Thesis Discussion

The first thesis I decided to look at belongs to Leah Ettenhofer. It can be found by following THIS LINK. Leah's thesis entitled, "Good Design: Graphic Design for Nonprofit Success" examines the amount of influence we have as designers when it comes to patrons choosing which charity support.

Leah begins my demonstrating that even in a large recession, like our country is still trying to rebound from, people still want to donate. In fact a study she cited showed that the amount of money raised between last year and the year prior had actually risen during a time of finical hardship.

A majority of her thesis was spent explaining how, clean corporate design styles can instill trust and faith in the market at large. Nothing she said came off as a fallacy to me, but I would have loved to see her push it a bit more. Knowing Leah personally, I know that her style is very much what she is advocating for here in her thesis, and while I do agree it's a great fit, I wish she would have explored the hypothetical a bit more. For example, what happens if a charity goes through a failed re-branding (thinking of JCP and the blue Jack in the Box campaigns  is there anyway for the charity to rebound? Is there room to try something new and innovative? Why or why not?

Again, the piece was very well written and highly informative, my favorite section being where she explains the re branding process of "Teenage Cancer Trust" which moved from what I call "hospital design" to something that feels much more like corporate America.

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The second thesis I looked at titled. "Social Etiquette and the Social Networks: 
How to Integrate Social Networks Successfully into Your Business to Attract Consumers Who Buy
More, Share More, and Care More" by Holly Bowden, which is a topic I was very interested to learn more about. Sadly, and I am not sure if this comes more from a state of me already knowing most of this, or if the information is indeed derivative and obvious, but a majority of the paper read as a reminder more than an educational opportunity. Items like " remember you comments aren't private" or "ask your friends before you tag them in a pic" seem like pretty commonplace knowledge at this point, but again, to be fair to Holly this paper was written nearly 2 years ago and therefore, I can't, with any degree of certainty, say all of this was common knowledge at that time.

What I did find fascinating was the case of social PR going bad in Murphy-Goode's case. Again their sin was a simple one, "don't lie to the internet" but it was interesting to see the kind of effect it had, and still has one the company to this day.

I'm not sure what I could have done different to really add some substance and depth to this paper, perhaps more individual case studies like she did with Murphy-Goode would help at least personalize it. As it stands now it's a fairly well written reminder to basically, act like a decent person online and that as designers and marketeer's ourselves, the quicker we can learn these lessons the better, but it doesn't go much deeper than that.