wesmoody | JMC3433 - PR Publications

Chapters 6 and 7 (Extra Credit)

By wesmoody in Uncategorized May 1, 2014

Chapter 6

This chapter was a good lesson in crisis communication. I was really impressed with the example of Flckrs problem and the contest they ran. I’m sure whatever intern or whoever came up with that idea got a big fat raise. Running a constest got people thinking about how to win rather than how mad they were the site was down.

The idea of emotional design is pretty abstract to me. I always feel that I struggle to be creative. I can make you something very technical and I can do it well but new ideas or out of the box thinking is not my strong point. They make a very good point though that this can buy you some leeway.

One portion that really impressed me in this chapter is when they talked about designing for human emotion but that human emotion is not perfect and that eventually something bad will happen. How you respond to that is what makes the difference, just like in real life. Flickr did a great job because they were able to ease bad emotions and they already had built up a lot of trust with their design and how much people liked it.

This is another example of how design can be just as important as content. Even in a crisis situation, a good design can buy you more leeway.

Chapter 7

The idea of starting small really appeals to me. Designing for emotion doesn’t always seem to fit. For the athletic department I feel like it would be very difficult to convince someone to do something like the Easter Egg hunt on our site. They are always concerned with traditional and professionalism. At the same time, they always tell us that recruits look at the site and they we need to be mindful of that. Finding a way to appeal to that audiences emotions would have a great impact on the university.

I wonder if I could convince someone to take a chance on something similar to the examples in this book. The book seems to conclude that while it may be risky (although not very) the benefits could be huge. As an intern My opinion doesn’t matter but if they tried it I bet it would lead to a job.

I thought the book was pretty good overall. It gave me a better sense of how to design for humans and how to get the best response from an audience. I def want to use some of the principle I’ve learned whenever I start my career. So many athletic department websites are the same boring stuff. There is so much room for improvement, particularly when these sites say that they are aimed at high school recruits. That younger demographic would love emotional design.

Originally posted at Wes Moody

Reflection on Class

By wesmoody in Uncategorized May 1, 2014

I have really enjoyed this class. I enjoy any class, be they ever so rare, that teaches me a hard skill. too much of my college life has been spent talking about ideas and hardly any has been spent teaching me things that make me employable. You can’t put theories on a resume, but you can put “good at InDesign”.

I want to be a sports information director. This job produces a lot of content for websites and paper on gamedays. SOOO much of what we do is done on InDesign and so I am grateful to have had this class (but also disappointed that there aren’t more computer skills classes in Gaylord… It’s 2014!). I feel like I went from a very basic knowledge of InDesign to feeling confident that I could produce the documents I would need to in my profession. Adam was a great instructor and very knowledgeable about the program.

I wish we would have spent some time on Photoshop but I realize that the class is really too short to cover both programs sufficiently. OU needs to have 3-4 classes for teaching software in Gaylord.

I enjoyed the lab format of the class. I was free to work at my own pace but I could ask questions if I had any.

I plan to use the website that we created in my job search. I think that it will be a real asset when I am applying for jobs around the country and it might just put me over the top. I am going to keep updating my portfolio as I go. I probably wont use the blog section but you never know.

Originally posted at Wes Moody

The non-student me

By wesmoody in Uncategorized May 1, 2014

So something that people probably don’t know about me is that I volunteer with a local Boy Scout troop. I was a Scout growing up and I got my Eagle Award. I really valued the knowledge and skills that Scouting taught me and I want to give some of that back.

I think in today’s world that it is a good thing to teach young men outdoor skills and to teach them a love nature and the outdoors. That way they can grow up to responsible stewards of our natural resources. I also think that Scouting teaching values unlike any other organization. You can’t just send you kid to school and trust that they will learn how to be a good person. SCouting teaches honor, integrity, citizenship, the value of serving others, honesty and independence. THings that are lacking in our society. DOing all this in a setting of fun and outdoorsmanship is a great experience for young kids.

I am really passionate about SCouting and I am glad that I can be part of it. I hope that the knowledge I give to those kids is valuable to them and it can be something that will shape them as people and help them to lead better lives.

Originally posted at Wes Moody

Newsletter Assignment

By wesmoody in Uncategorized April 10, 2014

This assignment was unique because the size of it gave me a chance to really increase the level of content that I could include. While in the mailer assignment you could only put a few line or so to get your point across, this assignment gave the freedom to really fill it up with content.

