Atlanta. Day 4.
Today was a huge learning experience.
Things started off like normal: we got to MetroMerge around 9 in the morning and got to work on some stuff for GCG. One of the projects that I worked on throughout the day was a design for the announcement on GCG’s blog about the upcoming tour. But I worked really hard on it because more than likely we will craft all of the later packages and materials from today’s design concept, so it had to look pretty amazing. I took a slightly different approach to it than anything I’ve ever done before, so I was kind of feeling my way through the project. I knew that I wanted it to have three colors (black, yellow, and white) so that it would have a very impactful, in-your-face feel to it, and I figured that that could be best achieved in Illustrator by breaking down an image into just a bunch of simple lines and fills. But instead of just LiveTracing the image, I actually went in and “hand-traced” it by using the Pen tool and forming lines around all of the elements in the picture (the picture sitting behind on the canvas and just adding fills above it as I worked). Positioning the illustration that I made was just a matter of identifying where I wanted the audience’s eyes to move on the canvas: toward the title. So I made all of the illustration white filled with black strokes except for the two lines on the highway, which I emphasized as yellow, and placed them as diagonals in the corner (a design tactic) and pointed them toward the content. I am really proud of the results. You can check it out here: http://www.giftcardgiver.com/?p=228. I also wrote the content for the blog entry, so you can read that to get somewhat of an understanding about the tour (I’ll explain more as time draws nearer for it).
The other project for the day was related more to the business side of a non-profit. We sat down and tried to figure out how to raise money to support the summer tour on the back end (our expenses). There’s a lot of details within that that I found helpful, but since most of that isn’t fleshed out yet, we won’t worry about it for now.
Jeff had a lunch date with the blogger from Ragamuffin Soul, so I was on my own for food. I decided to walk around the neighborhood. “Harold’s Barbeque” wasn’t too far, so I stopped in there to grab a bite. It wasn’t bad, but it sure wasn’t good either. I got it to go and headed back to MetroMerge. Walking through the ghetto in south Atlanta reminded me a lot of walking through streets of Honduras. People talk about how bad things are in third-world countries, and they are right; but there is some pretty intense poverty here too, so we don’t need to ignore the needs of our neighbors either. I had lunch on the roof of MetroMerge, overlooking the city, which was a very cool chance to take a break and pray for Atlanta.
This is the cool thing that happened: at 4, Jeff had me sit in on a meeting with the president and her assistant of The Trinity Forum (apparently kind of a big deal). Cheree, the president, was really trying to take the Forum in a new direction from a marketing standpoint and Beth, her assistant, had informed her that Jeff was a marketing guru. As they talked, Jeff detailed some of the projects that he had worked on in the past that were similar to The Trinity Forum, and I started to finally make some connections to what all he has worked on. He worked for Relevate (a more hidden organization) to help launch the Fermi Project (a well-known organization) and Axiom (something different entirely); if you don’t know those, it’s a LONG story, so research that one yourself. But you will recognize this: Jeff was on the marketing team behind the research project that Fermi did to launch the book, “UnChristian” (which if you haven’t heard of/read that, you need to get out from under that rock). Trinity Forum is looking to better market their materials as well as their events, and so for a little over an hour I just listened to Jeff give them advice on how to better widen the range of audience whom they are appealing to. Very, very helpful stuff! Just one thing I heard from a design perspective was that certain organizations (in this case, The Trinity Forum) are not trying to market to be “cool,” and so their products don’t need to look that way. So there is a difference between modernizing something and making it “cool.” For example, Cheree asked how they could modernize their book materials, and Jeff said that the best selling books have all-text covers; no graphic. He said to possibly stop foil-stamping the text in gold, and to use cleaner (i.e. sans serif) fonts. He also said that the majority of book-buyers in America tend to be women, and most of their materials appear to be geared towards men, so a change in design, or an alternate material, that reflected more feminine qualities would improve sales. I was listening to that kind of wisdom all day long. Great stuff.
For the evening, Jeff, Andre, and Meghan went out to eat with Tammy (an accountant who does accounting for developing companies in third-world countries; cool!) went out to eat together since it was Meghan’s last night here. Then they went to Jeff’s friend’s CD release party. I would have loved to have gone because the music he plays is excellent, but I’m not 21 yet (only had I been born a few months earlier! haha). So instead I walked down to the Joe’s Coffee in the Village to read more of Seth Godin’s “Tribes” book that Jeff assigned me. We are going to meet and discuss it on Friday afternoon. It was also kind of cool though to just sit and people-watch in Joe’s; there were a lot of interesting characters. But everyone here is so nice. I really like it. Perhaps I’ve found an area that I could someday live in myself.
