Texas State Park Protectors

Vanessa Montenegro Design Management Integrative Capstone

Texas State Park Protectors

ADES 4662.020 Summer 5W2 2024

Table of Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7-9 10 - 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 - 28 29 30-31

About Me Introduction Problem Statement Brainstorming Wicked Problems Key & Precedent Research Audience User Profiles Site Locations & Geographies History & Culture Transportation & Accessibility Tourism & Entertainment Economy Demographic Project Abstract Design Concept Board Design Concept Logo Ideations Guidelines Color Palette Tagline Typography Marketing Prototype Lo-Fi & Hi-Fi Conclusion Works Cited

About Me

Hello, my name is Vanessa Montenegro and I am in my final year of University of North Texas. I am graduating with a major in Design Management and Marketing as my minor. My goal is to be an art director for my own company. When I’m not studying, I run social media accounts for myself, my friends, and my family’s startup business. I also go hiking with my partner to different places, and I love to travel to mountain towns. I have a passion for visuals and creating them since I was in elementary, and now I want to lead projects to help grow small businesses.

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Introduction

Problem Statement

Image credit: Vanessa Montenegro

Howdy readers! The Texas State Park Protectors is a social media organization that fights against biodiversity loss with conservation actions. They engage with park visitors from Dallas, Texas, and inform them how they can help maintain state parks near them. The project will be focused on the following state parks, Cedar Hill, Ray Roberts, and Lake Tawakoni.

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State parks in Northeast Texas, such as Cedar Hill, Lake Tawakoni, and Ray Roberts Lake face a threat of biodiversity loss. Habitat fragmentation due to changing demands on land resources, overgrazing, non-native plants and animals, and fire suppression harms native wildlife (TPWD). This leads to a decline in park visitors and a decrease in funding for the state parks.

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Brainstorming Wicked Problem

Key & Precedent Research The TPWD (Texas Parks and Wildlife Department) will help me understand the strategies they use to get the public to participate in conservation and how they maintain their parks. The document informs the public about the land, the water, law enforcement, the heritage, resources, and their three different plans. This will help me better understand the current condition of Texas State Parks and better connect with my social media marketing plan to inform the target audience. This is how the target audience can understand the necessity of conserving the environment in state parks. I analyzed their social media account content for inspiration.

The Texans for State Parks is a nonprofit organization that informs fellow visitors about the current condition of the parks so that the public can make impactful differences. It helps inform the audience by promoting public events, engaging with park visitors, informing any current issues to the public, and strengthening the relationship between state park partnerships. They only have a Facebook account so I will be following them to analyze the different ways they promote their mission.

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Audience

User Profile 1

Image credit: Vanessa Montenegro Image credit: Pexel user Nans 82

The users affected by my project are the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and state park visitors from Dallas, Texas. The ages of the audience range from 20 years to 60 years old. The audience wants the parks to stay open and to be provided a break from city life. They want to be entertained by hiking trails, camping, fishing at lakes, taking their boats to the lakes, and other outdoor activities.

Their needs are hydrating, food, accessories for their outdoor hobbies, and cars for traveling to state parks.

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Jaime R. 20 years old Lives in Dallas, TX College Student Mexican-American Operations Management Major Hobbies: Hiking, Reading, and Video Games Dislikes: Litter, Animal Abuse, and Carelessness for the Environment Jaime is a college student who recently got into hiking after playing the “ Firewatch “ video game. He has visited Cedar Hill State Park multiple times since he lives near it. He hikes to get away from busy life in the city and for health reasons. When he goes hiking, he sees that others leave trash behind. Jaime started packing extra trash bags to clean up any litter he saw.

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User Profile 2

Image credit: Pexel user Tima Miroshnichenko

Nicole M. 27 years old White Lives in Dallas, TX Veterinarian for Wildlife Hobbies: Camping, Hiking with her Dog, Baking Dislikes: Carelessness for the Environment and Animal Abuse Nicole works for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, specifically for taking care of injured wildlife. She sees the harm that biodiversity loss has caused to the animals. So every time she camps with her dog Milo, she leaves no trace. She at times volunteers with park rangers to maintain the park, like environmental clean-ups. Her favorite park is Ray Roberts Lake because of the beautiful shorelines.

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User Profile 3

Image credit: Pexel user Anish Naik

Yoshua G. 33 years old Cuban-American Lives in Mesquite, TX Baseball Player Hobbies: Fishing, Hiking with Friends, Baseball Dislikes: Plans getting ruined, Animal Abuse, and Hot Weather Yoshua is a professional baseball player and has grown up fishing with his dad. He always tries to fish or hike when it’s not baseball season. His goal is to visit all 88 Texas State Parks with friends.