I decided that my newsletter would be for OU baseball, the team that I work with most directly. It made sense to me to aim the newsletter at fans that are not close to Norman. I wanted this to be aimed at people who may have a hard time getting to games and feeling involved but also make it something that a casual fan could pick up and enjoy.

PAGE 1

The title includes the acronym WAFO which is the mantra of the new coaching staff and is just everywhere in the baseball program. It stands for We Are Family Omaha and you can’t be around the program without seeing that. I made it a hashtag because they use that on all their tweets and I was hoping to drive traffic to the accounts of the coaches and administrators. The line under that is the motto of the team you could say and suggests the team attitude that the team wants to have.

I included the team’s schedule/results because that is really the whole point of the newsletter and I started two of my articles on the front page.

I used the thin grey line at the top to seperate the title and the body and filled it with some of the programs accomplishments. OU is all about tradition and the more you mention it the better.

PAGE 2

This page feature the award winners for the past month. These are significant awards and I wanted to showcase them and really highlight the best players her. I had some trouble getting the right pictures so that they would look good with the text over them but I was happy with the way they turned out. Offsetting the players in the frame rather than centering them helped to really make the text pop.

I again went with OU’s yearbook solid text for my headlines. It is important to keep that consistent and since that font is used on everything, even on the signs at the stadiums, it really is part of the brand and makes things look recognizable as being OU.

PAGE 3

This page has all my jump articles on it and I like the way I organized the text. I was also happy with how my pull quote turned out. I think putting it here makes sense because there is so much text the reader would be temped not to read it so drawing them in with this made sense to me.

The cutout was a good change from all the other square pictures and worked pretty well here. I wish I had put some kind of shadow on it though in hindsight.

PAGE 4

The last page I saved for my feature story. This was a longer story that I thought was better suited to have its own page. I included my contact info on thus page and added a couple of elements that attempt to drive traffic to soonersports.com

This assignment was really easy once I made my wire frame. that was by far the hardest part. From there it was pretty much just plugging things in.

I have noticed that I have gotten a lot better and faster at basic things like changing tools. I know a TON of shortcuts now and I can really work a lot faster.

Originally posted at Wes Moody PR Publications

Project 3 – Newsletters

By wesmoody in Assignment 3, Assignments, JMC 3343, Newsletter April 10, 2014

For our third project in my Pubic Relations Publications class we had to make a 4 page newsletter. I decided to make my newsletter for the President’s Leadership Class (PLC) members and alumni. This year I am an intern for PLC and it is my job to keep alumni connected with our program. PLC at the University of Oklahoma only lasts for your freshman year. After that you become a student alumni. I made the newsletter to highlight the work the advisors, interns and Burr Scholars have done this year. The newsletter explains what each of positions do. The newsletter has five different stories/ information boxes.

The first story is a letter from the Director of PLC Nanette Hathaway. The second story is from this years PLC Advisors Ally Renfroe and Bear McAfee reflecting on their past year and the PLC class. The third story is from the Jane E. Lawton interns Niki Haddid and myself about the alumni events we planned this year and the last event we have planned the year. The next part of the newsletter is an invitation to our end of year picnic. The picnic is open to current PLCer’s as well as alumni and it is where we announce the new advisors and interns. The last section of the newsletter is called Burr Corner. Burr Scholars are made up of 16 junior and senior PLC members who serve as mentors for the current PLCers. For this section I named all of the Burr Scholars for this year as well as a member spotlight on a junior Burr and a senior Burr.

Since this is for an OU organization I decided to stick with the basic publication colors. I used a linen back ground with black, red, and light blue text. I also made sure to include pictures on every page to add more color. I did not use a very flashy font because I wanted the newsletter to match consistently and look professional.

I have attached pictures of my newsletter if you want to learn more about PLC or check out my design. Enjoy!

Originally posted at OU Public Relations Publications

Newsletter Assignment

By wesmoody in Assignment 3, BOOMER SOONER, Bowling, JMC 3433, JMC3433, Newsletter April 10, 2014

The latests project my class has been working on has been a newsletter. We had to find an organization we were interested in and make a newsletter about it. So basically we wrote three articles and created a layout for the organization.

