English 420: Business Writing

This week we prepared our rough drafts for the templates. There were two drafts prepared, so the client can make their choice as to which one they like, and then we'll give that one final tweaks. We also are working towards the reports describing our work on the project. We are planning on doing the video next week.

During this short vacation we basically worked on the templates for the newsletters of our clients. I got the information needed about the two new employees they hired so we could put them onto our rough draft. We met on Monday to finish the contracts and I took them to get signed the same day. This week we will finish up our templates and turn in our rough drafts to Mr. Baker.

This week was a short week. Our group has decided to complete a paper menu for distribution in the coffee house and a post card with a coupon on it to be distributed around the Purdue campus and Lafayette. We met with the Benners last week and showed them some final drafts of the menu and the post card before we sent the projects off to be printed. Mrs. Benner seemed very pleased with the work and eager to get the menus and postcards. We also offered to have 500 business cards printed for her. Jenn has a great coupon to get 500 business cards for only $15 to $20.

Over the break each of us was assigned a section of the brochure to work on. I was given the section of sororities and how Two Tulips works with different sorority events. The rough draft of the brochure is due Tuesday now. Samantha created an outline for the brochure and on Monday we are all going to get together and share our findings from over the break. We will also create our brochure and get ready to present it to Mr. Baker on Tuesday. Stacy and Brandy also found out that Cheryl does not have Indesign.

Since this past week was Thanksgiving break, our group did not get a chance to meet due to people being out of town. We completed the majority of our deliverables last week, so we had minimal work to do over break. We had fully completed the Exponent ad and one of the flyers so we just needed to finish the flyer targeted toward Club Sports. Kyle got a good start on the Club Sports flyer since he is involved in the organization and had a good idea of how to reach the audience. We all reviewed the flyer and made our own changes.

Samantha and I met once this past week in order to begin designing our brochure. When I met with Samantha, she informed me that the owner of Two Tulips, Cheryl, does not have Adobe InDesign. In order to provide easily accessible public documents for Cheryl, Samantha and I decided against Adobe InDesign and instead chose Microsoft Publisher. We thought Microsoft Publisher would be an excellent choice because, since Cheryl has Microsoft Office 2007, we are confident she would be able to make any necessary changes with ease due to the familiar user interface.

Since the last work blog, our group finished the final draft of the Public Documents Agreement. Three of us visited Skylight Coffee House and spoke to Karan Brenner. I outlined the contract for her and invited her to read the document in its entirety herself. After she did so, she willingly signed the contract.

Since this week was a shortened one due to Thanksgiving break we met before everyone left for break to get something’s done. We worked together and created a menu template that we believe will go a long with the décor of the interior of the bar. Since the theme of the karaoke bar is sort of like a modern Chinese we made sure the template went along with that. We wanted the menu to be unique and not just a standard menu, so we used InDesign and Photoshop to make it more our own. On the bottom of the menu we put a picture of the Beijing skyline, which we faded to a dark purple.

Week four of our client based project took place during Thanksgiving break. That being said, It was very difficult to find a time for all of us to meet before we all headed home. I am glad that our group met on Wednesday prior to break to get our initial deliverables finished. During that meeting our group was able to complete two of the three deliverables. One being a flyer, targeting Purdue students. The other is an Exponent Ad, consisting of a sudoku puzzle. Throughout Thanksgiving break, our group has maintained contact with on another via email.

This week was extremely shirt. Short in terms of the number of school days and the amount of work done on our project. On Monday, two of our group members went to Skylight Coffee House to get the Memo Agreement signed and to present the drafts for the second public document we are doing for them, the postcards. The two group members showed the Benners the ideas and what the postcards will look like and the group members told me that the owners really liked the postcards. I did not attend this meeting because I had a class that I needed to go to at that time.