Although he is no professional, he still loves the outdoors. When he visits Lake Tawakoni, his favorite fishing spot, he usually sees a lot of invasive species that affect the fish population. He reports this to the TPWD every week it seems. He hopes that the invasive species population will decrease soon.

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Site Analysis (Location)

Dallas and Cedar Hill Geography

Image credit: Otto Nassar M. from Google Reviews

Image credit: Vanessa Montenegro

Image credit: Screenshot of Google Maps

My site location for my specific project is Northeast Texas, specifically Dallas, Texas. It is a physical city with about 1 million people residing in Dallas from multiple backgrounds. In this region, I have mainly focused on three state parks that are within a sixty-mile radius of Dallas: • Ray Roberts Lake State Park (60 miles) • Lake Tawakoni State Park (60 miles) • Cedar Hill State Park (20 miles)

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In Dallas, there are parks where small creeks run, such as Spring Creek Preserve, but the city is flat. For the most part, the city has electricity, internet accessibility, running water, and an interconnectedness in the community through technological devices.

Cedar Hill’s geographical features are rugged limestone bluffs, forests with dark green cedars, abundant grasslands, rolling hills, creeks, and a lake. Inside the state park, there are only solar panels that give power to campers, running water, and no internet access.

There is a dam nearby that controls the water levels.

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Ray Roberts and Lake Tawakoni Geography

History and Culture

Image credit: Tamalika Chowdhury Google Reviews

Image credit: The Portal to Texas History

Image credit: Vanessa Montenegro

There are three ecoregions in Ray Roberts Lake State Park which contain hardwood forests, prairie grasslands, and the Trinity River basin. Due to the lake, the park faces flooding issues. Like Cedar Hill, there are solar panels that give electricity to boat ramps and campers.

In Lake Tawakoni, there are 200 miles of shoreline, a river, red oak forests, prairies, and a huge lake. Like the other two state parks, it has solar panels to give electricity to campers and running water.

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For all three state parks, settlers from European countries discovered and lived in these areas to preserve the state parks’ beauty. Cedar Hill is known for the Penn Farm Agricultural Heritage Center and the city’s first settlers. Ray Roberts is known for the spearheads, hunter-gatherers, French and Spanish explorers, Native American settlements, and the forts during the Civil War. Lake Tawakoni is known for the Tawakon, Comanche, Wichita, and Waco Indian tribes settling in the land and being removed by Anglo-American settlements in the 1820s.

In Dallas, cultural centers celebrate and inform about the African American, Latin, Asian, and LGBTQ+ experiences. According to Visit Dallas, these cultures can be found in the city’s authentic arts, music, food, places of worship, historic landmarks, and urban lifestyle. Cedar Hill State Park has an agricultural center showing how the Penn family lived along with facts about the town. In Lake Tawakoni, there is only a historical marker that memorializes the lives lost in 9/11. In Ray Roberts Lake, there are mostly natural elements such as the the largest spiderweb in history.

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Transportation and Accessibility

Tourism and Entertainment

Image credit: Dart

The types of transportation that are available in the city of Dallas are: • DART buses • Trains • GoLink On-Demand • Paratransit Services • Dallas Streetcar • Uber • Lyft • TRE(DART website) Most of the residents use their car to get to places and the main routes around Dallas would be the highways that surround the city.

Most of the residents here use apps to get passes or rides from DART, Uber, Lyft, and other transportation services. The people who own cars mainly use Google Maps, Apple Maps, and GPS services.

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The types of tourism and entertainment in Dallas happen in the nightlife, holidays, and weekend days. The following are the industries that bring an economic impact(Visit Dallas): • Restaurants & food services ($10.1B) • Bars ($3.8B) • Arts & Culture ($440M) • Venues($313.4M) • Sports & Recreation ($261M)

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Economy

Demographic

Some economic factors that affect Dallas, Texas are affordable housing, unemployment rate growth, consumer price index(CPI), and GDP. According to the City of Dallas, 45 face unemployment rates, the labor force & employment for residents has about 730,000, the GDP was the highest with 41 million, CPI has been generally higher than for the U.S. over the past decade, the median sales prices have increased by 0.3%, and the home prices have increased a 3.5% over the past year.

Most of the population in Dallas have access to transportation, and outdoor equipment if they have enough income to spare, speaking from personal experience. The audience for this site analysis likes to go exploring and will try their best to do so no matter how they can.

A report by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in April of 2021 states that the parks contributed $35.9 billion to the Texas economy. These state parks generate $891 million in economic value, create 6.801 jobs, and make $18 million in sales tax revenue (TWPD).

As of March 2023, the general demographic in Dallas, Texas includes total residents, race, ethnicity, second languages, income, and households.

According to the City of Dallas website, the total population is 1,300,239, and the current median age that lives here is 33 years old.

