JDA joins with Canon and SCORE at an Event for Small Business Owners

On September 30, 2016, we were invited by Canon USA to be a part of a small business outreach event at their beautiful Canon Experience Center in Costa Mesa, CA. Co-hosted by Canon and SCORE (a nonprofit association dedicated to helping small businesses), the evening for the 123 attendees featured speakers, photographers, product demos, and us—JDA. David Jensen, Patty Jensen and Stephanie Han were on hand to provide design advice to small business owners on whatever marketing materials they had questions about.

When 6pm rolled around people started trickling in, and the first couple of people wandered into our area looking very confused about why they were directed there. After that inauspicious start, things got busy very fast. We did our very best to provide helpful feedback in the shortest time possible, and I think for the most part we did a pretty good job. The word started to get around and soon there was a line forming for our little area. It was basically non-stop design evaluations from 6 - 8:30pm, everything from logos and business cards to web sites and even company naming. Most of the attendees had never worked with professional designers so it was nice to be able to explain what we do and how we bring greater value to the design process than someone churning out logos on fiver.com (which was what most people used, if they used any kind of service at all). Even though it was a rather grueling 2.5 hours, at the end of it we felt pretty exhilarated to have met all the people we did and felt a sense of accomplishment that we were able to provide good advice. We also got some nice kudos from our contacts and Canon so it was a successful event for us overall!

Here are some photos from the event:

- Stephanie Han

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