Trend Setting Design » promotion

Make Up Your Own Mind – Branding

Joseph Cotten — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:31:24 +0000

The Greensboro Pregnancy Care Center (GPCC) wanted to launch a new pregnancy awareness campaign on college campuses in the Greensboro area. Their goal was to create a new brand identity and marketing materials around a theme that would attract male and female college students in the Triad area.
GPCC wanted to let students know that they are available as a source of knowledge about pregnancy sexual activity, abortion and adoption. In addition, they offer ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, counseling and more.
One of the problems they have had in the past was having the word “pregnancy” in their name often keeps guys away, but since GPCC deals with more than just pregnancy, they wanted to find a way to reach out to guys who are sexually active on college campuses.
I decided it would be best to brand this new effort with something wholly unique and distinct from the GPCC identity. I came up with the name “Make Up Your Own Mind” because the center offers information to its clients that empowers to do just that—make up their own minds, apart from or in addition to other input they are receiving from popular opinion, peers, etc. The goal of GPCC is to give people information that is even-handed and balanced so that they can weigh both sides of each issue and make a truly informed decision.

The brand needed to be visually loud without being garish, and needed to have an honest, down-to-earth sensibility about it. I used a high-contrast color scheme, stamped text, a megaphone with blast rays and an overall grunge treatment as tools to develop the brand.

Right off the bat, I created two tee shirt designs for the campaign: heather grey American Apparel cotton crew neck short sleeve shirts. Each uses four colors: the guys uses black/white/red, and the girls version uses purple/pink/white.

I also created a one-page website which currently is used as a landing page which then points to the main GPCC website. This will be developed further in the future as this new program grows. In addition, I purchased the makeupyourownmind.org domain name, and GPCC has buyers negotiating for the variant domains such as .com and .net.

Promotion: Awaken City Church Grand Opening

Joseph Cotten — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:54:55 +0000

Part of the branding project for Awaken City Church included a promotional build-up to their Grand Opening in January of 2010. The whole project has used an “underground” “power to the people” kind of vibe, so instead of investing into traditional media such as radio or television ads, we saved costs by creating business card-sized invitations which the church’s startup team could hand out and post in public places. Had the budget been higher, we would have done some actual graffiti using the logo, but without prior arrangements, we could get arrested for that. In addition, I designed a tee shirt which was given out to everyone that attended the Grand Opening event.

Front of the Awaken Tee Shirt

Back of the screen printed grey tee shirt for Awaken City Church

In addition, I created a large format exterior sign for Awaken. They are currently meeting in a large conference center, so the signage needed to be semi-permanent. The solution was to create a high quality, durable exterior vinyl banner in full color. The size is fifteen feet wide × seven feet tall, with plenty of reinforced grommets to prevent wrinkling. The quality of the banner is such that it can be used indefinitely as the church moves into a permanent location. We were able to print at a high dpi so that the concrete cracks and background Greensboro cityscape are able to be seen, but don’t distract from the important data. The impact of a 15 foot wide banner is quite noticeable.

Exterior Vinyl Banner Design for Awaken's Grand Opening

This project included several other elements, which each have their own portfolio entries:

Awaken City Church logo and brand design

Website Design

Revolutionary Love Card

Joseph Cotten — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:14:19 +0000

Another project for my church, Kernersville Community Church (KCC). This was a business card-size promotional piece done for a long-term KCC campaign to bless the surrounding community. During the hard economic climate, we decided to do something to tangibly help people. KCC members go out and pay for random people’s needs, for example, a KCC member will go through a fast food drive-thru and buy some food, then pay for the order of the next person in line. Or a KCC member will go to a gas station, and leave enough money to pay for someone else’s gas. Then, the KCC member leaves one of these cards with the store clerk to give to the person who just received the free gas/food/etc. The idea is to bless people with absolutely no strings attached—not even an invitation to come to KCC. We feel that so often, Christians are guilty of bait-and-switch tactics to lure people into joining a church or other organization. We wanted to find a way to bless people in real ways and ask for absolutely nothing in return. Enter the Revolutionary Love card.

This card needed to be small, attractive, easily read and friendly in its presentation. I did all the design and copywriting for it. I also used the card to subtly push the realigned KCC brand, as see in this article. I used the same corporate identity definitions of font and color to do it, while keeping the purpose of this particular card clear. The cityscapes on the card are Greensboro and Winston-Salem, to large cities around Kernersville, and the most likely location the cards would be used.