Almost half of the population (53.8%) are White, 24% are African American, 0.5% are American Indian or Alaskan Native, 3.5% are Asian, and 42% are Hispanic. This represents the majority with almost 500 people being Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, two or more races 9.3%, some other race being 8.8%, and 23.8% foreign born.

The percentage of Spanish being a primary language is 36.5% and other languages being the primary language is 5.9%. Total households in Dallas are 515,138, the median household income is $58,231, and the per capita income is $37,719.

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Project Abstract

Design Concept Board

Image credit: Vanessa Montenegro

Through social media marketing my project informs visitors how to prevent biodiversity loss to protect the state parks. The three state parks include Cedar Hill, Ray Roberts Lake, and Lake Tawakoni State Park. Biodiversity loss affects the visitor’s experience and then the TPWD suffers from low funding which maintains the parks.

The solution is to create a fun and engaging social media presence, like the Texans for State Parks and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, to inform hikers, bikers, and any experienced/new visitors on how to conserve the biodiversity in the parks. I hope that by informing, demonstrating, and getting real input from the park rangers, anyone who is interested in outdoor activities will know what to do to keep the parks maintained on their part. This social media page will be partnered with TPWD. It will have special events to conserve the state parks, such as clean-ups, classes, and special perks for participating members.

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Design Concept

The design concept involves creating an Instagram profile that will give conservation advice to my target audience when visiting state parks surrounding the Dallas area. This profile will contain eye-catching flyers for clean-up events, vlog-styled videos of the park, interviews with the state park rangers, and content that engages the community. Pictures will be posted for the following parks, Cedar Hill, Ray Roberts Lake, and Lake Tawakoni.

The theme will be the outdoors and conservation events hosted by us and TPWD. For pictures, we will use the rule of thirds and for flyers, we will use the brand colors red, blue, green, light yellow, brown, black, and white. With this design concept, my social media platform on Instagram will help me reach my goals for the three state parks.

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Logo Ideations

The idea behind these thumbnails was to create a visual that stood for a community protecting Texas State Parks. I came up with the name “ Texas State Park Protectors” from mind-mapping phrases like Texas, state, parks, conservationists, protectors, and people.

Twenty thumbnails were created inspired by the name and the three thumbnails I chose have a star next to them.

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Guidelines DO: Use white and yellow as the background of the brandmark

Color Palette RGB : #C45B5B CMYK: 0,54,54,23

RGB : #61ABB8 CMYK: 47,7,0,28

RGB : #96836E CMYK: 0,13,27,41

RGB : #FFFFFF CMYK: 0,0,0,0

Examples of what you CAN do:

DON’T: • Change the color of the features within the logo nor the color of the font.

• Change the color of the background of the logo • Add any shadow, outline, or font changes.

• Blur any features of the illustrations • Change the size of the visuals

RGB : #D6CC87 CMYK: 0,5,37,16

RGB : #000000 CMYK: 0,0,0,100

RGB : #6DB462 CMYK: 0,54,54,23

I was inspired by the colors that I have seen or felt while out exploring state parks. Texas Heat was inspired by the heat of the sun on my skin while hiking. Lake Blue was inspired by the three lakes in Cedar Hill, Ray Roberts, and Lake Tawakoni. Dirt Brown was inspired by the dirt of the trails, Green Grass by the flora of the parks, and Shoreline Sand by the lake shores. Cloud white was inspired by the big and beautiful clouds on scenic overlooks.

They are meant to instill a calmness and appreciation of nature to the audience. These colors are used in the logos, flyers, and merch.

Examples of what NOT to do:

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Tagline

Typography Norwester

Remember to Leave No Trace

This font will be used for headlines and titles of any flyer or announcement. It will be used for the brand name on the logo and will be twice as big as the secondary font.

A brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Garamond

This font will be used for sentences on flyers or announcements. It will be half as big as the primary font.

A brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Some taglines that will be featured on our posts are reminders of what to do when our audience is visiting state parks: • “Remember to Leave No Trace” • “Appreciate Nature’s Beauty” • “Protect Wildlife” • “Protect Our Parks” Our main tagline will always be “Remember to Leave No Trace”, this will also be featured on flyers and merch.

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These fonts represent the strength and sturdiness the audience should have when protecting our state parks. Norwester is an industrial font that grabs the viewer’s attention(Canva Learning). It symbolized the strength of the organization’s mission. Garamond goes well with the Norwester font. I thought it was a clear and strong font as well. According to Designforhackers, it is a timeless font for designers to use. This matches the timeless and classic features of nature.

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Marketing

Prototype Lo-Fi

My prototype includes both my social media platform on Instagram and a website that connects. Both of these will have informative content and beautiful nature photography. The website will be used for events, blogs, and more information about our mission to our guests.

