12. Professional Practice

Professor Elena Rogalle

Media Design MFA Experience Map

Final Experience Map. Click for a full size view.

Ethics research paper

Mastery Assignment

Mastery. For me, Mastery was like much-needed therapy and deep counseling. It caused me to examine my motives for embarking on the Master’s journey. More importantly, learning about all the great men and women in Robert Greene’s “Mastery” text and the obstacles they had to overcome to become great—that convinced me that I can accomplish equally amazing things. I can’t really say that any techniques from this course helped in developing my thesis. However, the course itself made me resolute in my decision to become the best designer that I can be. That would be my personal triumph in the Mastery course.
Defining Client Needs. This course taught me to be free in conceptualizing. It took away the pressure of having to find the right answer, because there is no right answer—only a good, better and best answer. I learned to sketch freely and get my ideas out on paper before self-editing. (This too, I find, is a type of therapy.) This course introduced me to mind-mapping, which I had never done before. There’s something liberating about getting the ideas out of your head where you can organize, evaluate and narrow them down to one best solution without the pressure of being right. David Airey’s book “Logo Design Love” taught me the techniques involved in designing a killer logo. The sketching I did in this class helped me to organize my thesis later on and settle on the best layout.
Brand Development. This course taught me color, typography and design hierarchy. I also learned to create vision/mood boards that define the look and feel of the photography, textures, fonts and color palette that will come to define a brand. Perhaps most importantly, I made a thorough list of resources that I can refer back to as a refresher in the future. Instructor and peer feedback helped me to honestly evaluate and finalize strong logo designs. The brand development and logo design techniques became acquired competencies in my thesis presentation.
Effective Copywriting introduced me to voice and tone, strategically connecting consumer needs with product benefits and strategies for writing powerful headlines. The technique of creating personas to lend human characteristics to a product or consumer market was another valuable concept. Personas help to make the consumer a real person with whom advertisers can speak. Sketches of testimonial ads produced in this course went into the acquired competencies of my thesis presentation. The wisdom of sketching the ad first is a discipline I’ve added to my toolbelt as a result of this course.
Design Research taught us the fine art of research in finding a product’s unique selling proposition—the one thing that gives it the advantage against its competitors. I worked on branding Grand Avenue, the main thoroughfare through the town of Baldwin, NY. I used primary research (interviews) and secondary research (library) to find how it measures up against the villages on either side of it. The main technique I take away from Design Research is the importance of becoming a student of your product, getting to know it as well or better than those who manufactured it. From the research we did brand analysis and empathy maps—other acquired competences to populate my thesis presentation.
Organizational Structures presented me with the big take-away of motion graphics. I completed parallax ads and learned about the increasingly large role that motion plays in media design. Increasingly, we receive emails containing motion graphics. I took a brief foray into Adobe After Effects. It’s not my thing, but it is information that is great to know and understand so that I can hire the talent necessary to do it, should the need arise. This class also taught about screen resolution, frame rate, storyboarding and infographics.
Design Strategies & Motivation took us into a study of design strategy, brand voice and preparing the creative brief in the attempt to brand BoxPark Sushi. I researched and narrowed down the target market this brand is most likely to appeal to, using Maslow’s heirarchy of needs and Settle and Alreck’s shopping list of needs. The empathy map from this assignment made its way into the thesis. I find it helpful to develop an understanding of “who” the design needs to speak to, “how” to speak them and “what” to say.
Design Integration put together color, typography, photography and texture to help me formulate a vision board and dynamic vision board, incorporating music, to establish a voice and tone for BoxPark Sushi. This course even covered the differences between designing for print versus digital media. This is where all the pieces of the campaign come together. The course brought together for me many of the missing pieces that make design great: choosing color, typography, texture, etc.
Multi-Platform Delivery combined all the media assets in the campaign including print, outdoor, menus, signage and bumper stickers. The major problem to be solved was making our brand stand out in the mind of consumers amidst all the sushi restaurants in Milwaukee. My idea was to launch out into an entirely new color scheme and look that was not typical of other Japanese establishments.
Measuring Design Effectiveness introduced us to survey research and articulating that data into visuals that could be easily understood and digested. As a result, I created my first complete infographic which was then presented in my thesis presentation. The Infographic showed a problem with the color scheme according to the research. That color issue was then resolved in the problem-solving portion of the thesis presentation by tweaking the colors in the campaign. The greatest take-away for me was learning about various design techniques like arranging white space and design hierarchy from Linkedin Learning’s John McWade.
Presentation of Design Solution explained that the purpose of the thesis was to present a persuasive argument for a student’s qualification for a Master of Fine Arts Degree. In this course, I presented my thesis and academic portfolio. Together, they explain how I would solve a particular client problem. In the case of BoxPark Sushi, the problem was to create brand awareness in a saturated sushi market. I liked the challenge presented by this course, though stressful. My takeaway was the confidence that I can identify, analyze and solve advertising problems for a brand.

Resources

Wally Snyder. Making the case for enhanced advertising ethics: how a new way of thinking about advertising ethics may build consumer trust. https://fso-lms4-immortal-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/316/20174/0fc230cd-3f85-48b9-a806-10f3e634921b-54882860-4be3-4e1d-a6c2-dd7ac99739e2/Snyder_Wally.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20200525T041420Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAI4QJ7YJDQ7JYMBXQ%2F20200525%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=ba14a0b3f0fc6f549da150d3f2635df48afe00ee50d0bebc5547029170db89ab

Media Ethics: Cases and Moral Reasoning by Clifford G. Christians, Mark Fackler, Kathy Richardson, Peggy Kreshel, and Robert H. Woods. Vital Source Bookshelf.