Hi all,
I have claimed the task to make a new brochure for Drupal to be used as a marketing tool at future talks and conferences.
I have already made two mockups which I would like your input on to see if there is any way in which I can improve the brochure, whether the design, layout or content. However, please do bear in mind that the content is editable and that the Marketing team will be able to change any textual content which displeases them with ease by editing the source files, which will be provided once I have completed the task.
Attached to this post are the two mockups with A4 dimensions. Please state which one you prefer and suggest any changes or improvements you feel necessary so that I may produce the best final brochure possible, given the time limit!
I have only made mockups of the front page of the brochure, but the ensuing pages will include images to go with the text. I have brainstormed the content of the brochure, which I have taken a photo of and uploaded to Flickr (available here). I will post a bullet-point list of the content I intend to include tomorrow. Suggestions and criticisms are more than welcome! :)
Thanks,
Max Bossino
Project Manager
Mira Groupware
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 1st Mockup | 121.38 KB |
Comments
Links to mockups
Unfortunately and inexplicably, the second mockup failed to upload! So, I've uploaded them both to Flickr.
Links:
Max Bossino
Project Manager
http://miragroupware.org
Great start. Kudos for
Great start. Kudos for taking on the task. Thank you.
I like #2... fits the drupal.org color scheme a bit better with the solid blue.
The headlines are more visible in #1
Perhaps the headlines should be value oriented rather than containers for the ideas.... having "I'm not convinced" as a focal point simply opens up doubt.
Perhaps pick three key value propositions of drupal and have those as headlines. Kieran (Amazon) did a survey awhile back that gave data on what administrators find most valuable. I would use that data, but it would be something like...
Build a powerful community site fast....
Benefit from a global community....
etc.
As you say the actual text can be worked out latter.
...
I love them.
2 things - "the only cms that matters"
we try to be nice to other CMSes.
and "the uninitiated"
can we say something like "the non-geek" or something else? uninitiated is odd...
[Drupal++]
prior work
It is always good to get inspiration and some feeling of how people did this before from prior work: http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drupal/contributions/docs/marketing/book...
The initial booklet was used at many events, and provides a good framework of things to mention. Although contains outdated content in many occasions. The second one is newer, and can also give you loads of inspiration.
I like the second one, fits
I like the second one, fits in nicely with Drupal's theme. I would remove "uninitiated" since most likely the person reading the folder doesn't know Drupal yest (else they wouldn't be reading the folder, right?) and we don't want them to feel stupid. I would also remove references to "geek", "non-geek" et cetera. Some people have strange idea's of what it means to be a geek and this might bring up unwanted associations.
As per Gábor's advice, I love this one: http://cvs.drupal.org/viewvc.py/drupal/contributions/docs/marketing/book...
The second
I overall prefer the second version, although I like the rounded corners of the first. What would the second look like with rounded corners? (Not identical to drupal.org, but it doesn't have to be.) I will also echo prior comments that recommended against "I'm not convinced" and "uninitiated". Those give the impression of "we the uber-geeks of Drupal are telling you, the great unwashed masses, why Drupal kicks butt." That's not quite the tone we want to send. :-)
I find that when doing sales-pitch material, it's helpful to take whatever you're writing and make a hyperbole out of it. If you don't like the way the hyperbole sounds, then you should probably change the wording. Even if subconsciously, people will read the extreme version of what you're saying. The goal of a sales pitch is to make sure their subconscious loves you. :-)
Thank you for the comments!
Thank you all for your suggestions; I shall take them into account and post new mockups tomorrow! I will also start converting the second mockup into an actual document, as that seems to be the more popular of the two brochures. :) Thanks again!
Max Bossino
Project Manager
http://miragroupware.org
Second Draft
Hi all,
I have finished the second draft which incorporates the majority of the suggested changes. I also drafted up a design for the second page, which will be used for some more use cases on the third page too. I will post mockups of the entire brochure tomorrow and the final document on Monday!
Please provide feedback on the following mockups - thanks!
