As a j-school accredited by the Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communications, the Greenlee School has sponsored the annual AEJMC conference each year since I’ve worked there. In the past, Greenlee’s opted for smaller sponsorships (which meant smaller ads)(link to past ads).
This year the school opted for a larger sponsorship (meaning a full-page ad) and the ISU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences took out a full-page for the following reasons:
- Director Michael Bugeja won the 2015 Scripps Howard Foundation’s Journalism Administrator of the Year Award, a prestigious award that we wanted to highlight and celebrate
- The ISU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Greenlee are starting the search process for a new director for the Greenlee School and search committee members will be holding interviews at the AEJMC conference.
- Greenlee was unanimously re-accredited by the AEJMC this spring, maintaining its reign as the longest continuously-accredited j-school in Iowa
After reviewing other school’s advertisements from past AEJMC conference programs, I started this assignment with two thoughts. 1: I wanted to focus on simplicity and effective use of images, as these were the common characteristics of the ads that caught my eye. 2: I wanted both ads to be cohesive as a spread and for both to effectively adhere to Iowa State’s brand standards, since I was ultimately representing the university as a whole in this spread.
My first task was to find a strong image of Dr. Bugeja for the celebratory portion of the ad. Here were some of the options, including the image we ended up using.
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After receiving the copy for the college’s search ad, I offered some edits to make it as concise as possible and include some of Greenlee’s key messaging. My supervisor and I decided that because the copy of the ad was focused on Dr. Bugeja and the search, we wanted our spread to feature strong student experience visuals to add some personality and convey the Greenlee experience.
After four different versions, I finally settled on the following layout for the spread:
