COMD 4900 Internship

Finishing Up Banners and Video and Reflecting

For this week I got some more input on the banners and the video that I was working on. My supervisor gave the feedback of changing the colors around on the banner. Instead of using two similar colors of blue together in the design, he suggested changing it to white in order to increase the contrast with the dark blue background.

The text changed is the “You Click”, “Learn More” and the logotype. My supervisor was accepting of changing the color of the logo itself to white in order to make it stand out more within the design and the new addition of white makes things stand out much more when compared to the older design.

The other banner received similar changes as well, but there were some other major changes made to this one alongside with changing the color of text. Here I decided to get rid of the image of the man celebrating and instead of him add in some text about the $1,000 donation to charity. The $4,000 text was increased in size and moved to the left. The “You Click, We Donate” tagline was sent to the right alongside with the button to learn more and both were changed to a white color. The logo was then placed under the charity text and the text of the logo was changed to white as well. I also wanted to have the prize be more impactful and I figured the best way to do that was by increasing the size of the prize money text.

The final banner also received similar changes to the other banners. The light blue color was changed to white on the tagline and on the logo. In this case there weren’t many other changes made to it apart from the blue.

The same treatment was done for the GIF as well.

As for the final video, I increased the time of some parts of the video in order to be easier to read, as I had the video play a little too fast for people to read.

The Video

Reflecting on the internship experience

Working for Giving Forward was very interesting. The actual design process was done in tandem with reaching out to influencers, crafting messages that could be sent out to as many people as possible all in an effort to get more people to sign up for the sweepstakes and donate money to charity.

The experience of having to do some PR for the company was all very new to me and I didn’t expect to have to do this type of work for the organization. I volunteered to create the banners, a gif, and also a video and my progress with them was discussed on a weekly basis with one on one meetings with my supervisor and the feedback given helped to shape what they required of me and how we should move forward.

Weekly meetings with my supervisor and the leader of the organization also provided some insight and strategies for how to tackle the problem of getting people to sign up, and there was also a street event set up where the non-profit partnered with the New York Blood Center to promote blood donations for World Blood Donor Day. There was a meeting discussing that event and where it would be located, and I joined the team there to give out drinks and promote the sweepstakes and the NYBC blood drive as well. It had very little to do with my major but it was a change from what I was used to and allowed me to experience how some fundraisers and charity organizations do some of the work to spread awareness about their causes. These meetings also held me accountable to what I was working on for the organization, with revisions being made to my work and discussing what my plan would be for the week.

Having to attend the weekly meetings also provided me with a chance to showcase what I was working on, and it was during these meetings that we received feedback on our work and what we should fix or change.

The amount of work done for the internship was something that I didn’t expect to have to do, such as sending out messages to influencers and doing some on the ground work handling out flyers and drinks to passerby. But it showed me that sometimes there are things that happen outside of the scope of my abilities that I have to tackle and learn from.

Interning with this non-profit has been a great experience. I was given free rein to create whatever graphic work I needed in order to spread the sweepstakes as much as possible. The assets provided and the initial interview all showed me that there are different uses for graphic design. The work I created for the company is something that I’m proud of and it is something that can be used by the organization in their efforts to raise money for other non-profits and charities that need it. And since I can also enter the sweepstakes, there’s a chance that this unpaid internship might become a paid internship if I’m lucky enough.

PDF’s and audio of this page

Final Edits and Reflections; #7 – English PDF

Final Edits and Reflections; #7 – Spanish PDF

Translation and audio generated by software

COMD 4900 Internship

Weekly Meetings, Teamwork, and Time Management

For this week there were a few hiccups with the structures of meetings. My supervisor had contracted COVID and so he was out of commission for a while, unable to attend meetings with the group of volunteers and individual meetings with us as well. But he gave us a look into the work being done for other projects that are running concurrently with the sweepstakes as well as informing us of what the next project might be.

