7 x 5 "Variable Data Direct Mail" Piece- Word Matrix, Roughs, Thumbs, Final Piece

This school project is a variable data direct mail piece for my digital file prep class.

The target audience consists of 18 yr old to 25 yr old, male and female, UNL (Nebraska) students who live on, or close to campus.

The call to action for this piece is to get the people included in the target audience to attend the "event X" at "nuVibe Juice and Java" in Lincoln on March 18th from 5-6 pm. At the "event X", The business would be giving away 30 free smoothies as long as you asked for "THE PRINCE" which refers to the athlete Prince Amukamara (First 30 are free). Prince was a defensive back at UNL and is currently working hard and participating in the NFL Combine to improve his NFL Draft status.

Here is an example of the word matrix I designed. This helped me determine the target audience, purpose, and call to action:

Here is an example of the thumbnails I designed. These helped me brainstorm and think about what content would be fitting for the piece:

Here is an example of the rough sketches I designed.  Once again these helped me brainstorm further to determine the content that would be fitting for the piece:

Here is an example of the finished file. This is what the piece should look like when it is sent in the mail and the variable data fields are filled with content from the database.

Here is an example of the PDF file with crop marks and bleed indicated.

The variable fields that change in this particular piece are the first name on page two (Crista) and the photo below that section of text (the smoothie photo). On the male demographic the male first name would be filled in that particular field and instead of the smoothie photo there would be another photo of prince in that section. 


All the images used in this blog post are Copyright "rickcarrolldesigns"

[Rick Carroll]