Original Email

Hi, my name is Jessica Schoenenberger and I am a senior Glenelg High School in Maryland. I am extremely interested in Graphic Design, and am currently in the Mentorship program at my school, studying the topic of Graphic Design. Our teacher encourages us to contact Universities we are considering, and who might have an interest our project. My project centers around whether or not giving a strong graphic identity in advertising will help a small business gain customers through the advertising specifically. I noticed that the small businesses in my area are not consistent with their ads, partly because they do not have the means to hire a designer. Working with my father and my mentor, who is a professional designer, who is a small business owner, I will be creating a monthly magazine consisting of just advertisements. I will approach the businesses myself, and offer the opportunity of full page advertisement space to around fifteen businesses a month. It will be very cheap for these businesses, since they only have to pay for printing and postage. Out of these fifteen, I will choose about three businesses a month to design for from start to finish. I hope to put my experience designing for my father and from the Maryland Institute College of Art Precollege program to good use. I will rotate which businesses I design for to get the experience of doing business with different types of clients. I plan to distribute the magazines through the mail, and around locations that generally put out brochures, such as doctor's offices and supermarkets. I will then ask the business to simply ask the consumer how they heard about the business, to see if the identity I gave the business is working. Hopefully the business will like my designs and use them in the future, furthering my project. I was wondering if you thought this was a good idea, and could evolve into a good research project in the field of design. Thank you for your time.

-Jessica Schoenenberger

Reply from John DeMao of Virginia Commonwealth University

Dear Jessica

It sounds as if you have an interesting project but I'm afraid that it would be difficult to determine the success of your design work in improving the results for the companies. It would be difficult to determine whether it was the graphic identity you had created or simply the customer  finding out about the existence of the business through the brochure that was the determining factor for the person going. Another problem is that depending on the type of business, there are often other mitigating factors that determine whether a customer goes to them, reputation, proximity, pricing, etc. You may create a very strong identity for a company but if their prices are high customers may prefer another company. It may not be the identity that brings the customer but simply the knowledge that the business is there. 

You may want to rethink your project and work with one or two businesses and try different designs and see if a large proportion of customers respond more to one design than another.

Good luck and best regards,

John DeMao