This week I assisted in more designed social media post. I created a post for Facebook and Instagram talking about two animals my organization has; a popular horse and goat. It was a lighthearted post, talking about how protective the horse became over the goat getting a vet procedure done. I also created an animated post for their social media stories, hinting at some big news we will reveal very soon.
They were invited to be host for the training of a new local Special Olympics team, so we are working on getting the word out while also guiding people to the newsletter and push for donations. I want to help them build a stronger brand story and identity online so people will understand right away what they do and why. Since managing their social media, I’ve helped them hit 80 followers on Instagram.
Next Steps
During our meeting, we spoke about their next plans, what we could do to improve their website and the amount of newsletter sign ups. I advised we make finding the newsletter sign up link more visible and accessible to those who view the website. Every week, I also update the data charts I created and shared with my supervisors, which keep track of our social media data.
I’ve been very busy working for my supervisors this week. With the load of my school projects and my other job, I’ve been stretched very thin this week. For my internship, I was asked to reach out to an equestrian trainer for a collaboration via email. She wishes to help us get ready for the Special Olympics, along with helping us strengthen our Facebook growth approach. I appreciated this because although I’ve been helping the company consistently grow on Instagram since I started, Facebook has been stubborn and has not budged in likes and followers.
I’ve been feeling a bit deflated because of this and it began to make me question my abilities as a whole. When talking of confidence in your skills as a designer, I know it’s important to remind myself of all the other things I’m good at and what I’ve helped the company accomplish so far. Waiting on a reply from the trainer, I finished editing and scheduled another Instagram to post today.
I was also emailed and asked to start another Instagram post to speak of the equestrian trainer, so that will be my focus for this week. I will also be working on other tasks such as updating the social media data chart and researching how to get the company on the Facebook marketplace. It’s been a lot for me this past week, but I’m hoping I can better manage things this week, at least mentally.
This week, I spent some more time editing their anniversary carousel post. I had hit a bit of a block when it came to choosing the colors due to them only really having one brand color to work with. I went through 3 different color palettes before getting to the one that seemed to work the best. Their main brand color is a very deep green, so I first started with using orange as a complimentary color but it didn’t seem to flow well with their organization. It seemed too bright for a more nature-based non-profit, being on a farm working with both animals and people. I then tried a tan color with the green, but then the post just seemed too dark and serious with the dark green as the main background color.
Using their brand color green, I took tones of it and used those as the other brand colors, giving them a monochromatic color palette. Using a lighter, almost-white green tone for the background, it gave a more fun feeling to the post, which is what the non-profit really seems like. It helped with the hierarchy development of the post layout as well because the text is the darker green, drawing the attention to where it needs to be.
Besides the anniversary post edits, I managed their socials some more. From our meeting, I was given some accounts to look into and possibly follow, such as a non-profit called Next for Autism. I was also advised to follow Sosie Bacon, the daughter of Kevin Bacon, due to her being very involved in equestrian organizations and farm life. Along with the recommendations, I followed some more accounts based on what I found through other follows, going down a non-profit rabbit hole. After trying to network through their accounts, I created a social media data chart to help keep track of followers on Facebook and Instagram and see how much we grow within each week.
After my social media tasks, I went back to design work and began editing a website pop-up graphic and an email newsletter graphic. We discussed wanting to gain more traction on their newsletters, so I thought it would be good to create some graphics to hold people’s attention more while also separating the information more efficiently. People get discouraged from reading something when the text seems very dense. To help with this, I began working on what I could create to separate the topics within the newsletter. Having a nice website pop-up graphic to get people’s attention of the newsletter would hopefully help with more sign ups to the newsletter.
Hello, I’m Ariana Dejesus, a Communication Design major at New York City College of Technology.
This blog is meant for you to be able to follow me on my Spring 2023 internship journey!
Photographed by Ariana Dejesus
A little bit about me
I’m focusing on advertising, but I have experience in brand identity design, package design, photography, and animation. I’m skilled in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere and Lightroom. I can also read in Korean. I’m very interested in learning how to make better animations, so I’m in the process of learning how to use Blender as well.
Getting the position
I began my search for an internship early, around November 2022. Through City Tech’s internship site, I found a great non-profit. They focus on assisting teens and adults with disabilities gain job-readiness skills through equine-assisted learning. I reached out via email with my resume and a cover letter, which lead to a virtual interview about a week later. During the interview, speaking with the two future supervisors felt so easy. They hired me right after the interview and we went straight into getting the paperwork completed. I was all set by Thanksgiving, giving me a chance to focus on the remaining classes in my Fall 2022 semester.
For my first week, we listed a lot of ideas we could possibly get to by the end of the internship during our meeting. I was offered to take a one hour, online workshop held by a designer CEO of her own creative agency for food, beverage, and agricultural brands. She gave insight on how to set attainable goals for your company and then make a plan to reach them. It was a good start to the internship because it helped get my thought process shaped into what would benefit the non-profit more.
With the workshop, more research was to be conducted during the week. I looked into direct competitors, similar non-profits, and more social media managing strategies. I’ve had internships before, but this is the first time I’m dealing so closely with a company’s social media, so I’m determined to see how much I can help them grow.
Their anniversary is approaching! We touched on this during the interview phase, so it seems that this will definitely be where their focus lies for now. To celebrate and create an announcement, I planned on creating an Instagram carousel post since they had never posted one before. I began working on sketches for the layout for this along with following other nonprofits, larger organizations, either equestrian/farm related or disability related, and checking hashtags for what is popular.