Max Bossino
Project Manager
http://miragroupware.org
That's awesome work! Simple
That's awesome work! Simple and neat. Well done. Why is there a dark spot kind of sticked to the right and under the druplicon - also a little bit on the left. Is that due to the resizing?
Hi Scor, Thanks a lot! Yes,
Hi Scor,
Thanks a lot! Yes, those dark spots are artefacts from resizing the icon - I will remove them for the final version. :)
Max Bossino
Project Manager
http://miragroupware.org
Not much to say really other
Not much to say really other than HOLY CRAP!! You've done an AWESOME job on these!! :)
Regarding the second page, do you think you'd have room to cover more than just two case studies? I'd love to get a wide variety of the types of sites using Drupal.
Btw, when you feel you're done, please upload the source files to http://drupal.org/node/197246 and http://code.google.com/p/google-highly-open-participation-drupal/issues/...
Thanks!
Hi Angie,
Thanks for the compliment! I'm glad I've been able to help Drupal in no matter how small a way. :)
I was thinking of doing a third page with two more case studies and then a little blurb at the bottom stating examples of other case studies, followed by a final fourth page with Drupal's main features, an Open Source blurb and then contact information.
However, if the marketing team would like something slightly different, I will still be available after the "completion" of the task to help finalise my work and produce a brochure that Drupal's team will be proud to hand out!
Max Bossino
Project Manager
http://miragroupware.org
A few thoughts
I am the marketing administrator for a co-op. We use Drupal for many different purposes through out our organization and have recently begun planning the push of Drupal as solution to business customers. We have had a couple of meetings in the last few weeks discussing how we would go about offering Drupal to these customers and have come to a few conclusions that I thought might be helpful.
But first some background info: We are telecommunications cooperative serving a 7 county area in TN. We provide land line and wireless service along with internet, IPTV and business services like web hosting and web design. We service primarily rural customers, many of whom are not the most educated in the latest technology trends (read CMS sytems, Drupal and Open Source initiatives).
As you can imagine it is tough to introduce these customers to complex ideas like CMS systems without creating situations where they simply look at you, nod and then turn to thier colleagues and say, "Sorry, we can't do that right now, too complicated."
So, what does all of this mean. Well we boiled it down to two things:
1) Audience is everything - We looked at what we would be selling and ask the question, "Who is the audience?" This may seem like a really simple and obvious question, but in the end it drives everything in a marketing campaign where you are presenting new information to broad audience. What we decided is that we had to narrow our focus and attack each demographic individually. As other marketing folks out there know, there is nothing worse that using a shot-gun to do the job of a sniper. And we think that marketing Drupal falls in the same category.
I would recommend attacking your audience first, dividing out your cohorts and design based on the groups that are most prevalent. While this lends to more complicated marketing endeavors, it means more success in the end.
2) Education is a must - We realized that in order for this initiative to be successful, we had to educate our customers. In our case, this was more difficult than most, because we are primarily dealing with a sub set of the population that is less educated. So we decided to take a fun approach and look toward using agronomy to drive home the ideas. Think crops, planting, managing and harvesting. While this may not be the best approach for the general Drupal community, I think it is a good way to approach our general audience and will hopefully serve as a good working example for future Drupal marketing campaigns. Look for more information in the near future.
I think the design is great and follows the general branding established thus far by the Drupal community. I would just look toward narrowing your message based on the audience and maybe offer more in the way of real world examples (as you noted with the use of case studies).
tmg-studio (Jamie)
--
Jamie Meredith
Technical Account Manager
Acquia, Inc.
Status?
Hey, mbossino! How are you on the "done-ness" level of this task? I think what you have so far is absolutely great, but it sounded like you wanted to put on a few more finishing touches first?
Go ahead and finish up whatever you'd like and then post back here with source files, etc. when you can. That way we can mark this sucker "Closed" so you can take on even more tasks! :)
Great! And one more little suggestion to sneak in
Very, very nice!
Only thing I might change, and it's a silly visual detail that may be overridden by the type of sites -- but both the example sites on page 2 happen to have a plain header area, and a colorful middle/bottom area. It might be better, if you have use cases to choose from, to have one have a colorful header, or sidebar.
