At Ohio University, many students define themselves as athletes – I being one of them. Here at Ohio, I am on the varsity Track and Field team and I love it. I have to say, one reason why I love it so much is because of the great facilities available to all Ohio varsity athletes. I am in Peden Stadium almost every day of the week and not once do I think to myself, “Man, I wish I could work out somewhere else.” This is why I chose to feature Peden Stadium in my promotional piece. I believe Peden has a great history that OU students should know about - especially Ohio athletes – and Ohio’s football history is a big part of the stadium as well! While designing of my promotional piece, I had to make many decisions on how to promote the history of Peden Stadium. Some of the main decisions I had to make, when promoting Peden Stadium, were advertising the stadium through a series of flyers, including information and history I felt was most important, and how to catch my audience’s attention.
My first decision, making a series of flyers to promote Peden Stadium, was a fairly easy one. I am a journalism major and I have a background in design from high school and now through the Ohio University magazine, Backdrop. This being the case, I love working with Adobe InDesign and felt this project was a perfect project to use my design skills for. After doing research on the history of Peden, I knew there was no way I would be able to fit all the information on one flyer; that is when I decided to do a series of flyers. I realized that Peden had important improvements every couple of decades so I chose to base each flyer on a different decade of Peden’s life.
Through my design knowledge, contrast and repetition are the most important design aspects; therefore, I incorporated these aspects into my promotional piece. I used contrast with the colors of the flyers and the text’s colors. I outlined dark-colored text in white to make it “pop” and catch the reader’s attention. I used colored backgrounds on every flyer for that same reason: so passersby would be interested and stop to read what Peden is all about. The colors I used on each flyer were also thoroughly thought out. Each flyer’s background color had to do with OU colors. For instance, the tan flyer is the same color as our mascot: Rufus the bobcat. I also made a point to incorporate green into every single flyer since it is OU’s color. I used repetition in the flyers because it lets the audience know that the whole set of flyers go together to promote the full history of the stadium. I did this throughout the flyers by using the same font, same phrase (“Did you know?”), and similar pictures placed in the same general area. Speaking of pictures, I believed it was very important to feature pictures in each flyer so my audience could see how Peden has changed physically over the years. While a good design will make readers stop to look at a flyer, I know interesting information will make them stick around to find out what the flyer has to say. That is why I carefully chose what to incorporate into the information of the flyers.
When researching the history of Peden Stadium, I found a lot of information, but I believe the best source was Ohio University Outlook. I read an article called A Saturday Standard by Corinne Colbert, and this article not only featured the history of Peden stadium, but it also featured the history of Ohio’s football team. In my opinion, I believe Ohio’s football history is an important aspect of Peden’s history because without our football team, the stadium would not be here today. Through this article, I learned that before the stadium was built in 1929, the football players played on the baseball fields. I think that is crazy and it personally interested me, so I assumed it would interest other athletes and football fans as well. Another thing that interested me about the early history of Peden was that it was originally named Ohio Stadium. It wasn’t until 1960, when the stadium was named after the head coach from the years 1924 to 1947. I think it was very important to include information and history on the head coach, Don Peden because he was a phenomenal coach and that is why our stadium is named after him today. Another important fact that jumped out at me, was that Peden wasn’t renovated for 57 years! That is such a long time to go without any improvements and I feel that even the stadium’s state of despair is an important part of its history. Another important aspect of the stadium’s history is the football field and seating itself: how many fans the stadium can seat, and what features are a part of the stadium such as the scoreboard and FeildTurf. While this information reaches out to football fans I also thought it important to reach out to the athletes themselves. That is why I decided to incorporate a picture and information about Carin Strength and Conditioning Center. This facility featured in Peden is very important to all varsity athletes because this allows them to lift as a team and stay separated from all the people who work out at Ping. I personally enjoy being able to lift in a facility dedicated to all varsity athletes and I believe the rest of Ohio’s athletes do too. As mentions in previous explanations, catching my audience’s attention was a very important aspect in creating my promotional piece.
Audience plays a huge role when creating informational flyers. I knew I had to incorporate information and design aspects my audience - Ohio University athletes and football fans – wanted. I reached out to my audience by using ethos, logos, and pathos. Because I am an Ohio athlete and football fan, I believe this makes me a credible source to evaluate what my audience wants. I have experienced Ohio football games first hand, as well as worked out in the conditioning center, ran both on the field and in the stadium, and studied in Peden Tower. I used logos by incorporating all of the facts into the five flyers. Right away, the phrase, “Did you know?” sticks out to the readers and, following this advertisement, are many facts on the history of Peden Stadium over the course of its lifetime. I appealed to my audience’s emotions through pathos by incorporating important pictures and information that all football fans and athletes want to know and see. I believe my intended audience would be very interested in the flyers I have created to promote the history of Peden Stadium.
Peden Stadium has a very important role here at Ohio University. It hosts football games every fall, has great facilities for athletes, and an interesting history behind it. These are just some of the reasons why I chose to feature Ohio University’s football stadium in my promotional piece. I made many decisions in the process of creating my promotional piece and I am confident that every decision I made helped to make my flyers attract an audience. Along the way, I made decisions to help promote Peden Stadium’s history by advertising the stadium through a series of flyers, including information and history I felt was most important, and appealing to my audience through ethos, logos, and pathos. I know students would be interested in the history of Peden Stadium because it is a huge part of Ohio University’s history as a whole.
P.S. I wrote this paper in Peden Stadium.
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