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Prototype Hi-Fi

Conclusion

Image credit: Vanessa Montenegro

The website connects my social media platform on Instagram and also gives helpful information on conservation tips through blogs and expert talks by our state park rangers. Events will be shown on our calendar and it will link to RSVP for it.

This is the website : https://nessajam41.wixsite.com/texas-state-park-pro

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In conclusion, this project aims to protect the three state parks near Dallas and have the residents garner an appreciation for the outdoors. Any time you find yourself in any state or national park, keep in mind the possible harm you could find or others could bring to them. Always try your best to leave no trace of your visit and enjoy Mother Nature’s wonderful landscapes.

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Works Cited

Works Cited Continued

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• “The Biodiversity Action Guide.”, October 11, 2022, https://www.nature.org/en-us/ what-we-do/our-insights/perspectives/biodiversity-action-guide/.

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• City of Cedar Hill. “Nature & Open Space | Cedar Hill, TX - Official Website.”, https://www.cedarhilltx.com/2905/Nature-Open-Space.

• “Clean Planet Project | Fun Volunteering | Colorado Nonprofit.”, https://www. cleanplanetproject.org/.

• “Conservation Challenges — Texas Parks & Wildlife Department.”, https://tpwd.texas. gov/education/resources/keep-texas-wild/one-state/conservation-challenges.

• “Dallas Area Demographics | City of Dallas Office of Economic Development.”, https://www.dallasecodev.org/490/Demographics.

• “Dart.”, https://www.dart.org/.

• “Diverse Dallas | Visit Dallas.”, https://www.visitdallas.com/explore/experiences/ cultural-experiences/.

• Dolan, Rebecca, et al. “Social Media Engagement Behavior: A Framework for Engaging Customers through Social Media Content.” European Journal of Marketing, vol. 53, no. 10, 2019. ABI/INFORM Global, Health Research Premium Collection, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/social-media-engagement-behavior/ docview/2293538580/se-2?accountid=7113 https://DQ4WU5NL3D.search. serialssolutions.com?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info:ofi/enc:UTF-8&rfr_ id=info:sid/ProQ%253Aabiglobal&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft. genre=article&rft.jtitle=European+Journal+of+Marketing&rft.

• “Economic Indicators | City of Dallas Office of Economic Development.”, 2023, https://www.dallasecodev.org/341/Economic-Indicators.

• Gahan, Brendan. “Deconstructing Duolingo’s Secrets to Success on TikTok.”, -1213T15:30:34+00:00, 2021, https://sproutsocial.com/insights/duolingo-tiktok-success/.

• “Garamond: Why You Don’T use this Complex Font on the Web.”, https:// designforhackers.com/blog/garamond/.

• Jordanna N. Bergman, Rachel T. Buxton, Hsien-Yung Lin, Magdalena Lenda, Kayla Attinello, Adrianna C. Hajdasz, Stephanie A. Rivest, Thuong Tran Nguyen, Steven J. Cooke, and Joseph R. Bennett. Evaluating the Benefits and Risks of Social Media for Wildlife Conservation. FACETS, 2022.

• “Lake Tawakoni FAQ.”, https://www.laketawakonitexas.com/news--lake-life--LakeTawakoni-FAQ/8024.

• “Land and Water Resources Conservation an Recreation Plan 2024.”, 2024, pp. 39-55, https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/pwdpubs/media/pwd_pl_e0100_0687_2024.pdf.

• “News Release: April 30, 2021: Texas State Parks Provide Physical, Mental and Economic Benefits for Texans - TPWD.”, April 30, 2021, https://tpwd.texas.gov/ newsmedia/releases/?req=20210430b.

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• NRPA. “Using Social Media Marketing to Promote Physical Activity and Health and Wellness in Parks.”, 2012, pp. 1-4, https://www.nrpa.org/contentassets/ f768428a39aa4035ae55b2aaff372617/social-media.pdf.

• “Owala Color Drop - Release Dates & Launch Calendar.”, https://owalalife.com/ pages/color-drop.

• “Penn Farm Agricultural Heritage Center | Visit Cedar Hill TX.”, https:// visitcedarhilltx.com/186/Penn-Farm-Agricultural-Heritage-Center.

• “Ray Roberts Lake State Park, a Texas State Park Located Near Aubrey, Denton and Frisco.”, https://stateparks.com/ray_roberts_lake_state_park_in_texas.html.

• “Social Media - Digital (U.S. National Park Service).”, July 14, 2022, https://www.nps. gov/subjects/digital/social-media.htm.

• “Think You’re an Expert in Quotes about Hiking? Read these. - Wellness Travel Diaries.”, https://wellnesstraveldiaries.com/best-quotes-about-hiking/.

• “The Ultimate Guide to Font Pairing — Learn.”, https://www.canva.com/learn/theultimate-guide-to-font-pairing/.

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