On my design blitz, I photographed four signs and ads that caught my eye and were each different and unique from one another.
The first is a sign for PRSSA advertising a meeting this Wednesday for newcomers on campus to join. It’s small and was probably made on a whim. It doesn’t serve much information other than the small text below the main text that draws the most attention. There isn’t any color to help draw attention further, but the font is nice.
As far as its effectiveness goes, I think it’s not setting out to achieve much. It feels more like a reminder for those already interested about PRSSA and if one doesn’t know about it, it gives them a chance to by inviting anyone to learn more at the meeting.
The second I found is an ad for the student living apartment called The Edge. This was outside of the student union and I think it’s an okay sign. Nothing seems pretty eye-catching, and to me looks kind of cheap as a result despite the nice photo they used to show off the apartment’s pool.
The fonts don’t necessarily separate the apartment from the others in any unique fashion, and the color of the logo is the same as my own current and previous apartment, Millennium and the 2900, with crimson to go with our school’s colors.
The third sign I found was for OU Daily. This sign is really effective to me, as it caught my eye the most on its own. The crimson goes in theme with the college, and the white font to pair as well. The fonts and layout are the best qualities of this sign to me, with a big and bold “OU DAILY” in the center of a square-shaped word cloud that contains words signifying what the Daily is all about: journalism, independence, accuracy, diversity and more. The inclusion of the phrase below that, using OU’s “There’s only one” phrase in their own way, adds to the sign and gives the group a more confident representation.
The final sign I came across is for the brewery Coop Ale Works. While I am familiar with Coop and some of their beers, like their famous F5 India Pale Ale and Native Amber, I hadn’t heard of their official craft beer in partnership with OU, called the Schooner All-American Ale. This sign was a great way to get my attention as a beer lover and entice me to look further.
The beer’s title is bolded and sits above the graphic of the can, which features an illustration of the sooner wagon. I guess it’s hard to get away from crimson when it comes to OU or Norman related signage and posting, because once again it is the main color of this sign, featuring the classic OU logo and a crimson rendition of the Coop logo.
Two things I also noticed on this sign on second glance was the white line that sits awkwardly below the crimson part of the sign and the fact that it includes the phrase “The official craft beer of Oklahoma Athletics” twice, which I thought to be an odd choice but proportionally works either way.
I should also mention the line separating the OU and Coop logos, which do add some clarity and a tiny bit of cohesiveness to the design.
