During my last semester at Drake University, I had the opportunity to work with Poweshiek County Conservation to create a brochure for Diamond Lake located in Montezuma, Iowa. I was one of four people working with Poweshiek County Conservation to create useful content for the Diamond Lake and Fox Forest Wildlife Area. My main part of the project was to create the brochure.
We started by sitting down with two people from Poweshiek County to discuss what their needs were for both locations. The main focus was to start with the Fox Forest Wildlife Area and create a user-friendly map with a description of each of the trails. From there, one person in the group used Geographic Information Systems to create the map with trails. Two other people worked on creating text for the brochure I was working on, including some of the rules and amenities that are associated with Diamond Lake. I still wanted to give these people credit so that it didn’t seem like I did all of the work when I didn’t.
Working with Poweshiek County was a lot of work, but I enjoyed it. The most difficult part of this project (for me at least) was trying to get all of the information to fit and still be readable on the brochure. The outside of the brochure is below, and you can see the immense amount of text that was put on it. There were several reviews of the outside of the brochure to make sure the wording was right in all places. I had tried to shorten the text to create a more easily readable and usable item. While this was taken into account, Poweshiek County Conservation wanted the wording to be nearly identical to what is on the website to eliminate any confusion between visitors. We also wanted to add contact information for emergencies. I decided to place this under the “Rules and Amenities” section, which would be visible at all times and easily found in an emergency. The QR code on the front of the brochure links directly to the Poweshiek County Conservation site with the Diamond Lake map. Again, this was placed on the front for easy access. The “Upcoming Activities” was placed on the page that would fold inside the brochure, since it was less important to people being in the park. This QR code was made to show running lists for future events happening, so that people can come back to the park and increase visitor numbers
The inside of the brochure was made to be more educational and informative for people in the park. We wanted to be able to showcase what local wildlife and plant communities may be seen while in the park. It is very hard to create a complete list of specific species due to the limited amount of space. The same goes for the QR Codes for the Local Animals and the Spring Flowers Booklet. Both of these are created by Iowa State and are available for public use. The Park History needed to be extremely short to allow for the pictures to fit as well. It’s important for people to know the history of the area, and the pictures will draw people to look at that section first when the brochure is fully opened.
Overall, making this brochure was a lot of work, but it was extremely fun. I was able to use my creativity and my artistic skills to the fullest for this project. There was one more section to this project that was an added bonus that I was assigned to do, which was taking pictures of the trail. These were partially used for archival purposes as well as to take and show the public. There were very few pictures of the area and the trail before we had done this project. Below are some of the pictures that I took that were then sent over to Poweshiek County Conservation. Not all of the pictures I took are here since there are nearly one hundred pictures, and some of them contain animal remains. I felt it was better to showcase the top 3 unedited photos. I will touch up a few later to add to my portfolio page.
