Scenario

You currently volunteer for a nonprofit organization. Because you stated on your volunteer application that you enjoy designing marketing tools and participating in outreach events, the director of advancement has asked you to help prepare materials for an open-house event next weekend. Your goal is to leverage technology to produce various visuals that communicate the organization’s mission and appeal to its target audience.

Specifically, the director would like you to prepare one visual for advertising the organization’s participation in the open house and one visual that you can hand out to visitors at your booth. The visuals should be able to stand alone as well as speak to one another to tell a story. The director assures you that she will provide any materials you may need to effectively deliver your visuals.

Because you are not an employee of the organization, the director is expecting to review your concept for the visuals prior to the open house. The director will ask you to discuss your design approach regarding how you created the visuals.

Directions

Choose a nonprofit organization that interests you. Research the nonprofit organization to gather information regarding its mission and target audience.

• Creative Brief: Use the information you gathered from the nonprofit organization to formulate your design approach for creating each visual for the open house. Before you begin conceptualizing the visuals, the director sends you a link to the organization’s media directory that contains a number of tools and technologies that the organization has licenses for to create your visuals. You should choose two tools from the directory that you will use to create your visuals. The director has asked you to use a different tool or technology for each visual. To present your plan to the director, prepare a creative brief that outlines your concept for the open-house materials. In your brief, be sure to explicitly identify the organization, its mission, and its target audience. In addition, the director has asked you to address the following in your brief:
  • Describe the visual communication tools and technology you will use to create each visual.
  • Justify your selection of the visual communication-related tools and technology to create the visuals. Consider why this is the appropriate tool or technology in relation to achieving the project goal.
  • Identify the appropriate delivery method for each visual.
  • Briefly explain your reasoning for using each delivery method in regard to the organization and its audience.
• Visual Prototypes: In your brief, you should include a storyboard-style outline showcasing your visual prototypes. For instance, you might create a draft of an infographic, a commercial, a flyer, or a website using one or more of the tools in the directory. The director has clearly stated that this is not the final product that you would share for the open house, but rather a concept or draft used to receive feedback on. For your designs, you may use templates, but your prototypes must include context related to the project goal, the organization’s target audience, and its mission. Specifically, the director would like you to do the following:
  • Use the selected technologies to create two visuals that align to the project goal. Be sure to include one or more images of each visual in the storyboard-style outline section of the creative brief to the director.

What to Submit

For this project, you must submit the following:

Creative Brief to the Director
Your creative brief must include information regarding the organization and a storyboard that showcases two prototypes of the visuals you created. Each visual must clearly convey meaning with correct grammar and spelling and demonstrate an understanding of the audience and purpose. Cite all sources in APA format.

Supporting Materials

The following resource(s) may help support your work on the project:

Citation Help
Need help citing your sources? Use the CfA Citation Guide and Citation Maker.

Document: Media Directory
This directory provides a list of design tools to choose from to create visuals for the open-house event. Use this resource to access tutorials to learn how to use various tools and technologies.

Shapiro Library Resource: APA Style: Basics
As you create visuals, it will be essential to provide credit for all images, videos, and text you use. Review this citation guide to learn how to properly cite text, images, and videos taken from other sources. This guide is intended to help you cite sources in APA style, avoid plagiarism, and search examples of APA style