AB Films is a sub-committee of the Activities Board at Carnegie Mellon University. AB Films presents weekly films on campus for students and the greater Pittsburgh community. It is entirely student-run, and funded by a set Student Activities Fee each year. The processes, rules, and guidelines are passed down each year to new leaders who are taught and expected to stay within the lines.

I was involved with AB Films, and specifically the marketing efforts, throughout my entire 4 years at CMU. I began as a lowly volunteer member as a Freshman, taking ticketing shifts and putting up posters. As I observed the club's functions and efforts, I saw a ton of places for improvement and redesign, both in the marketing, and later in finances and management.

One of my main goals as I slowly took over more responsibilities and realized I would be leaving at the end of my senior year, was sustainability - for designs and management. I needed to keep the designs simple, in case the future club members were not designers, and to have something easy and timeless to work with, while maintaining the long-standing brand in the 30+ years of the club. There's some element of respecting the form that came before, as I felt pressures from upperclassmen and leaders to keep things running exactly the same. Any change I proposed or made was always met with some sort of discontent from those who didn't want to see any change or didn't understand why a change was necessary. My only regret is not pushing it further, to feel free to do a full overhaul of the brand. But I felt I did what I could in the environment that I was elected into.

I made a few major changes in my time, after spending time respecting the current state of the club, observing its workings from the inside, and forming plans for it to be more successful. Some of the impactful ideas I proposed and implemented included: reducing ticket prices for students from $1 to free; rebranding (twice) the official "name" of this movie series; adapting and streamlining poster designs for maximum efficiency; increased social media management and activity; decreasing the number of unsuccessful films shown to allow for more budget to be put towards bigger films that appealed to more students; handing out physical ticket stubs to track attendance; installation, promotion, training, and general management of new 4K cinema projector in the auditorium; introducing raffles for movie posters at the showings and special events... and more.

I've broken this project post up by year, as it really shows the journey of designs from trying to maintain that respect for current structure and follow leadership, making small incremental changes to eventually reach more substantial changes and sustainable designs that can continue to improve and move in the right direction.

We had a few special themed weekends or other promotional posters, so I broke the pattern and created custom posters to grab attention.

This was a particularly interesting year for AB Films, with two main initiatives. The first, was rebranding the AB Films movie program as "Dollar Movies" - previously, no name had really existed for the movies on campus, some unofficially called them "the dollar movies in McConomy" or something similar. Consistantly referring to our program as "Dollar Movies" helped us gain more awareness on campus and make it easy to show what we do.

The second was the installation of our 4K Digital Cinema Projector - installed in October 2013, technical issues with sound installation and changes to the previous setup caused a delay in the premier until February 2014. We had to be flexible and be ready with a promotional plan at any time after the projector was installed.

This year, we switched from a weekly black and white poster (featuring details about every movie that weekend) to printed materials focusing on a larger schedule. We began printing monthy calendar schedules in November 2013 in full color as the budget allowed, as well as a couple "specialty" posters to promote a theme weekend (Halloween and Valentine's Day) or event (our 4K Projector premiere). Full color, no bleed, standard tabloid size (11x17").

I chose to focus on the name of the film, rather than the date, so students would first be grabbed by what movie was playing, then look closer for details about showtimes. Some research and surveys showed the primary reason a student would attending a movie on campus was to see a specific film, rather than to pass the time on a given day.

POSTCARDS

In addition to the posters, I developed a postcard with the semester's schedule of films for the Fall and the Spring. We printed about 11,000 - 6,000 to be distributed to faculty, staff, and student mailboxes on campus, the rest to hand out at the ticketing table and other student activities events. Full color, double-sided, cut to bleed, standard postcard size (4.25 x 5.5").

DIGITAL SIGNS

Displayed on a digital sign in the university center common space - came up with this idea after realizing the club had not been utilizing this free advertising space efficiently. Created these full schedule listings to mimic the postcards and be able to reflect last minute schedule changes, or include special weekend/event posters as well on a rotating basis. This design continues to be in use (as of this posting).

POSTCARD SCHEDULES

Same successful pattern from the previous year, but incorporating the new Movies in McConomy branding. The Fall postcard fit better with a horizontal layout on the back (due to the long movie title names), also just to try a little different orientation. After printing, decided to go back to the standard portrait orientation for the Spring postcard, because it made more sense in the hand.