The Final Countdown
Two weeks and then the rest, but first the reviewer.
If you aren’t caught up on my journey so far, then start here: The Final Year.
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Who am I? I’m Courtney, a senior in the Digital Media program at Maryville University, who studies remotely from Oregon. The digital media major crosses my passion for creativity and my current job skills within the coffee and marketing industry. I am making my way through my final year of school and currently working on the grand finale project of all projects, The Capstone.
The capstone is a milestone for seniors where you highlight your skillset in a project of your choice. The design topic I chose is branding, which is where I hope my career takes me after graduation. We have made it through the ideation stage, research stage, main logo design, social media mockup designs, and merchandise designs, and are officially down to just two projects left. It has been a cyclical process in some ways and an ever-changing and adapting process in others, but I’ve learned so much already.
My Concept
My project, Studio Blend, is building a brand identity for a hypothetical business. I chose the underlying theme of community and decided that a combined business model of a third-wave coffee bar in the middle of an art studio space would allow me to explore my theme fully. Think of a space that evokes authenticity, openness, and eclecticism. I will build this into my brand identity, merchandise mockups, social media mockups, and event poster mockups. It will allow me to showcase my branding, color, conceptualization, and organization skills and align my portfolio with my intended career path in branding. Throughout my process, I will use design to marry the elements and ideas of both coffee and art together.
My Capstone Reviewer
Outside of conceptualizing and designing, a capstone’s other key factor is having a professional reviewer participate in your process. After shooting out many an email and researching agencies, firms, local designers, and Maryville alumni, I found my reviewer in Matthew Heidenreich. He is a Maryville Alum and the current Associate Creative Designer at Metajive Agency based out of San Diego, CA. His current company has worked with some pretty recognizable names like Nike, Lyft, and Pepsi, just to name a few. You can find him here: https://www.mheidenreich.com/about.
We had our first meeting over a month ago which you can read more information on here: Project Menu, where we discussed the brand in its fledgling stages with the logo work and menu concepts. This meeting was my first time pitching any project to someone who doesn’t know me or teach me, so it was pretty intimidating, and only having exchanged emails prior to the Zoom call. I didn’t know what to expect. Matt was a wealth of resources with suggestions and feedback that I carried forward through my designs.
In our last meeting, we covered the new aspects of the brand in the form of social media mockups and merchandise concepts. For the social media mockups, we discussed the need for consistency within the hand-drawn elements of the post and discussed if the logo was a necessity in the imagery. For the merchandise, we talked about which elements were working well with the shading, imagery and color stories. This meeting was met with so much more ease on my side having more confidence in presenting and direction on the best way to utilize the meeting for my project’s current standings. To see the fruits of his feedback and my peers check out the projects here for Studio Blend.
My favorite of Matt’s suggestions was to keep a personal brand mood board active while I create each design the best piece of advice as we’ve gone through this process. It has helped me over and over again to keep my inspiration stream when I do hit a roadblock and to remind me of the overarching goals, themes, and mood that I am trying to create with each piece while having them all meld as one synchronous system. This is something I will absolutely carry forward with any projects I take on in my future career.
A very true blue thank you to Matt for being my first pitch ever and for having so much knowledge to spread.
Where or where do we go from here? Revision. Revision. Revision. I’ve got some I’s to dot, some t’s to cross, and the final push to the finish line, otherwise known as, The Senior Show! Catch my final capstone post next week to see it all come together. Hopefully, I keep my head between now and then. TTFN.
