Note (2/22/07): This section is in the process of being updated with work from the last 12 months. Please stop by again for my most recent work and a more refined site.
The Mini-Porfolio
Click here to view my mini-portfolio (PDF).
Penn State Advertising Club
So as it turns out, I'm the secretary of the Penn State Advertising Club this year. We've been working really hard to breathe new life into this organization, so get ready for the best year AdClub has ever seen!
We're kicking off the 2006-2007 year with an ice cream social during the first meeting. You'll be able to meet the AdClub board and Ad professors, learn about what you can expect from the club this year, and find out about this year's exciting AAF National Student Advertising Competition for Coca-Cola. Anyone from any major can attend and participate.
Keep an eye on the AdClub web site. You can download the latest meeting's flier and a copy of this year's schedule to get the what/when/where of the club. Hope to see you at the meetings.
WD-40 Ad for Dads
I created this ad for the lubricant/water displacement solution called WD-40 (standing for Water Displacement - 40th Attempt). The assignment was to create an ad and a piece of point-of-sale material. My design was specifically recognized for taking a totally different approach from everyone else in terms of message delivery.
My ad was designed to pull the reader in by selling a cold, utilitarian product in a very warm, sweet, and amusing manner. I designed the layout in a way that makes the reader become more involved in exploring the ad, while keeping them interested so that they read the entire ad.
Here is the point-of-sale material I designed:
This dangler designed to be located in stores selling WD-40 - attached to the shelf where the WD-40 products are displayed. It contains samples of the over 2000 uses for WD-40 on laminated cards. Each one directs users to the WD40 web site to explore the product and brand even further.
Winning Ad Design
There was a competition to produce an advertisement promoting a symposium on "Trust and the Ethical Management of Corporate Reputation." The opportunity came up right in the middle of a million other projects I had going on, so I didn't think I'd ever find time to work on it. As it turns out, I wrestled out a design that I'm really proud of especially considering how unexciting to subject of the ad is.
It ended up being a release for me in the middle of a lot of other stressful work. I consider it to be some of my best work this year, and as it turns out - my design won! So here it is, my poster design to promote the topic of this year's Donald W. Davis Symposium.
Mr. Goodbar Ads
These are some ads from a Mr. Goodbar campaign I had to work on for a project in my creative advertising strategy course. We had to select a Hershey's product. We could select a well-known product and continue to promote the brand, or we could pick a product that isn't actively marketed. I wanted to select a product that needed brand-building, so I went with Mr. Goodbar. These ads come from a campaign that was constructed around women aged 18 to 34.
The campaign began building a personality for the Mr. Goodbar brand. It would make the brand visible in the crowded candy market and give consumers a personality and image to associate with the brand name. The campaign included a television commercial storyboard following the "bring him home to your mom" and "he's a keeper" theme, some out-of-the-box media by featuring an assignment on Donald Trump's The Apprentice, a brand extension called Mrs. Goodbar (Duh.), promotions, and other media.
Ads for Creative Strategy Class
I had to produce a series of ads for various companies in my Advertising Creative Strategy class. Here are some examples from that class.
Mac User Group Fliers
This is the ad I designed for the advertising blitz Carolyn and I unleashed to promote the last meeting of the Penn State Mac User Group. The last meeting of the year was one of our best of the year! There was as much energy and enthusiasm at this last meeting as there was at the very first one.
We ended the year on a high note with record turn out, delicious cuisine, and memorable banter. Though still in its infancy, the MUG has already grown into something beyond our wildest imagination. I'm looking forward to growing the group into something even greater with the MUG team!
The ad was pretty successful, we seemed to have a record turn out for the meeting and many new faces. I would hope so, Carolyn and I spent three hours on foot plastering the campus with these ads a couple nights before the meeting.
Here are some other ads I produced for the Mac User Group:
Public Service Announcement
Here's another ad I have created for my advertising class. We had to create a public service announcement to promote the Central PA Ulster Project. It's an organization that brings teens from Northern Ireland (where the Protestants and Catholics having been fighting) to the US to live with a host family and engage in fun activities that promote understanding and other good things. My professor Dr. Leslie Turner is involved with the organization.
I used this image of the human figure interrupting a line of ammunition to represent the human element that is needed in order to break the "chain of violence." I hoped to capture attention with the over-sized, off-kilter copy above the simple image. I wanted the ad to tug on the audience's conscience without getting touchy-feely. This ad turned out to be more of a call to action than a call for empathy.
Doggie Ad
I love my new advertising major! This is the latest assignment for my advertising class. We were asked to design an ad for a dog lover's magazine. The ad had to promote the new "YumYum doggie bits-kets." The assignment was supposed to assess our ability to target a specific audience as well as our ability to know our client and their product. I kept waiting for Donald Trump to pull up in his limo to see how I was doing on the task (for all the Apprentice fans reading this).
I think the idea to not actually feature a dog or the product in the ad worked out beautifully in concept and for practicality's sake. The crumbs you see in the pictures are actually from a granola bar that I crumbled onto a white foam board. The color scheme was derived from the brand I used, Iams. I wanted to maintain continuity with their brandname's image. Everything you see there in the ad (except for the Iams logo) came from either my camera or Photoshop. It was a fun assignment!
Updated 3/17/05: Voted #1 by my classmates! Thanks guys :-)
Energy Drink Ad
This is my first advertisement design for Intro to Advertising. We had to do research on a certain class of product - high caffeine beverages. Based on our research, we had to create a product and an advertisement to promote it. The product and the ad is supposed to reflect the needs and preferences of the audience we targeted in our research.
My research showed that people were turned off by how unnatural and unhealthy energy drinks like Starbucks Doubleshots and Red Bull seemed. It also showed that the target price for each unit of one of these drinks is around one dollar.
Though I conducted the research far ahead of the due date, I didn't actually work on this advertisement until about 2AM the night before it was due. I'm glad I remembered it however, because our professor surprised us by selected a few finalists out of all the ads created by the class of over 200 students. These finalists would be voted on by the class to find the most favorite ad created. Mine was a finalist, and was voted #2 favorite in the class. I missed the humor element that the #1 design worked into their ad. I would make up for this in following ads...