This week's goals were: to explore a creative approach to our Capstone topics through a very specific prompt,

generate ideas and make decisions quickly, and

produce complete and refined work. Every venture capital pitch seems to start with the phrase, "It's like [something we all know well], but for [something new, different, or unrelated]."

WEEK 3

Create a VC pitch using 10 slides in presentation format, including research on our platforms, topics, and mockups to showcase our ideas effectively.

THE TASK

It's like Discord, but for music and political activism.

PROMPT

VC PITCH

TOPIC IDEATION

TOPIC/THEME: music's ability to bring connection into political activism

I knew immediately I wanted to mesh music and activism into my project, but I originally got so focused on the medium that I had a hard time knowing what I actually wanted to say.

DISCOVERY

THE WORKSHEET

This body of work will encourage community and provide a visual space for communicating ideas and opinions on the state of the world today and its connection to music. I've recently found it difficult to find an effective means of contributing to the conversations about social topics I care deeply about. There are so many terrible things happening in the world, and there isn't a single issue I can focus on.

The ideation worksheet's questions about what community I wanted to target and what messages I wanted so send really helped me narrow my focus overall.

This body of work will combine my interests and concerns and provide opportunities for its continuation and advancement post-grad.

THE IDEA

Beatnik is a magazine that covers social topics and music local to the Des Moines/Iowa area. Each issue of this magazine will be accompanied by an exclusive "vinyl album" designed by a local artist that links to a playlist. The magazine will also have a centerfold typographic poster and sticker in each issue that subscribers are encouraged to share and post in their neighborhoods. To accompany all of this, each issue will announce a free "club" event location that will allow subscribers and their friends to come together to talk about important topics and the featured album.

MY APPROACH

Discord's core values that led to their success as a platform are community, customization, and niche focus. I knew I didn't want to take this in a literal direction of creating an app or chat platform.

I LOVE researching and a good wordlist. My ideas evolved the more I researched about Discord, punk history, and building community. I got started on creating a planning document and contacting friends to potentially contribute to articles for the first issue!

PROCESS

REFLECTION

Spending more time in the research and ideation phase helps set me up for success in the refinement phases. Now that I've narrowed my topic and have done the research, I can more easily focus on what visualizations should accompany my project in order for it to be successful.

Check back for week 4 to see the final results!