Reading Response #7
The brochure exercise was useful in determining if our group's document will get noticed. Much like writing a resume, a brochure must catch the readers' attention and inform the reader in a consise, professional manner.
Appeal to emotions (+)
Our brochure does a good job trying to, " strike an emotional chord" with our readers. Everyone realizes that it is important to have a place to be on Christmas, and to provide for children in a bad situation. The pictures we use illustrate how the community can help those in need.
Be Professional (+)
The layout and design of the brochure make it look professional. We did use some clip art and somewhat cheap graphics. However, these graphic were provided by the client, so we followed the ideas presented by the company.
Be Personal (-)
I believe our use of pictures connect with the audience and make it personal. I gave our brochure a minus in this section because the color scheme used does not entirely invoke the Christmas spirit. Christmas is not at all a personal celebration. That being said, people do have a personal association with the holiday (red, and green).
Achieve Readability (+)
Our brochure makes a good use of bullets and boxes etc. There is always room for improvement though.
Speak the Language (+)
The brochure allows for a wide variety of people to read and understand it. Our group made a concerted effort to make sure the diverse audience that will read the brochure will comprehend, and enjoy it.
Lead with Benefits (+)
I thought our brochure showed how helping the community can benefit themselves, and more importantly, those who need it.
Have a Single Message(-)
This was a tough section to give a grade. The point of the brochure is to give a small amount of information about the company and then focus on the event. Our group did give enough information about both topics. However, I think we could do a better job at leading into discussing the event from the general information about the company.
Focus on a Product or Service (-)
We definitely focused on the need, and importance of volunteering. On the other hand, we offer a large amount of different ways to volunteer. This is good, but parts of the layout are a little confusing about what days people can volunteer. There are clear headings for Christmas day volunteers and non Christmas day volunteers. But, there is a section that could also be considered Christmas day volunteers that is not labeled as such (Poinsettia Delivery section).
Make an Action Call (+)
Our brochure makes is very clear that there is a need for volunteers for this event.
This brings the final score to +3. It is promising that our groups' brochure achieved this score. I do think, however, there is a lot of opportunities to make it better.
Comments
Group Reply
I agree with you on many of the aspects that you had. I had very similar thoughts with each of the sections. I also feel that we are off to a good start but have some areas that we could improve on. I think changing the color scheme may be helpful in some aspects because it can help the reader automatically relate to Christmas if they see red and green. I also felt that it was hard to grade the section for a single message because we have a main message but we are also supposed to include information about CFRC too. I think that we could do a better job at making sure that the reader knows that the main focus is on the Christmas Dinner. I can see what you mean when you say that some parts are confusing with the volunteering. We should probably look over that and figure out a way to make it clearer so the reader has no confusion.
Group Reply
I commented on the same thing "I think we could do a better job at leading into discussing the event from the general information about the company." I think we should restructure the text in the layout so that we explain what the CFRC is and what the Christmas Day Dinner is before we encourage or persuade our audience to volunteer for such an organization's event. I think that small problem can be solved easily.
To address the color scheme you mentioned, I had thought about doing the brochure in green and red before but I was afraid of the cliché. Also, I wouldn’t want to change the color this late in the process incase the organization did not want it to be red and green. Just a thought.
Reply
I think that it’s interesting that you don’t find our brochure to be personal to the reader. I see your point about the color scheme, but I felt that going with red and green was kind of cheesy, it seems like an overdone color combination for Christmas time and it doesn’t provide a very easy background to read. I have looked at some other brochures that used this approach and I felt that it took away from the professionalism of the document. I think our use of photographs depicting members from the community who have participated in this event in the past is what makes the brochure personal. I don’t think that colors have anything to do with how personal the document is, if so its very minor.