Dordt Alumni in Design: David Ver Meer

Editor — This month we asked Dave Ver Meer to talk about his design work since graduating from Dordt in 2005. As you’ll see Ver Meer is a versatile designer. We want to thank Dave, who writes:

I work at Alpha Omega Publications (AOP), a company in Rock Rapids, Iowa that produces homeschool and Christian school curriculum for grades PreK–12 with paper-based and online-based options. While working at AOP I’ve been blessed to have all the opportunities I could ask for to work on different types of projects and grow as a designer. About a year ago, I was promoted to a senior designer position where I help manage and give art direction to our junior designers. The types of projects I’ve done include the following: product/dvd/multimedia packaging, tradeshow booths, book covers, catalogs, magazine ads, brand identities, brochures, postcards, and e-mails.

In the past few months, I’ve started transitioning from print into web design and in the future most of the work I do will be web design related. A typical week for me lately involves giving art direction to the other designers and designing websites. AOP’s marketing department functions similar to an in-house ad agency. We are staffed with project managers, copy writers, editors, designers, and developers within our group. Many of the projects we do are started internally within the marketing department, but we also do projects for and service all the different departments and divisions within AOP.

I’ve picked out a small sampling of the work I’ve done. A recent magazine ad I did was for AOP’s annual spring sale that they have every April and May. The goals of the ad were to promote awareness of the sale and, most importantly, to have the readers act on the ad by purchasing their homeschool curriculum early to get the best savings. To test the ad, we sent similar variations of the ad out to a group of beta testers we have and received over 400 responses. Overall, the responses was very positive, and it gave us insight into how our customers reacted to the ad design and concept.

The Daily Focus book is a compilation of devotionals for each day of the year. It’s for both homeschool mothers and fathers, but we wanted to appeal primarily to mothers. I choose cooler colors that serve to help draw attention to the warmer colored spots in the design and give a peaceful feel to the cover. I also added subtle floral elements into the design and used a picture on the cover that would draw readers into the design.

The branding identity for GPS AgSystems was a freelance project for a local Trimble dealer that sells and provides precision equipment to farmers. I wanted the logo to be organic in form and also communicate the precision and triangulation aspect of the technology that allows for global positioning. For supporting design elements I choose to use intersecting oval shapes with smaller circles on them to abstractly illustrate orbiting satellites. The brown shapes at the bottom of the business card and letterhead serve to both ground the design and symbolize the farmland.