitors, lack of brand deals and collaborations, and its not as recognizable of a company. 

O)   Recent opportunities have been more collaborations with larger companies, like Redbull, Oreo, Hasbro- there is an opportunity for better customer connection at smaller stores if there was more push to get customers to shop there instead of usual stops. 

T)  Threats come from larger, more established companies like Dunkin and Starbucks.

Week 1 Creativity

 One of the biggest learning curves for me un this course is learning how to navigate the industry standard of photoshop. The many buttons, paths, settings, and shortcuts are overwhelming at a glance and are quite hard to keep tabs on especially with the constant updates.

It is important to know how to use an application like this, as it gives you more creative ability and tools to allow you to design whatever you need, for personal use, commercial, ect. 

The past few weeks have been insanely hectic for me, and to add to the craziness of work, the holidays are around the corner, when trying to decide what to give my neighbor, it dawned on me that my truck designs have been getting a lot of traction online- so I wanted to design a few shirts for his company. I also decided that when making this shirt, I wanted to dive more into the tools on photoshop to better learn and familiarize myself with its tools.

This is his logo, which sports the three Toyota racing stripes, a set of mountains, and little camping icons.

I wanted to be able to reference back to this logo, the colors and the tagline.

Here is the design I made; 

While there is still some fixes to be made, I will cover those later on, for now I will walk through my process of using tools.

Starting this, I had to find some source images, which was quite easy as the company primairly markets with off-roading images of their modded trucks, using the owners 4runner I imported it into photoshop and got to work. Originally there was a lot of difficulty trying to separate the truck and PARTS of the ground while keeping some of the rocky outline, then I remembered one of the lectures in class when we went over the different selection tools, so I used a combination of the quick select tool, magic wand, and manual lasso. From here I went through different filters, trying to get an illustrated look, which I found a few good ones in the filter library, which were easy to tweak and set to what I needed- afterwards I added texture to give more of a shirt feel, a tactic I've used before in other designs. After done with the filters, I used the magic wand tool to select a few of the areas to adjust the colors. making the whites and silvers pop more, and then adding more saturation for depth in the reds. After finished with the center of the design I made a few more fixes and then moved on to text- which of course started with an adobe font browse, as I needed a strong, clean font, that could be easily read from different distances. I went with Owners Narrow. From here I broke up each word adjusted some of the kerning manually, and the edited them to line up- afterwards I shift clicked the segments to group them and then repeated them downwards through the design.

For final touches I added a basic center stroke around the center piece to allow it to pop more from the words without taking away from the rest of the design, and then added in the tagline with a slightly lowered opacity.

My biggest issue with this design is the kerning in the word "overland" it looks different from the other letters and to me is really distracting, if I revisit this design I may also add in the mountains from the logo into the background, as a dark grey, so on the shirt its a subtle touch. 

Tell a story

For my image telling a story, I originally had a hard time finding an image that would convey a story, a few of my original images were outside during stormy weather, which, while made for interesting photos, I couldn't quite put a story behind it.

Often now, I work both morning and night shifts, so I get home late and am hardly there- my cat typically waits up on me to come home and bring her upstairs. One of the later nights I came home, she hadn't heard the door (how she typically knows someone gets in) and was waiting super patiently by our tree. 

The stark lighting made for a really cool photo, with some moody lighting.  

In Lightroom I was able to drop some of the colors, blur the background, increase the shadows, and add a vignette, I wanted the Christmas lights on the tree to really shine.

While the story here isn't super evident, I think the theme of waiting in the dark has a good implied story.

Holiday Ad

 For week 3 we had to come up with a series/set of holiday advertisements in three different sizes, a full page, a half page, and a Instagram post (2000x2000px). When trying to brainstorm originally I was going to go the route of handheld tools, like Milwaukee, Dewalt, and Klein- around the holidays hardware stores like Homedepot and Lowes put a lot into marketing the sales for winter time. However I went away from this towards the end cause I got more inspiration while Christmas shopping for some of my teammates. Pure Hockey is a chain of stores that sell, well, hockey equipment, while they do also put a lot into marketing for the holidays its not as loud and announced like other retail stores. So grabbing a few assets online, I got to work making some holiday themed advertising for CCM, one of the bigger brands in hockey. 

For my first design, it was a full page advertisement- While making this design I was watching a graphic design youtuber make quick posters and tried to implement some of his tactics into the poster.

This design required a few clipping layers to change the colors on the CCM logo, and then I also tried practicing with the pen tool and brushes to make my own art of a bow.

For my second design, for the 2000x2000 social media post, I wanted to try and recreate a box of candy canes, but with a specific CCM stick (that has similar color and pattern to a candy cane). I don't think this design came out good, as it doesn't read like the box of candy, but I tried to reference back to a few things that'd be included on the box.

Here I utilized textures, shapes, and special effects layers.

For the last design, a half page advertisement, I wanted to stay within the CCM theme but go away from hockey sticks- so I took a few different models of their skates, layered a few icy textures and backgrounds using some of the asset sites we all shared in the wiki.

This design I made with Pure hockey in mind, so I gave it a tagline and added a sale mark onto a custom shape.