Student designs ad for Meg’s and Garrett’s

A class project is now a holiday tradition. Annually a student from the Department of Design creates an open house advertisement for Meg Weddle, owner of Garrett’s and Meg’s retail stores in downtown Radford.

Four years ago, Tammy Robinson, associate professor of Merchandising for Design, began having her Promotion for Design 2-D class work with Weddle on creating an open house announcement.

This yearly project provides Robinson’s merchandising students with real-world newspaper and magazine advertising design experience.

The students visit Weddle’s stores to see her location and merchandise.

“Meg talks to the students about her customers, her advertising, and about her Holiday Open House event,” Robinson said, “She also talks about what she is looking for in an ad. This ad was for her Holiday Open House for both stores, Garrett’s and Meg’s.”

Each student works individually, brainstorming and sketching their ideas. They share these with the class and based on critique and feedback, they narrow their concepts down to two rough compositions.

At this point, these are shared with Weddle, who provides more feedback. Each student produces a final ad and the clothing store owner picks among these.

Sophomore Rachel Berger created this year’s ad. Her design features text accented with iconic holiday imagery including holly.

“When we went downtown as a class to see Meg, she went into great detail about what she wanted her ad to include. She emphasized simplicity and she kept mentioning holly leaves, Berger said about what inspired her design.

The ad ran twice this month in the Roanoke Time’s New River Valley section.

For more information about Merchandizing Design, please visit www.radford.edu/content/cvpa/home/idf/programs/merchandising.html. To learn more about Meg’s and Garrett’s, go to www.clothingmusthaves.com.