Note Pad Project

 Ideas for note pad, 6 thumbnail sketches. 

The purpose of creating the notepad is to use it as a promotional product for my blog spot. The note pad is something that I could give out to people or possible employers to remind them of my skills and direct them to my blog to find out more information about my work and who I am. My target audience is employers or customers, which varies in ages, genders, as well as specific tastes. I wanted to display my typographic skills, and show the creativity I can produce. By making a showing my own artwork it is appealing to a corporate point of view and a more creative and free-lance point of view it spikes interest in different types of people. People who use and see the note pad are called to scan the QR code and visit my blog.

 The notepad is 5x7 inch trim size, black ink only, and with a bleed of 1/8 inch from the page edge. The margins that the text cannot set outside were set at 3/16 inch from the page edge. The finished product will be a notepad with a
                                                                 cardboard back with 50 sheets per pad.

Above is the rough of the note pad I selected. 

Pricing from Quality Printing in Parsons, KS for a notepad with these specifications is $3.90 per pad and $390.00 for 100 note pads.

All illustrations were created in illustrator and there were no copywrite images in my notepad. One thing that I did use however is a grayscale raster image of my QR code that will be on my final note pad.

Below is the final version of my notepad that includes the bleed and crop marks for print production.

QR Code Research

A QR code is a two-dimensional bar code that contains information that sends a person who uses it to a website that the creator intended for the user to be directed to. This is a quick way for people to learn more about a product, place, or thing. A person can scan a QR code with decoding software on some camera phones; this will interpret the code a direct them to the site. Business are placing these on posters, newspapers, magazines, and other forms of advertisement because if a user likes what they see they can gather more information by being directed to a site and become potential customers. To generate a QR code the creator can simply type in generate QR code in to a search engine and find a code generator. One site that generates codes is kaywa.com . You can track QR codes you create on many sites that you generated them. There is a place on the website that will allow you to track your QR code. Every time a code is scanned it will log that and allow you to see how many times it was scanned to get a good idea of how useful it is and how many people are using them. I think QR codes would be bigger in the United States if they were more advertised, many people do not know what a QR code even is. I would place a QR code on my printed products and things such as business cards to link my customers to my website, because it will send them to a place where they could get more information about my services and allow them to view my work. Below is a QR code generated to direct a user to my current place of employment.



Sources:
net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7046.pdf 
http://searchengineland.com/what-is-a-qr-code-and-why-do-you-need-one-27588