Art and Design Commons^™

Touch By Angels Café Rebrand, Hailey Choi

Graphic Communication

Touch By Angels, a local Korean-dessert café in San Luis Obispo, CA, specializing in bingsoo, taiyaki, and specialty teas, has struggled since its December 2023 opening to establish a cohesive visual identity across its B2C interaction spaces, including its website, social media pages, and on-site signage. This rebranding project aims to develop a comprehensive visual identity for Touch By Angels by enhancing its logo design, color palette, typography, and photography, revamping its social media, and on-site signage to create a unified and appealing brand image. The expected outcome is improved customer engagement, enhanced brand recognition, and business growth, positioning Touch …

The Perfect Model: Exploring Gender Differences Within Commercial Graphic Design Preferences, Adeline Roberts

Undergraduate Theses

Personal preferences within graphic design are heavily shaped by social factors, including cultural practices. This project explores the effect of gendered-based experiences on visual design preferences, through investigating men’s and women’s preferences regarding graphic design elements, and the source of these opinions. The data was then used to create two educational images, which mimic contemporary magazine covers, visually illustrating the effects of gendered marketing and experiences on personal design preferences. These images were then attached to an interactive website, so that the findings and pieces from this project can be easily accessed by future audiences.

Battaglini Winery: Marketing Collateral Development & Rebranding, Lexi L. Battaglini

Graphic Communication

The Battaglini Winery is a small family-run winery located in Sonoma County. The winery has no existing brand guidelines and any marketing collateral in current use has outdated information and design elements. The purpose of this project is to provide the winery with cohesive and refreshed brand guidelines while using these guidelines to generate relevant marketing materials for consumers.

Dhf Conference Marketing And Branding, Anna Christine Haller

Graphic Communication

The focus for my GRC 462 Senior project is to dive into my role as Director of Marketing for the annual Women In Business conference. As the Director of Marketing for the event my goal is to develop visual branding and an event identity, develop a digital marketing strategy, create marketing collateral, and present promotional marketing to increase event sign ups. My role also includes managing a marketing creative team as well as marketing strategy team. I will also discuss how the branding and marketing initiatives reflect the Women In Business community values and add to the conference experience.

The High Tide Inn Rebrand, Caroline Turnbull

Graphic Communication

For my Senior Project, I found a small Inn in Maine that was just purchased by a new owner. The previous owner of The High Tide Inn was very old and had owned the Inn for a long time, running on word of mouth and the quaint charm of the location. Their website was not a priority and had not been updated in decades. It was not mobile friendly, up to date, or easy to navigate. The logo reflects a charming sign on the property, but does not translate well digitally. In addition to this, there is no vector file …

Take Flight Music Festival Branding, Maxwell Bo Chen, Jake Oxenham

Graphic Communication

We created a branding and design campaign for the Take Flight music festival on campus. The project covered many aspects of event creation and marketing such as name, logo, content creation, social media, printed media, vendor outreach, and administration outreach. All these pieces had to work together to create a strong and cohesive brand image for this event which would help ensure a successful turnout and event overall.

Visionaire Branding Company, Toni Joy Forsythe

Graphic Communication

It has been a goal of mine to one day launch my own branding and marketing agency, therefore this opportunity has allowed me to ideate what the agency would look like in terms of branding and business. I developed Visionaire Branding Company, a branding and marketing agency located in Central California. Creativity has always been at the forefront of my ambitions and Visionaire is a reflection of my passion for taking businesses to the next level and doing it with a vision.

Artisan Tea Project Re-Brand, Alyssa J. Tong

Graphic Communication

Artisan Tea Project, a local cold brew tea pop-up in San Luis Obispo, aims to communicate the brand’s quality, simplicity, and creativity. The company is in need of design collateral that can best market the nuances of their product to target audiences, especially through digital means. The end result of the project is a fully re-branded company with a cohesive brand image that supports the company’s products, mission, and vision.

Branding On A Budget: Marketing In The Nonprofit Sector, Nicholas Biere

Honors Projects

“Branding on a Budget: Marketing in the Nonprofit Sector” This service learning project combines academic research with experiential service learning. The purpose of this project was to create a strong brand for BeInstrumental, a nonprofit music education organization from Toledo, Ohio through the creation of a graphic branding plan. Principles of visual communication technology, graphic design, marketing strategies, branding, and graphic design are all implemented in this project.

