RING BUS

GOALS – The Ring Bus was designed to market the class ring program at Virginia Tech. We were looking for a creative and distinct way to market the program to students and raise awareness of the program to the wider university and local community.

EXECUTION

1. Conceptualization
   The project was first conceived by the Alumni Association's director of student programs, who also oversees the ring program. She became aware of a similar project for the ring program at Texas Tech and began exploring the feasability of doing something similar at Virginia Tech.
2. Schedule
   There was a great deal of administrative work on the front end, which I was not a part of, to gain approval for the project. This process began in early Summer 2011. Once the project was greenlit in September, I had a couple weeks to create the design mockups and the  full-scale design files for the vendor. This resulted in several late nights and long work weeks to finish the project on time.
3. Design
   I created an original design. The Texas Tech bus served as an early inspiration, but we did a number of different things with the design to make it our own. We were given a spec template from the bus company to show sizing and where all the cutouts and breaks in the design would fall.
4. Tools
   The bus art was created in Illustrator and Photoshop. Images had to be converted to vector so I could make them large enough for the bus. After everything was done, we had to work with the vendor, who we discovered was only capable of opening files under 1 GB and was only able to open files up to CS3 (none of this was disclosed on the front end of the project).
5. Creativity
   I'm pleased I was able to ensure the final design of the bus was clean, legible, and modern. I redesigned the Alumni Association logo in Spring 2011 and the bus was a great way to showcase our new logo. The bus was also an exciting opportunity to do something new that I hadn't done before (I've been designing long enough that this is no longer a common occurrence). I welcome and seek out opportunities to challenge myself and work on new projects.
6. Specs/Printing
   The bus wrap was first printed on paper for a fitting, then was printed on vinyl and applied to the bus by a large crew who specialize in wrapping vehicles.
7. Budget
   The project was executed within budget, with most of the funding coming through the company that manufactures and sells the class ring. I was not involved with the budgeting/funding stage of this project.
8. Distribution
   We have a three-year contract for the bus wrap with Blacksburg Transit. The bus is moved through different routes so it circulates throughout the Virginia Tech campus and the surrounding community.

EVALUATION

We saw an increase in web traffic to the class ring site this fall. The bus wrap was featured in VT News, and in the VT Magazine.