A resume can only say so much...
Welcome to my portfolio.
Coe College
Kohawk Day Advancement Fundraising Campaign
Recently, I worked with my design team to produce the campaign materials for the Coe College advancement team's day of giving, #KohawkDay. We produced a large number of digital graphics (web, social, email), a T-shirt, a save-the-date postcard with magnet, a thank you postcard and an infographic among other items. The campaign raised over half-a-million dollars in June 2020.
Coe College Viewbooks
The Coe College viewbooks are some of the largest admissions print publications that I was the project lead for. These 20ish page booklets of course involve many hours from the design team, proof-reading by myself and team, as well as the coordination and collection of information from many different areas of the college. We have even won American Advertising Federation awards for these projects. You can download the Student Life Viewbook here.
Student Life Conference Room Environmental Branding
A very fun recent project was the environmental branding for the Office of Student Life's conference room. I was given a budget of about $12,000 to completely renovate the space. This involved many moving pieces like shipping and assembling furniture, scheduling installations and painting as well as many different design drafts. The picture above includes the main wall vinyl, all new seating and a new tabletop vinyl with custom glass. You can see the before picture here. Quite the upgrade if I do say so myself!
Admitted Student Drawstring Bag Invitation
This project may seem simple, but I include it because it took a lot of creativity and resourcefulness to ensure we got the best ROI. To invite admitted prospective students to an on-campus visit, we sent them a Coe College branded drawstring bag with a postcard. Despite an initial shipping estimate of $4-$5 per unit, my objective was too keep the cost per unit (shipping & materials) under $4 per unit. After exploring a variety of materials at various sizes, studying USPS regulations and experimentation, I landed on a clear envelope, folding the bag very specifically so it would be flat enough to ship as a large envelope rather than a package, a cardstock postcard with chipboard to ensure it met flexibility standards and lastly a custom shipping label that we were able to print and cut in-house on an adhesive paper. After much determination, we sent these eye-catching mailers to thousands of prospective students for less than $2 per unit including shipping and materials (thousands of dollars under budget!) Download the postcard and shipping label.
Marketing+Design
MLK Jr. Celebration Week 2019
I had the honor of facilitating materials for the 2019 University of Iowa MLK Jr. Celebration Week. The week consisted of different events and took coordination between marketer and client to ensure accuracy. We wanted to reach both students and faculty, so we developed many different print installations, as well as digital signage for around campus. This campaign also included t-shirts, stickers and buttons.
Lecture Committee
One of my favorite clients at M+D was the Lecture Committee. Bringing multiple renowned speakers to the Iowa campus each semester, lectures in years before me included celebrities Woody Harrelson and Jane Goodall. I had the privilege to develop marketing for speakers such as political commentator Cokie Roberts, actor Common, and activist Ron Stallworth (The BlacKKKlansman). Keys to these projects are staying within branding guidelines, and paying extreme attention to detail. These projects include print installations, digital signage and social media graphics.
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UI Multicultural Center Logos
An extremely rewarding project I worked on at M+D was developing a set of logos for the University's cultural centers. This involved hosting focus groups with students and staff to determine how they wanted these to look. Our goal was to develop four logos that clearly belong to a set, but exude their own personality through color pallets, patterns and shapes. Many different sets were proposed, but the ones pictured were eventually selected.
Office of the President Pride Materials
Each summer, the University of Iowa President's residence hosts a luncheon in honor of Pride. This past year, they were also in the parade. I coordinated invitations, directional signage and the graphic above was printed on a 6-foot vinyl parade banner. The challenge was using traditional Pride colors, while ensuring the university was represented using the trademarked "block IOWA" in UI gold. This took clear communication between myself/client and myself/design team. We were all extremely happy with the results!
Hawk Shop Product Photoshoots and Web Formatting
One of my most unique roles of my job at M+D was acting as art director and coordinator for Iowa Hawk Shop photoshoots. This involved intense organization, heavy scheduling, collaborating with photographers and designers, recruiting models and developing an attention to detail/visual eye for how to portray these products. Once we had the final result, I was responsible for uploading the final product to the website for online purchase.
Managing Social Media for the Iowa Hawk Shop
After being hired at M+D, I was asked to become a social media manager. During my two years there, I developed content and tracked analytics on the 3 main social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This included campaign, Hawk of the Month, which was a successful engagement campaign. We also expanded to the app, Pocket Points. The Facebook page had 13k+ followers and growing, and Instagram saw steady growth. Related to this, I also sent out mass emails using MailChimp when we had sales, and I would have special on-location photoshoots to get content outside the studio.
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Hosting a Study Break Video for Division of Student Life
Initially hesitant, I'm glad that I agreed to host a study break video for the Division of Student Life. These videos are shared throughout social media and posted to YouTube, and meant to be a brief entertaining mental break for UI students. This is a fun example of going outside my comfort zone to take on new challenges. You can watch the video here!
Other
Innovation Center Marketing Institute Project
My first assignment with the Marketing Institute was an amazing learning experience. Our team was tasked with conducting focus groups and secondary research in order to present and make recommendations to the Dean of the College of Business. Our challenge was to enhance the UI's new innovation center, a multi-million dollar project. Learn about their plan here. The planning committee will be taking concepts from each team's pitch to incorporate in the final project. This was a great opportunity to be involved in such an important initiative. Download our presentation here!
Vermicomposting Workshop Presentation
I had a wonderful time creating this short presentation and presenting it at a University of Iowa Gardeners meeting to a crowd of around 50 people. This began as a project for my Marketing & Sustainability course, and I took it a bit further. The event was promoted on Facebook, materials were donated and I taught the crowd about how they could reduce their carbon footprint. This combined two of my interests: marketing and sustainability. Download the presentation here.
International Marketing Product Analysis
This is a throwback to a project from my first major level marketing course; International Marketing. I would certainly change many things about this project now that it has been a few years and I have grown professionally, but I still enjoy remembering this project because it taught me to look at products and scenarios more holistically. Approaching ideas with a holistic point of view is something I find most important in competitive markets because one tiny mistake can change an entire campaign. Download the presentation here.