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By Joe Basi, VIcky White, and Chris Johnson
Well, we didn’t actually take it over entirely, but our “company”, ProDesign, Inc. was graciously given the opportunity to work on the December 2005 issue of the College Crier as our major project for Professor Patti Dorazio’s COM406: Advanced Technical Communication, otherwise known around SUNYIT as “The Apprentice meets Technical Communication”. The class is designed to give students the real-world experience of working with clients on major projects. Professor Dorazio also teaches her class by modeling COM406 after the popular NBC television series “The Apprentice” featuring Donald Trump to teach her students the skills of working in groups, time management, communications, graphic development, production deadlines and business management. The show is discussed in detail at the beginning of each week of COM406 and Professor Dorazio’s lessons and specific examples are based on the show’s weekly tasks.
ProDesign, Inc is made up of SUNYIT Professional and Technical Communications majors Chris Johnson (web design), Vicky White (graphic design, writing, and editing), and Joe Basi (project management, writing, and editing). Our group worked closely with College Crier Editor and Founder, Tim Parker, to update the look of the paper and to create and launch their new website www.collegecrier.com. ProDesign, Inc. created the new logo and new front cover layout for the December issue. We also created a new header for all pages within the College Crier to create a uniformed look throughout the paper. We helped to interview Josh Shaw and we did redesigns of four print ads featured this month including ads for The Last Unicorn, SUNYIT, Now Playing, and of course the full page ad for the brand new website www.collegecrier.com.
Early in the semester we met with Tim to discuss the cover story for this issue. ProDesign, Inc. shot for the stars and told Tim that we would like to interview a cast member from “The Apprentice”. The main idea was to somehow tie the COM406 project in with “The Apprentice”. To our amazement we were actually able to contact Donald Trump’s publicist rather easily (with much help and guidance from Tim) and within a few weeks we had an interview with Josh Shaw scheduled for November 21, 2005. We also had the opportunity to write and ask questions used for the interview with Josh. This was a particularly interesting experience, getting to write questions and speak to Josh about his role on the show after having followed the show for several weeks.
It was obvious from the first phone call that Josh is an extremely busy CEO. He runs a very successful company called GOSMILE, Inc which produces teeth whitening products. Despite his busy schedule Josh was eager to speak with us. We discussed issues such as what it is like to be a young entrepreneur, the essentials of risk-taking, the upstate New York economy and of course Josh’s experience on “The Apprentice”. If you have not read the cover-story interview with Josh yet, please be sure to do so, we are certain that you will find him as interesting as we did.
We also met with Tim on several occasions to discuss the design of the College Crier’s website. After weeks of discussion, mock-ups, graphics re-designs, site re-designs, system crashes, file transfers, archival content searches, Mac-to-PC file conversions, and a host of other “snags” we managed to get www.collegecrier.com up and running. Please take a few minutes to log on and use the site. It is in the beginning stages and plans are in the works for it to be updated regularly. Send the College Crier your input and ideas, this is your paper after all….drop them a line at collegecrier@aol.com and tell them what you think and what you would like to see in the future.
We hope that our COM406 project has been helpful to the College Crier. The members ProDesign, Inc were all familiar with the paper prior to taking on the project and felt that having the College Crier for our client would be a win-win situation for both parties. We feel that we succeeded in creating a new look and feel for the paper and we are particularly excited about the launch of the website and what the future holds for the site, we hope the College Crier is able to expand the site and we would like to see the site become a major marketing tool for the paper, reaching even more students than the paper does now and reaching students throughout the country and world via the world wide web.
It was a pleasure to work with so many talented and interesting people on this project. ProDesign, Inc would like to thank the College Crier and Josh Shaw for allowing us this opportunity and we would also like to thank our COM406 Classmate Aaron Hueber for his help and guidance in re-designing the College Crier’s “Crier” graphic featured on the front cover. We hope that you, the reader, find this issue and cover story to be interesting and informative and we hope you keep coming back to collegecrier.com.
