I was contacted by the IAFP (International Association for Food Protection) to help them create a logo for the their 2011 Annual Meeting.  The meeting is to be help in Milwaukee, WI and they will be celebrating 100 years in the food protection industry.

We first created a logo for the 100th Anniversary.  They are going to use this logo over the next year to help bring awareness to this wonderful business achievement.  We wanted it to be universal enough yet eye catching so association members would see the value in the achievement.  The logo also needed to be able to blend with all their current marketing materials.  To the left is what we came up with.  I was really happy with their choice.  Like many other times, I gave the client three to choose from.  This client just happened to choose my favorite one!  Always nice when that happens.  Makes me realize that we might have similar taste and this process will move smoothly!

Next our challenge was to create a logo for the annual meeting.  This ended up turning out just like we needed but it didn’t come with a little sweat.  The challenge I was facing was trying to tie together, International Food Protection, 100 years, and Milwaukee Wisconsin. What do they all have in common???  I decided to just do a logo that was based on font and text and bring the look and feel to the materials instead.  So, I proposed to my client this logo but I showed it to them in a piece so they could get the feeling that I was wanting.

Here the Invitation to Exhibit for the annual meeting.  It showcases the feeling that I am looking for and the logo all together.  This was helpful to assist my client with getting the big picture.  In the background, you will see pictures of the five most popular attractions I found when I Googled this location.

It is always nice when you can create material for clients and they are hosting in place like CA and  you can use palm trees or in CO and you can focus on the mountains.  But for Milwaukee Wisconsin, how do you pick just one thing that will target your whole audience.  We went with color and lines that all tied together a common feeling.

This project is going to consist of many different pieces.  Some to be mailed and some to be set out during meetings and in the office.  This piece was created to be taken with them to the meeting that was held this year.  A perfect place to target your audience for next year!  It is rather hard to understand the layout so I will do my best to describe it.

Once it is printed and folded this is a tri-fold landscape handout with a finished size of 5×7.  The first picture is the inside and you can see dotted lines where it is to be folded.  The second picture is the front cover, back cover and the first piece they see when they open the handout.

Once I get one of the final versions in the printed form, I may take a picture so it will better help you understand the layout.  Small but packed full of information all tied together in an eye catching way!

 IMTA (Iowa Motor Truck Association)

The IMTA (Iowa Motor Truck Association) help their first annual event the summer of 2008.  They enlisted my help to create a logo for the event and then all the event materials.  Since they also have a towing division, we created the same pieces and tailored it to both divisions.

Following is the booklet I made for them and the additional pieces they needed.  Notice on the cover, I put a picture of the Iowa Speedway (location of the event) inside the semi truck grill.  I was so happy with how that turned out!  The book is eight pages long.  Trying to create a piece that is exciting for the trucking industry proved to be a challenge for me!  Not an area I was too familiar with to begin with.  Now, I can say I get it a bit more!

• 10% of what they hear
• 20% of what they read
  
• 80% of what they see

I recently read this and love what it says!  It just goes to show you how effective we must be in our approach to get new customers and keep them.  We need to find a way to engage the audience to first want to even look at what we have created for them and then we need to make sure they will stay interested in it.

Finding the “Wow” factor isn’t always easy but can’t we all agree that we do remember places or things that really captivate our memory.   When I design pieces, I always find myself feeling satisfied with the result once my audience goes “Wow” when looking at the work for the first time.  If that initial satisfaction isn’t there, I know there is still work to be done on the piece.

Given certain subjects, this can be challenging.  This past summer I did a piece for the Iowa Motor Truck Association.  Since I have no experience in the trucking field, I had to dig deep to help me find ways to “Wow” this audience.  Luck for me, the piece I was creating was an invitation to a Truck Show at the Iowa Speedway.  I created the invitation with pictures of the speedway and pictures of cars racing at the speedway.  My thought was that if they picked this invitation up and saw race cars, they might want to read more and find out what this event was all about.  It worked as IMTA was very happy with the look I created and they had a great turnout for their event!

Here is a picture of the cover of the invite.  I took a picture of the front end of a semi and put a reflection of the racetrack in the grill.