Cause for Paws
Fundraiser
Project Brief
For the capstone portion of this class, we were required to pick a local nonprofit and execute a fundraising event for them. My specific duties as part of the Design/Marketing designation included the following:
- Responsible for creation of all promotional exhibition materials, which may include but is not limited to a logo, print, and digital-elements, etc.
- Responsible for all of the above’s material distribution to both on- and off-campus locations; as well as to other subcommittees as they request them.
- Writes all press releases, advertising materials, and show statements; will present as public speakers for the event to all multiple media outlets including local radio and television stations.
- Required to meet directly with Sherise Morgan in the main CAHSS office once (minimum) to establish and identify promotional links, calendar benchmarks, distribution of content and appearances; and then perform those tasks. Will be evaluated by S.Morgan.
For this specific semester, Sherise Morgan was not available for oversight on this project. I was instead provided with a google drive full of promotional timelines and guidelines. Additionally, I was not the only person working on Design/Marketing, and as such I did not handle the press releases to radio and TV.
Moodboards
As a first step for this undertaking, a solid visual direction was key. I went through a couple moodboards to figure out where, visually, we as a group wanted to take our marketing and branding. Because we had decided on raising money for Animal Allies, it was pretty much a given there would have to be animals in at least the moodboards.
I went through a couple iterations, specifically because the directions we as a group liked were a little too close to the branding of another exhibition that was running prior to and concurrently with ours. (Our fundraiser on GoFundMe was open for about half the semester, with an opening event and following exhibition that ran for the last week of the semester.)
As part of this step, I also went out and found more images (with appropriate Creative Commons designations) that would work with our chosen color scheme, texture, and mood, and in some cases edited the photos to fit. This “Toolkit” was later combined with our brand standards miniguide and distributed to all group members so they could execute their parts of the project, such as an online interactive exhibit.
Logo Creation
By the time we solidified direction, we had a name: Cause for Paws. I started drafting logo concepts, somehow got the name mixed up, and produced a bunch of concepts for the wrong name! All was not lost, though, and I was able to carry a lot of these ideas over.
The finalized logo was created with scaling in mind, with the option for the smallest iteration to have one of the three animals featured in the largest logo featured in the smallest, up to the user’s choice. As covered above, the second image with six pages became the brand guidelines minibook and was included with the “Toolset” to help my other team members with their projects.
Finally, everything was done in Illustrator, to preserve scalability. Vector over Raster, any day (with Logos).
Marketing Materials
Next was conceptualizing the poster. As early as the wrong-name-for-logo stage, I was trying to make sure the direction of our brand Identity was aligned with our goals: to raise money for Animal Allies. First thing to create was a poster. While there were other marketing materials to create as well, that was step 1.
We started with a few different ideas, in the same vein. Much like the moodboards, we decided on an in-between direction.
Then, after much back and forth over class and Slack, we ended up with a poster.
From the poster, it was pretty easy to develop media pieces. In fact, I did develop these alongside the poster, because they were utilizing the same imagery. Using the documents that Mrs. Morgan shared with us at the beginning of the semester, I was able to hone in on what media pieces would best serve us.
From there, the banners were distributed to their respective destinations. As for the poster, with our budget we printed off just over 30 and distributed them around campus, Canal Park, and the East Hillside neighborhood in Duluth.
Puppy Painting and Animal Art
While I did not have a hand in planning these two activities, I do want to talk about them as part of the scope of the Fundraiser, especially since they are alluded to on the poster. We had two types of art for auction as part of our gallery event for the Fundraiser: Puppy Paintings and Animal Art.
First was our Puppy Painting Session. We actually went out to Animal Allies, which was the animal shelter we were raising money for, met and played with some of the animals, and created the Puppy Paintings. We put dollops of paint on canvas, covered the canvas completely with plastic wrap to ensure the pups wouldn’t accidentally get paint on them (and, as a side note, the paint was non-toxic to begin with), and put peanut butter on the plastic wrap in the hopes they would interact with the canvases and move the paint around. When it became clear the pups wanted nothing to do with the peanut butter or the canvases, we set them out and let the pups run over them. We did get some good results that way, as you can see with one pup who was content to stand and get some pets.
The other items we had for auction we called Animal Art. For this, each group member made one piece of art featuring an animal, preferably one that would be a pet. I did a digital painting of my cat, Newton. You will be able to see the other pieces below, in the video.
Fundraiser Event
The Fundraiser itself took place on April 26, as planned. The event was a pretty good success. The video was taken right before the event officially started, and over the next two hours we had a good number of people trek through. Additionally, we had not one, but two news stations come in and film a little, thanks to emails my colleague on design/marketing sent out.
At the end of the day, we raised $791 for Animal Allies!