The House That Credit Built: How Advertising Shaped A Culture Of Borrowing In The Decade Of Prosperity., Morgan Folden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an examination of the visual rhetoric of the advertisements in 1920s America that encouraged consumers to implement payment plans to purchase commodities. It begins with an analysis of a standard advertisement found in a popular subscription journal and describes the ad’s reliance on an editorial-style layout to appeal to the rationality of the viewer, a theme common among marketing schemes of the surrounding decades. It uses an art historical approach to provide a new lens in studying capitalist economics and the provocative issue of empowerment versus confinement in the general visual representation of American housewives. The latter …

Studying Abroad: A Travel Campaign, Flora Lindsay

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project displays the steps taken in order to create a successful marketing campaign for the Center for Global Engagement at James Madison University. It explores the history of studying abroad, its perceived benefits, concerns, and existing marketing strategies. The client is studied in depth in order to create a SWOT analysis of its current state. From this research a creative strategy statement is created to better understand the target audience, competition and strategies for the campaign. The campaign idea then comes to life in the deliverables to be used by the client for marketing efforts.

Music & Media: A Senior Recital & Honors Project, Kayla Luteran

Honors Projects

Music & Media: A Senior Recital & Honors Project is a cross-media marketing strategy. The main purpose of this project was to develop visually appealing, informative graphic elements and branding to effectively promote a musical performance. This is interdisciplinary in nature and includes written and oral communication.

While many music students post about their senior recital on social media or place flyers, they do not develop a thorough methodology for generating buzz about their event. Although musical preparation is of utmost importance for a performance, I believe that time should be spent on all aspects of planning the recital. With …

Effective Methods Of Marketing An On-Campus Resource To College Students, Samantha Gary

Graphic Communication

The problem this research it attempting to solve is how to market an on-campus resource to college students. Through conducting surveys, gathering research, reviewing case studies, and analyzing data, the author has found that the answer is to not to segment college students by major. It is more effective to figure out what a typical students’ needs are and address them by providing a solution to their problems. By strategically placing printed posters around campus that capitalized on student’s needs for study breaks and outlets to tap in to their ideas, the author found that more students respond to this …

Creative Advertising Portfolio, Hayley E. Sunderman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Since I was a young child, all I wanted was to draw and write. I would compose entire binders of my artwork, as well as Microsoft Word documents of the beginnings of mystery novels. As I grew older, I let my self-doubt take over and I convinced myself that I was not talented enough to pursue any type of creative career path. I came into college as a Marketing major knowing that my future career options would be fairly vast. During my junior year, I realized my strong desire to work in creative advertising. Graphic design, copywriting, photography, videography, and …

Zoetic Fitness, Brooke S. Fremeau

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Graphic design is a problem-solving field. A client or company tasks a designer with a problem, and to solve that problem the designer uses 2D fundamentals and technology. As a designer, one must carefully listen to the client to understand their needs before making design decisions. While graphic designers are responsible for creating stunning visuals for both print and digital media, one of the most important aspects of graphic design is branding. Broadly speaking, branding is the process involved in creating a unique name and image for a product or service in a consumers mind. Through branding, the designer aims …

The Project Shop, Lindsey Sullivan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Project Shop is a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) brand designed to promote a value-creating activity that impacts the lives and personal development for those who participate. The strategic culmination of research, marketing, and graphic design generated during the creation of this brand is intended to attract a target demographic of 18-24 year olds. This target market is identified as a transient population often typified by being civic-minded and pragmatically idealist.

The Project Shop caters to the needs of its target market by concentrating on habits and particular styles of living. This demographic often seeks DIY projects that are customizable due to …

The Impact Of Branding And Marketing Strategies On Events With Sole, Jennifer Vucinich

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to research current marketing, branding, and social media strategies and apply those to Events with Sole, a nonprofit organization that establishes running and multisport races in Northern California. This study explored the impact of these strategies on nonprofit organizations and the importance of sustaining a brand identity. More specifically, this research defined effective logo design for nonprofits, and based on collected data, provided suggestions for potential improvements to be made to the current Events with Sole branding. This research also provided suggestions for improvements to be made to social media strategy and marketing tactics, …