A different look?

I have been spending a lot of time in Corporate Communication and have now learned about how a large business gets marketing out.
It's interesting the complex supply chains involved in something as simple as making a flyer. I have always had to do a lot of activity with limited resources, so I feel like the big-awkward monster when I'm dangling in the strings of Marketing Communications procedure... ready to run afoul a procedural step I royally messed up on.

One of these mishaps was instigated when working on putting my "poster" sessions together for University Labs.

Many Universities want to show their partnership by having posters on the wall. Normally I would send them to the University Poster Site-- and they would pick what they want-- and then we'd get it mounted and sent to them--END OF STORY.

Example Poster from the University Poster Site

So, one of my favourite University lab manager contacted me for posters.
I sent her the link to the website and waited to hear back.
After a little time I sent her a GTalk IM:

LaraS*: Hey, you find a poster you want?
gn***23: ... yeah. I could have just blow up a Selection Guide and used that.
LaraS*: There are posters in there that are actually posters...
gn***23: I think I was looking for something more personable, and relate-able-- less, showman-ship.
Plus, there's no launchpad posters-- and my students use launchpad.
LaraS*: Well, let me get back to you and see if I can get something for you.

After digging around our files and repositories-- she was right.
Today there wasn't any posters that were just about Launchpad-- and, I wasn't sure how I could make a poster created by corporate communications contractors look any less like -- corporate communications.

So I made my own.

I rather like both of them.
The funny thing is both were made with my iPhone camera, a little bit of photoshop -- and a different type set. All for probably 1/20th the designers charge TI to use stock photography images and clipart... (that as an aside).

So I sent that over to my professor.

gn***23: I love those. It doesn't reek of Corporate money.
LaraS***: You mean that it looks low-budget produced?
gn***23: No, not at all, just it is more relateable.
LaraS***: Well, printing may be an issue since it's not under the TI-Vault.
gn***23: No issue, we have large formats here-- I'm getting these up to see how the students like it.
LaraS***: Let me know :-)


Out of excitement I did what I shouldn't have done-- and shared this with one of my branding managers. Who promoptly said it had all of the wrong elecments for the brand and needed to be discontinued ASAP.

Oh well, lesson learned. If it doesn't look like the rest, we should hide it until you can't ignore it any longer.

On the bright side: at least, for right now there lives a version of this on someone's embedded processing lab-- and on this blog.