Week 1-Competitive Analysis & Creative Strategy

Welcome to the Class. Following are the assignments, handouts, required reading and templates for the first week. Please contact me with any questions.

Here is a PDF of the syllabus as well.

Class Lecture Notes
Required Reading - One Process fits all
Required Reading-Analyzing the Competition

Assignment 1:

Get your feet wet...pick an industry from the list below and do an analysis of 6 competitive sites within that industry. Once you pick one, you will be playing designer/client and picking one of the six to redesign within our process:

Zoo/Aquarium
Automaker
Museum/Art gallery
Amusement Park/Recreation
Airline
Charity/Fund Raising

“Analysis Criteria”
What’s the mood of the site?
Site aesthetics (visuals)/on brand with messaging?
Any cool features/fuctionality/other?

A real Example
Analysis Illustrator template provided


Always save your assignments in both the native file format (the program you created it in) as well as a PDF or JPG and upload to class folder. Refer to syllabus for details on presenting formats and dates. Also, keep all your screen shots together for your competitive analysis or Illustrator won't be able to find them and open properly.

Assignment #2

Author a creative brief for your newly proposed site. A creative brief is a summary of the overall visual and conceptual goals for the site, identifying the target audience, proposed visual and brand styles as well as any executional considerations.

Weekly reading and Creative strategy template provided
A real Example

Save in both assignments in both native format and as a PDF and upload to class folder with your last name on the folder. Also, give your files a name that makes sense such as "stevenson_cs.pdf" (for creative strategy) and "stevenson_CompAnaly.pdf" for your competitive analysis...

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