For about a year of my professional career, I worked for this incredible company called Fuzati. They are a marketing, design, and technology agency that specializes in Catholic companies. Their clients range from parishes, diocese, to national organizations. Their portfolio includes redesigning the March for Life website, assisting Hallow with their marketing strategies, and creating and owning the Catholic Memes page on Facebook. Working for them gave me so many opportunities to create graphic design specifically for Catholic organizations. It truly was a dream come true.
An organization called Fraternus approached Fuzati for marketing assistance. Essentially, Fraternus “mentors boys into virtuous Catholic men” through retreats and relationships. They strive to redefine what it means to be a good man in our culture.
A really good place to start with marketing is offering something free in exchange for information, usually an email. At Fuzati, the go-to giveaway is an eBook. They’re cheap to produce but can be valuable. I was assigned to design an eBook for Fraternus. All of the copy was provided up front.
I was given a few caveats going into the project. I had a bit of freedom when it came to graphics. Fraternus only had a logo and a few basic colors. When it came to layout, font, and other details, that was left up to me. Young Catholic men in their 20’s were the target audience for this project. If I remember correctly, I was told if I did well enough on the eBook, Fraternus would remodel their branding akin to my work.
Being a woman in her 20’s, I have some friends who are men in their 20’s, so I initially had a unique leg up on the project. I already had a good sense of what the target audience was interested in. My guy friends at the time were very into Dungeons and Dragons, so I decided to allow that to influence my art direction. My keywords were: Masculinity, Heroic, Honor, Youth, and Energy. I wanted there to be a special treatment of the color gold and medieval themed illustrations.
The result is a well designed eBook. Neutral colors with accents of gold, exquisite medieval illustrations, and bold fonts. Fraternus loved the result so much, they decided to apply the visual language to other new marketing endeavors like a website redesign, landing page designs, and email templates.
I really enjoyed this project. At that point in my career, I was finally starting to get a hang of being in an agency. I was feeling stronger. I also take interest in traditionally male things like video games and Dungeons and Dragons, so it was fun applying my knowledge to this project.
From this project I definitely learned about challenges men are facing in today’s society and how to combat them. Additionally, I learned the usefulness of keeping master pages, layers, and character styles organized. If I remember correctly, this was my first project that also served as a soft brand redesign. I’m quite proud of this project and my male friends think it looks great!