A rough mock-up banner for DonorsChoose.org’s summer campaign. The picture of the girl was taken off of a stock photo site and inserted beneath a mask I made in the shape of the rectangular picture-area of another stock photo of a polaroid. The font seen here is VAG Rounded Standard. The jumble effect for the letter was done setting each letter to a random 15-degree tilt in the “Transform Each” dialogue box in Illustrator. The lines beneath the text were also created in Illustrator by creating a brush out of five different-colored rectangles, creating the brush stroke around a pen line, manipulating with a mesh, and then expanding the shape so I could manipulate each colored line. Readability needs to be addressed, and I’m going to try a few more versions. Here it is in the context of the site (it’s a little streched out):
The science behind the copy:
For the headline, I wanted something catchy, cheerful, and evocative of generosity. I went with alliteration to cover the catchiness, the word “celebrate” to add cheer, and “sharing” as a way to activate prosocial thoughts without referencing money. I recently read a psychological study mentioning that when words dealing with money are referenced, people tend to weigh extrinsic rewards (like recognition or avoiding negative evaluation) for charitable donations. On the other hand, when faced with verbs like “share” and “volunteer,” people donate for intrinsic reasons (i.e. empathy, resultant feeling of well-being, etc.). Thus, I tried to stay away from words like “donate” and “give,” which have more monetary connotations. (On the other hand, both “donate” and “give” might be more direct.
In the byline, I wanted to offer the donor a chance to become part of a category (“*become* a supporter”) rather than pushing a one-time action (“support”). Another study I read and a social psych lecture I recently heard talked about the power of rewarding a disposition, or someone’s character – as opposed to rewarding a single behavior. This encourages future giving, since the donor thinks to themselves, “I am a supporter of year-round schools,” instead of “I supported year-round schools.” Again, with the word “support,” I tried to stay away from associations with money.
Finally, I put “today” at the end to add a sense of immediacy, so users won’t simply look at the message and put their donation off until later.