~ ben melançon
benjamin, Agaric Design Collective
benjamin, agaric
Finishing touches
Hi all,
Thanks again for the suggestions - I have almost finished the brochure and intend to post it on here this afternoon once I have applied the finishing touches!
Jamie, thank you very much for the advice - I have tried to take both those areas into account when making the brochure. Perhaps the brochure is too general, but I have tried to make it give a good overview of Drupal's potential as a website backend without going into too much technical detail, essentially targeting the technology-orientated audience who might be interested in an endeavour involving Drupal but trying not to scare them away in the process. In any case, Drupal's marketing team will be able to edit the brochure once I have posted the source files, so hopefully they can do a better job with the content! ;-)
Angie, I am almost done! Thank you for being so patient, but I hope that you will be pleased by the final result and that I can take on some more Drupal tasks in the near future!
Ben, that is a very good suggestion - I will swap one of the use cases from the third page with one on the second page in order to fix this. :)
Max Bossino
Project Manager
http://miragroupware.org
Very important clarification...
Sorry, I really wasn't trying at all to be like "AHEM. Are you done yet?" but more that I'm just really excited about this and can't wait to show it off to the community (and also make sure you get your t-shrt! :D). I was just going through all of the issues yesterday and wanted to make sure to check in on any that were outstanding.
So please take your time, it's all good. :)
I really like the design and the idea of the brochure
Anyway I wanted to throw in my thoughts read Jamies post about this and he actually said most of the things I wanted to mention.
When developing an image brochure one of the first steps and most important is to ask "who is going to read this". Jamie has pretty much covered that topic but let me throw in an example.
Most of my clients don't know much about web development, they might have heard about html but that’s it in most cases. Doesn't make them stupid, not a bad thing at all but when these kinds of clients somehow ask (directly or not) "why should I order a website at your company and why are you working with free software?"
Then telling them about the great flexibility and architecture and great community doesn't help at all, believe me I've tried ;)
So what they want to hear is buzz words like "search engine optimization", “hacker safe” – well and in general that they’ll have a good return of investment.
When you talk to a blogger or a marketing expert …. It is something else. Drupal is extremly flexible and I would find it hard to cover all aspects suited to every case in one brochure.
My English isn’t that good so I am not sure about every word but as far as I understand the sentence “…setting up your own personal website or blog has never been easier…” is simply wrong, there are several out of the box solutions by Google, Microsoft and there is Wordpress… and “Just seconds after installing Drupal, you will be able to share photos from your last holiday…” is something I have experienced differently. As far as I can tell most people find that drupal has a learning curve ( http://buytaert.net/drupal-learning-curve ) and out of the box photo sharing is not what we would want to do our marketing with.
So once again, I like the design and I like the idea and I think Drupal is great – only about the content I believe we should think again.
Cheers
Sebastian
It's done!
That's not a problem Angie - I managed to finish it this afternoon!
protramper, thanks for the advice. I'm aware that the hyperboles are at best untrue and at worst outright lies, but it was suggested to use exaggeration heavily in an earlier comment, which is why I included them. In any case, the content can be changed even after I have completed the task, so hopefully the issues in the content which I have supplied are minor and can be sorted out fairly quickly by the marketing team, who are no doubt far more experienced than I am!
I will now upload the files to the places suggested (although I am within a school network and the source files are quite large, so I may encounter problems..). It's been a real pleasure working with everyone and I hope I will soon be back to the Drupal Groups site to work on another task! ;-)
Max Bossino
Project Manager
http://miragroupware.org
Thanks for your reply Max.
Thanks for your reply Max. Hope I didn't drop a brick here ;)
It is possible to produce great photoblogs with drupal - only you need at least a 30 minute screencast to understand wich modules to combine and wich code to include to get the desired function if you are not into it yet.
Thank you for taking on the task.
Uploaded!
Please see the Drupal documentation issues entry and the Drupal GHOP Issue 41 page.
Thanks again!
Max Bossino
Project Manager
http://miragroupware.org