Draft Me A Proposal

What
I want to work with the student group The Roosevelt Institute. In doing so, I hope to involve students not typically active with student groups, increase event attendance and group membership, while promoting the purpose of The Roosevelt Institute on campus.

Why
I'm working with The Roosevelt Institute because combines a group focus on public policy and my passion for politics. By promoting The Roosevelt Institute and involving a broad range of people, I am able to also advocate issues that I feel strongly about.

How
To execute this, I will need to take two routes. The first is a research component, whereby I survey current members to find out where they are from, where they live, if they're part of other student groups, their majors, etc. Using this information, I can design flyers, posters and other media that specifically target this pre-existing, politically oriented demographic that simply does not know what The Roosevelt Institute does.

The second path is to grab the attention of people that are unlikely to come to campus events and have little interest in public policy. This group is important, because if group members and event attendees are always the same people, we merely preach to the choir. This will not be done through targeted designs, but rather unexpected intervention into everyday campus life. This will take a variety of visual forms, including installation, the creation of a viewpoint in the Michigan Daily, and projection work.

Both courses will ideally increase membership and event attendance, but more importantly brand recognition. When people talk of student organizations, The Roosevelt Institute should be among the first few mentioned. I believe this can be achieved through a consistent design and flooding the campus dialogue with Roosevelt Institute material.

If I had unlimited time and funds…
… I would hire a team of ten people to help execute my ideas, place flyers, do installation work with me and document the work. Physical size and material would no longer be a hinderance, where all items, t-shirts, and such could be produced in color. I could then take the campaign to other campuses where the Roosevelt Institute has a presence, adapt my methods, and increase national membership.

If I had no time and was without money…
… I would design a logo for the Roosevelt Institute and create design guidelines using successful commercial brands as a model.

If I were to be realistic…
… Part of my project would be this methodical branding, flyering, postering, document creation, and publication design. The other half would be a more experimental means to reach new audiences. Conceivably, given time, manpower and money, only a few of these could be put together each semester.

The end result would be a design standards publication that explains the reason for design decisions, color choices, placement and the demographic information that supports it, but also documents the more exploratory means of gaining members through installation work. Such a manual can be used by this chapter of The Roosevelt Institute in the future, and is also accessible to other chapters.