Students worked in groups of four to create what the company Cornerportal calls, “social signage.” The concept uses digital billboards to advertise to their perspective audiences and customers.

Cornerportal is then “able to take the products that our students created and sell it to businesses,” said John Willman, co-ordinator of e-publishing.

Through this project, students teamed up with various industry partners, with Cornerportal, and worked together to design what the clients wanted for their business. Students designed products for restaurants, bars, The National Art Gallery, Carleton University tunnels and other local businesses.

“The challenge was to come up with unique ways to advertise to people,” said Tamara Solomon, who with a group of students, targeted bookstore/coffee shop combinations, like Chapters and Starbucks.

The students used Adobe Flash, a program that creates rich media content for the web. They devised products where people can interact with it through their cellphones and computers. Advertisements could be displayed on plasma screens, and the businesses are able to change the content at anytime.

“Students had to be able to move content on the screen, animate, read Twitter feeds and design an interface that could be changed on the fly,” said Willman.

Students, Lindsay Coderre and Yasmine Taha, ended up being a group of two after another student dropped out. They designed two digital advertisements for The National Art Gallery, one for an upcoming Pop Life exhibit, and another for the main lobby of the gallery.

“It was only the two of us, which was a challenge,” said Coderre.

But they just kept working hard; developed good time management skills and focused on the experience.

Though the gallery did not end up using the advertisements, both girls agree the project was a great learning experience and another piece to add to their work portfolio.

“The students are given an opportunity to learn what its like in the real world,” said Willman.

“It benefits the industry and benefits the students.”

However, no projects are without its challenges.

One aspect all three students found difficult was keeping clear communication with the businesses in which they were designing for.

“Communication is an essential part of working on projects like this,” said Solomon. She explained because the clients don’t go by the same timeline as the students, it’s harder to accommodate every detail they would like.

Coderre said it was a matter of sitting the client down and asking very specific question to try and figure out exactly what they are thinking.

“Sometimes we had to shake the communication out of them,” said Taha.

But, they all found that the project helped them learn how to work with real life clients, and gain skills and tasks they would be doing after graduating.

“It gives the project a purpose, you’re not just doing it for grades,” said Solomon.