Reflecting on Handouts

Here are the two handout drafts I have created for my school's recruitment office. The first is aimed at recruiting transfer students, and the second is aimed at parents of transfer students.

In doing this project, I have thought a lot about the importance of stakeholders and being able to identify them. In my last post, Finding My Second Stakeholder, I go into more detail about what a stakeholder is. But basically, it is someone who is affected by or can affect your organization/department/campaign/etc. For the recruitment office, I knew there would be many stakeholders - students, parents, alumni, teachers, office employees, incoming students, high school staff, etc. Each of these groups are important to the recruiting process so it is crucial that we consider all of them. Obviously, some are more affected than others. So, depending on your resources, you may not be able to cater to each group, but it is still important to understand that a project can have multiple stakeholders.

When I began this project, I started thinking about the biggest stakeholder- the students. However, I realized that this is a very broad category. You have current students, incoming freshmen, transfer students, foreign students, etc. I could have done one handout that covered this broad selection, but it may not be as affective. Instead, I decided to focus on one of these groups for my first handout - transfer students. Again, depending on your resources, you may not be able to target each of these
groups individually and that's okay. Just remember, the more specific you can be about your target audience, the better you can customize the information to attract them.

After I finished my first handout, I realized I'd been focusing a lot on the sense of belonging. That got me thinking about how important that is for students AND parent, which is why my next handout was geared towards parents of transfer students.

Designing

As far as designing, my layout and content changed a lot. I knew the colors I wanted to use (our university colors) and what I wanted to convey in each handout. I wish I could give you a solid rule for getting your design right, but honestly I had to redo mine a lot. However I will say, you have to stay
focused on the message and feeling you are trying to convey. For example, in the transfer student handout I wanted to share that we value transfer students and are ready and excited to accept them into our family. I made sure each picture and every bit of content was in support of this message.