Week 2 Exploration: Mood Board

Week 1 Project: Proposal & Wireframe

Dear Mr. Archer Ray, 

I would like to begin this email by thanking you for contacting Designs By Benzo and wanting to do business with us. I very excited to be a part of expanding your brand.  In this day and age, sometime in the near future, Holy Magdalena Cupcake Express will experience a significant increase in competition. I would personally say that the competition will utilize modern-looking websites and social networking. I feel that you wouldn't want other businesses that use trendy sites along with using social networking to draw customers away from Holy Magdalena Cupcake Express. Your brand needs a extreme online presence. This may be one of the reasons why you reached out to me a few days ago. I also kept in mind that you want this website to tell your story, along with what makes your cupcakes unique, and how to let your customers know where to find your truck.

To effectively get your story out to the public, bring to light the uniqueness of your product, make it accessible for your supportes to find you, and to broaden your brand... You will need to build a website. I do remember you stating that you don’t have any social networking accounts. I will have to tell you that we have to change that as soon as possible. There are so many benefits when it comes to social media. You can increase your brand recognition, improve your brand’s loyalty, you can showcase your cupcakes, you will have better search engine rankings, and you can get a clear view of the customer experiences. I understand that you may not have time to run social networking pages such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and so on. Well I have a solution for that. There are programs that will produce auto-feed to all of these accounts at one time. So, let’s say that your truck is driving to a new location, you can just access the auto-feed app from your phone and your post will generate on all of your accounts. You can also set up post-dated feed that will generate at certain times of the day. I will help you with this, free of charge. This is really all up to you, but I would zealously suggest this.

Now, let’s talk about the website. We already spoke on the key elements of the website, we identified your audience, and we determined the most effective call to action. The next phase would be the plan of the content. I appreciate you sending me the color schemes, the logo, and pictures that you would like to showcase on your website. If you look below, you will find a wirefame representation of what I feel will be very pleasing to your current and potentially new customers. I know you wanted to keep it simple. In the future you would like to add some more pizzazz, please let me know.

The estimated design and administrative time will be 48-72 hours. The fee for everything will be $1,500. I estimate the delivery of the site would be 1 week after a deposit of $750.00 is sent to DesignsByBenzo@me.com via Paypal. I do ask that this deposit will be made in a timely manner, because I would need the deposit of $750.00 in order to start this process. I also ask that your initial payment of $750.00 would be sent to the PayPal account listed above, within 15 days of the deposit. If this project becomes shelved, prolonged, or delayed by you as my client for 30 days or more, I will invoice you for this job as completed. I would also like to advise you that there is an cancelation fee of the identical amount of the deposit, which would be $750.00.

I am ready to get this started for you and I would like to thank you for considering me for this project. If you have any questions and/or concerns, please contact me at the information below.

Best, 

Lauren Benzo

Lauren Benzo

Designs By Benzo

718-555-5555

DesignsByBenzo@me.com

Portfolio Project Submission 1

MCBS Portfolio Project Submission: D.Y.M.E. Lyfe TV Pilot Snippet

Star Rating Sought: 

2 Star Approval Rating 

Project Description: 

I have been doing radio for many years now, and I had the idea revamp my radio show into a music video television. My sister Monica, my cousin Sophia, and myself grabbed a camera and shot footage in all the 5 boroughs of New York City. We were also able to contact hip hop artist in the area and interview them. After we finished taping, I grabbed some previous footage that I had from covering events and I started the post editing adding effects, voice over music, and actual hip hop music videos from the likes of SlaughterHouse, Lupe Fiasco, Notorious B.I.G. and more. I am not actually ready to release all of the pilot, but I wanted to submit a snippet to give you an idea of what I have been working on. I hope you enjoy. 

