Take Root

The City of Chattanooga Tree Commission and Leadership Chattanooga joined together earlier this year to begin a tree-planting project in an effort to affect the climate change within the city. By planting trees in the urban areas, it decreases the carbon footprint we make on the environment. Leadership Chattanooga and Leslie Jensen-Inman, professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, joined by the Professional Practices Graphic Design Class joined forces to create a name, logo, and look for this initiative. Our class named the initiative Take Root-Plant. Grow. Sustain. We began with logo design and followed all the way through by forming groups with the class to tackle the project. The three groups, Team Brochure, Team Identity, and Team Event were in charge of designing all print materials including two brochures, letterhead, envelopes, note cards, banners, and T-shirts. This project was long and tedious, but very rewarding. Not only are we getting “real world” experience in designing materials for such a large, new initiative, but we also, in a small way, are affecting the environment by putting our effort and whole heart into this project. It is a good feeling when your work goes beyond merely designing and really begins to affect your community and the city you live in. Hopefully with our dedicated efforts to this cause, this project will grow and be successful, and sustainable for all of us.

Visiting the Free Press

The class went to tour the Chattanooga Times Free Press. Frank Anthony gave a very thorough tour highlighting some of the features of the building from back in the day then leading us up through their newer, larger, color press. From lithographic printing to today’s flexography, I now have a better understanding the print world of the newspaper. It is an exciting, fast pace environment with quick turn around. The most exciting part for me was to see the paper being printed while there, and then reading it mere hours later. 

Public Relations and Press Releases

Janis Hashe, freelance writer and Richard Beeland, public relations director for the mayor, visited our class last week and spoke about their experiences in public relations. They each have different back grounds so we learned many ways to approach PR. They gave us vital information about how to complete a press pack, including what it’s purpose is, what it needs to contain, and how to disperse. Until this class I had not even considered this type of packaging or design that needed to be considered when publicizing an event. Richard discussed how to get a quote from the mayor or how to get the mayor to attend an event. Janis’ discussed how to make relations with editor and writers to get the story available in print form with magazines, radio, etc. It was very informative and it was new information for me to consider. I am thankful I had this opportunity.

Freitag Truck Design

For the first project, we were asked to join a competition with Freitag in Zurich. The company designs bags and accessories out of truck tarp materials. The object of the contest was to design a truck tarp to exist on the truck for five years and then later be used as the material to make limited edition hand bags. What was most exciting about this project was we not only had to come up with a clever design that would work on such a large scale, but we had to think of a second existence of this design. The design should look good on the truck and live nicely as a hand bag. It was challenging and fun.