LOVE - MIAMI MERGER MIX
PROJECT SCOPE
Audience Engagement
Package Design
THE CHALLENGE
Create a Miami Merger Valentine that will resonate with a multi-generational audience and can be mailed flat.
The Brief: Every year, the alumni association mails a valentine to their “Miami Mergers,” which are two people who graduated from Miami and later married. It is one of their largest group of constituents, at over 28,000 alumni, or 14,000 couples. The strategic goal of this piece is to deepen their affinity for the university and continue their engagement with the university. The biggest restrictions on the design was the design were the desire for there to be some sort of giveaway component and be able to mail in a flat envelope.
THE CONCEPT
Knowing the constraints of the project, I brainstormed what sort of promo item I could create that would be both flat and light enough to mail. I landed on the idea of a coaster, and then developed an interesting way to package them: as a set of vinyl records within a card designed to look like an album cover.
With this idea in mind, I began benchmarking Valentine’s Day themed album covers and posters to inspire the cover of the record. While doing that, I created three potential prototypes of the whole card to send off to vendors and get quotes for printing. These were created with different price points in mind so the client would be able to pick an option that would fit their budget.
Inspiration Gathering
A project like this needed to feel complimentary to the Miami brand, but was given more leniency in order to more closely align with Valentine’s Day aesthetics. I pulled designs and concepts to help inform my cover designs.
Prototypes
A card that functions like an album cover isn’t something our print vendors have done before, so to aid them in quoting the job I created three different ways the card could be constructed. They ranged in price based on complexity, the simplest being a sleeve that both “records” would be placed in and the most complex being a folded, two sided album with a “record” in each side. The more complex option was chosen by the client, so I worked collaboratively with the printer to develop a dieline.
DESIGN OPTIONS
Once the prototype was chosen and the dieline developed, I began work on the actual album cover and inside cover art for the card. Many iterations were developed, but my team and I narrowed it down to three general themes to present to the client.
Option 1: Cassette Mixtape
Option 2: Hearts
Option 3: Balloons
SECOND ROUND
After meeting with the client, the cassette and “Love” record were chosen to move forward into more flushed out designs. I worked with a few writers on my team to develop copy for the card. We developed 10 song titles that were adapted as puns to tie back to Miami. It was important that the music span different decades because we have mergers spanning generations.
Though the cassette option was fun to explore, we decided that mixing it with the vinyl album felt confusing and muddied the concept. Because of this insight, I moved forward with option 2 of the love record.
FINAL PRODUCT
