April 14th, 2013, by Gabrielle Barandiaran

Database Publishing is a course in the School of Media Sciences typically offered in the fall. In this course students learn about personalization and ways that they can output personalized material.

Shannon Moore is a third year; Media Arts and Technology major, and took this class in the fall with Adjunct Professor Phillip Rose who works at Xerox. You can read more about Phil Rose here.

To get a better grasp on what specifically was covered in Database Publishing, I asked Shannon to describe some of the programs that were used in the class. Shannon explained, “We learned how to manage databases through Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access and Xerox’s XMPie. We learned how to create layouts in Adobe InDesign and Photoshop and transform them into variable data prints. We also covered the different ways variable data printing is used and what printers are used.” Database not only goes into the technicality of creating these documents but also touches on the marketing and business aspects of variable data printing. As a part of the course, the class worked on several data-driven text documents and ../assets/img to create marketing pieces.

Shannon revealed that this class assisted her in learning about creating different marketing pieces. This is vital for her future because she is a marketing minor and this skill could put her in front of the competition when seeking a job in the advertising/marketing world.

The course ends with a project that combines all of the knowledge and skills learned throughout the ten-week class. The objective was to create a company, marketing plan, database, PURL, mailer and a newsletter. For this project her group created a company called REVS—a sunglasses company that sold leisure and prescription sunglasses similar to Ray Ban.

For the future of Database Publishing, Shannon said that she would like to see more web integration other than the PURL (Personalized URL). She explained that, “the PURL is useful but is becoming outdated. I think it would be more beneficial to use an actual website other than just a PURL. I would also like to see how this can be beneficial with mobile and tablet devices.”