This assignment was pretty tough. I wasn’t the article, but the layouts. I think it is hard to build it up in your head and even when you have a vision about what you want, it probably will change. I changed mine quite a bit, but I was happy with the outcome. Another thing that’s a little tough is deciding fonts. Since this was such a big body of work I wanted my headlines to reflect style but not be too crazy. The body of the articles I wanted to be easy on the eyes and clean. Here is a look at what I was able to come up with:

Newsletter

And here’s a look at my dummy layout, you’ll notice my final is nothing like the layout:

DummyLayout

For inspiration I searched numerous Pinterest boards and finally found one that I liked. I wanted my newsletter to look modern and not like the average newspaper look. So I found a magazine looking newsletter that had three columns instead of the traditional four. This was really challenging for me, but I liked how it turn out. Heres a look at my inspiration:

Here are the full versions of my stories:

The Future of OU Bowling

Student Spotlight

Types of Lanes

Hope you all enjoy!

-Tori

Originally posted at Tori Beechum - PR Pubs

Assignment 3: Newsletter

By wesmoody in Assignment 3, Assignments, JMC 3433 April 10, 2014

For assignment 3, we had to make a newsletter for an organization. I chose my sorority, Chi Omega, for my organization because I know so many events and activities taking place in Chi-O and have many connections to people in this organization. Also, I wanted to choose an organization that I cared about. When I started making this newsletter, I first made a dummy layout of how I wanted the newsletter to look. I started to search online to see if I could find examples of past Chi Omega newsletters to get some ideas. Although I didn’t find too many, I did get some good ideas of what I knew I did not want to do. I sketched a few ideas out an paper, but then put the ideas into action on InDesign.

First, I decided that I wanted to put a letter from our president on the first page to welcome alumni, family, friends, and others to our first newsletter. For this project, I specifically focused on staying inside the margins on all of the pages. Although I had looked at this on my previous projects, I wanted to make sure that it was a priority for this assignment. When placing everything inside the margins, it also made the layout very clear and understandable. All of the text and photos were aligned well, and were clearly spaced. I believe everything is organized well and easy to understand and comprehend.

When coming up with the overall design of my newsletter, I wanted to make sure that everything worked well together and was consistent. So I ended up using only two fonts and four colors throughout the entire project. This way, I used repetition and did not make the newsletter look cluttered by multiple colors and fonts. Additionally, I made sure everything looked proportional on the pages to create balance. My pictures were all appropriate sizes and always went along with the news story. Lastly, I believe that I have the correct amount of white space on all of my pages. The margins are kept white because it looks cleaner if nothing is outside the margins. Inside the margins, I believe I did a great job utilizing my space and making sure there is white space, but it is used appropriately. My main focus was to produce an appealing newsletter that was organized, clean, creative and easy/enjoyable to read, and I believe that my newsletter achieved all of these traits.

The main colors I used throughout this newsletter were black, red, yellow, and white. I chose red and yellow because every sorority has official colors, which for Chi-O are cardinal and straw (red and yellow). Additionally, I chose black because it helped offset the red and yellow and still helped bring a pop to the page. At first, I was worried about not having too many colors on my newsletter, but I think it looks cleaner with only four different colors. The background of the newsletter is white because it makes everything clear to read and the colors show up better on a white background.

For the typography, I chose a font that I downloaded from the Internet called Corneia. This font is a script style, and looks very distinguished and polished. When I first saw this font, I immediately thought that it fit the classy sorority style look I was going for, and it would connect to women and girls. For the news stories, I used a sans serif font called Sathu because it looked clean and easy to read. Another thing I focused on was to make sure all of the font sizes matched up in each section and align with each other.

Overall, I think this project went very well for me! I just decided that every class period, I would try to work on a new page of the project and get it done. I think this project was different from the others because although it required a lot of time to complete, more thought went into the original formatting of the newsletter. It was really nice creating a dummy layout because I was able to just immediately add my stories and pictures into the newsletter without having to create a textbox or a place to put my image. For the next project, I will definitely be making a layout on InDesign before and then add my ideas into the assignment. Personally, I feel like I have improved on InDesign again because I truly learn something new every time I come to class. I also think I have improved by the way I manage my time for this class. I know every project takes a while to complete, so I know that I have to schedule time into working on it in and out of class. I really enjoyed making this newsletter, and it might even have a possibility of being published by my sorority! Hopefully, this will work out and the Chi-O Chronicle will become a reality! Thank you to everyone who agreed to be a part of my newsletter! I appreciate your help. Below are the pictures of my newsletter:

Originally posted at Megan Young - Gaylord Student