Link to Deliverable:

D.Y.M.E. Lyfe TV Snippet

Feedback Received: 

Even though I haven't shown this snippet to any of my instructors or fellow classmates, I was not able to receive their feedback. I do recall showing some of the footage to my Digital Video and Editing Principles instructor, and he said he was impressed. I have received a lot of positive feedback from this pilot, from people that I have shown it to and sent out to potential sponsors. From the lighting, the angles, the music chosen, even the graphics. Since this is my first time really doing something like this, I will say that I was a little afraid of how it would be received, but I will say that I have really out done myself. When everything is finished and ready to be released to the public, I will let you know and I would love to hear all feedback on my work. Positive or not positive. All criticism is constructive.  

Resources Utilized: 

While working on this pilot, I used a cannon XA10 HD Professional Camcorder, Adobe Premiere, Itunes, and Adobe After Effects. I would also like to add that my co-host of this pilot were Monica Benzo and Sophia Twillie.  

Week 1 Practice: Mission Statement & Target Audience

Holy Magdalena Cupcake Express

Mission Statement:

The website for Holy-Magdalena Cupcake Express aims to attract people who love cupcakes and are willing to travel to the vendor's rotating locations in the city of Petaluma. The website will feature the primary colors within the client’s logo, including crimson, charcoal grey, black and white. The website’s home page will display “5 Daily Flavors” and easy access to the menu, pricing and locations.

Target Audience Characteristics:

Fellow Local Business Owners, Mothers, Middle Class, Artisan, Hipsters, Children, Travelers, People That Love Sweets.

Target Audience Profile:

The target audience of this website would be local business owners that are willing to support others and their brand. Mothers that may have to attend a PTA meeting, yet is so busy with house chores/work that she doesn’t have time to bake. The middle class worker that is walking on his lunch break wanting something more than a “Snicker” bar from the vending machine.  The Artisan that is impressed with crafty sugary goodness. The Hipster that loves gluten-free and vegan sweets.  The children that loves being a kid, licking cupcake frosting off the tip of their nose. The person that is on the go, yet will always have time for something to satisfy their sweet tooth.

Ideal Visitor Description:

The ideal visitor will use this website as a viral connector between themselves and the brand. The visitor uses this site to be aware of the edible goodies, the location of where the truck will be located in “real-time”, and the brand itself…In a simple yet alluring way.  

Week 1 Analysis: Competitor Research

Week 1 Practice: Project Inventory

Week 1 Exploration: Web Basics

Getting ready for this course, I would say that initial reaction was both intriguing and intimidating. From writing for many websites, I would either send in the interviews or reviews to the coder and let them do their work, or at times I would go into the site because they are ran by WordPress, and I would put the content in myself. Let’s just say that Wordpress makes it much easy to understand. Yet when I click over to the HTLM side of the post. It’s a lot of codes I had no idea what they meant. I can say that I have learned a lot over the past 3 hours watching the videos. Yet, I know that I still have more learning to do. 

I can envision myself working with the web in the future working on my craft of actually doing some good web design. Who knows, I may by able to make my own professional website. I have confidence in myself, but I know it is a lot of work. I could also direct a client to a web designer that I have worked with in the past and collect a finders fee. Where there a will there is a way. 


There were many points of interest from this lesson but if I had to choose 3, one would be about the coding. When I say that I am a no-brainer at these codes, I am so serious. Yet, after watching the videos, I feel a little more comfortable with them. I will just have to go back to my notes every now and then to keep up with everything. Another point would be choosing a code editor. How easy would it be me to use since I am a beginner? The speed of the code editor. Would hate to have a slow editor and it make everything more difficult, and the features. Last but not least, is web design actually right for me. I have so much going on in my profession, this could be a gift and a curse. More so saying, if I can master this, I can use my skills to my best extent and add another professional notch to my belt. This is very time consuming, web hosting, posting, keeping up to date content on the site. This is where the curse would come in, and I wouldn’t want to just throw in the towel and call someone to do the work for me.

I can say that I will approach my on-going web project differently as a result of this lesson. I have grown a little confidence, and I feel with that tools that I will be working with during this month will help me learn more and may want to dive into the world of web design. No promises, but I will definitely get my feet wet and give it a try.