February 29, 2011

            Since the creation of our mock store for the Academy of Art class, its development has moved at a rapid pace. At our last class, we divided duties among each other and I was given the task of creating a logo for our store. Before class had even ended, I was sketching up all kinds of ideas in my notebook.

Over the past week I created ten logos, most on the computer, but some hand drawn as well. Having never really created a logo before, I was nervous to see my classmates’ reaction. I felt they might expect something a little more professional looking, but hoped they would appreciate the work and creativity I put into each design. When I arrived in class, everyone was excited to see my designs so I posted them all side-by-side on the wall. Some were ‘ooood and awwwd’ at, why others got a little chuckle. We quickly narrowed down the options within a round of votes and realized the final two designs were split in vote because one appealed to the girls and the other to the guys. We knew we had to choose the sign that would appeal more to both sexes, so instead of choosing the more feminine script of the logo at right, we opted for the logo on the left. And now we were ready to go, we had our store idea and our logo and we were ready to create something that would wow the viewers of our final presentation.

Our presentation will consist of four large presentation boards each outlining a different aspect of our store. The first will be our merchandise board and will contain an overview of a few of the brands featured in our store. In the week before, we had decided to support as many eco-friendly products as we could. This meant we wanted companies that did not outsource, made products from recycled material, used sustainable resources, etc. At first we thought it would be difficult to find brands that fit both our ‘green’ requirement and style vision, however we soon learned there were a plethora of websites that assisted our search. With our merchandise chosen, one of the students offered to make a floor plan of our store that would detail where our chosen woman, men, and lifestyle products (everything from body care products to home products) would be placed.

Our second board will be dedicated how we will make our store visually appealing to customers. We will use images collected over the last few weeks that exude the mood we hope to capture in the store. It will also have images of how we would like to display our products and a brief statement of what we wish our customers to feel as they are shopping in our store.

At the beginning of this project, each of us chose an aspect of the store we wanted to work on. One student took it upon herself to create the design and layout of our website. Her hard work will be displayed on our third board where a printout of each of the 6 pages of our website will be displayed. The website will consist of a Home page, Lookbook (an online catalog displaying the stores newest items), ‘Follow the Bus’ page (where customers can see our current location, past locations, and future locations), Blog page written by our bus driver Jen (yes, she is only imaginary), Brands page listing all brands we carry, and an About Us page. When we decided upon a website we also decided that customers would not be able to buy online, making the experience of waiting for the Bus more exciting.

Our final board is our customer profile. Last week we were taught the importance of knowing the customers you are selling to, so we brainstormed who exactly our female and male customer would be. One of the students in our class is a writer who has written for several magazines and newspapers and whom took it upon herself to write the life bio of both a female and male customer. Our fourth board will have these customer bios and a picture of the ideal customer.

As we were working out the details of our boards this week, I thought you, the reader, might want to see these fabulous people I work with. So I took some pictures of us working:

            Everyone, including our teacher, in the

          classroom! (although one boy was absent this day)      

  

                                                                                                           the girls I've become close with