One of the options that was discussed was increasing the prize money from $4,000 to $10,000 for the next sweepstakes. Our supervisor gave us some insight into how that would need to happen, including how he needed to have the proper paperwork in order to send it to a bond broker. It was interesting to learn about that since I had no idea about how a sweepstakes worked behind the scenes, and it’s interesting to learn about the legal requirements that need to be met in order to have a prize of that quantity.

As for the project and assignments I’ve been given, there has been some work done on the animated gif for one of the banners. The banner that I wanted to animate is this one:

I wanted to keep it simple in the animation since a bigger effect could mean a larger file size, so I wanted to have a simple fade in to the elements in the design. The text would fade in first, and the other circles and rings would follow soon after. My plan was to use Adobe Animate, but I didn’t have much experience with the software and the learning curve could prove to be steep. But I gave it a try with the help of the Creative Cloud tutorials as well as some YouTube videos on how to navigate the software and how to create simple animations. What I completed was the following:

There were some small issues with this though. The logo for the organization is barely noticeable and the text is much too small to be legible at a quick glance. The size of the banner also plays a part in making things harder to see, and having an image scaled down to that size doesn’t work too well. Some changes had to be made.

First, I needed to get rid of the image and rely on type hierarchy and the circles and rings to create an impactful design. I also want to add something other than a picture to draw people in. Using the prize money of $4,000 would be better in this situation as I can easily have that be a larger part of the design and also have something that people can look at and be curious about. I also want to include the charity donation of $1,000 as well to create a sense of goodwill and make it seem less like a scam website or something along those lines. So I made some changes:

This new version incorporates the money prize, the logo and the tagline all together in a more engaging way. The animation done here is more dramatic in order to bring more attention to the prize money, and the contrast in colors helps to show the most important parts of the campaign. This was submitted to my supervisor for review but he will most likely get back to me once he recovers from COVID.

The work that was done so has been very productive. All of my projects are coming along well, with edits now being made by my supervisors. There have been suggestions made in the staff chat that also contribute to what something looks like, and many other members of the organization offer feedback. The video I am working on, for example, has been viewed by a lot of other people and there have been comments made on it.

I like that there is this group feedback because it gives me a lot more options to consider when I need to make any edits. For example, the banner here had the changes made after showing it to the rest of the team. That’s when my supervisor wanted to use the Win $4,000 and the $1,000 charity donation on the banners as well. The communication between all of us is very good and we keep up with the conversations we are having with regards to progress and updates.

COMD 4900

Final Video Edits and Reflections

For this week I sent the first version of the video to my supervisors for review. The version I had sent them was met with some adjustments they wanted to be made.

First, they wanted me to include the following information on the video:

The $4,000 prize and the $1,000 donation was to be added to the video, not just at the end of it but also along with the other elements of the video. One suggestion they had was to add it like so:

The information they wanted on there was to be added at my discretion and I had to revise my work in order to include it in the video and to go along with the theme of what someone could spend the $4,000 prize money on.

So I decided to have the video continue with that question by adding the information like this:

I re-worded the information to better fit the question that is being posed in the graphic elements in the video. I already had the initial question of “How would you spend $4,000?” so I felt like having “Win $4,000” right after that would be redundant. My supervisors wanted the $4,000 prize to be seen as much as possible to incentivize people to sign up for the sweepstakes and also having the additional $1,000 for charity could also help with attracting people. Another objective of this video was to have it be a part of the outreach message to influencers and could help give a quick explanation of how the sweepstakes works. It would be an additional item that could be sent out to multiple influencers at once.

After working with the organization for a few weeks its become apparent to me that they are very committed to reaching out to many different people with large followings in order to maximize the reach of their platforms. Their online platform has multiple avenues that they provide people with as part of joining with them, and the efforts that are made by the teams is quite incredible. They are constantly looking for more people to be a part of the organization and the contact lists that they have number in the thousands.

But of course there are some things that have also stuck out to me in a way that has made me think carefully about what my role has been. The work that I was given was all about creating content that can be sent to influencers to have them help with spreading the sweepstakes around to their followers. It felt as though most of my work has been done solely towards this goal of increasing the number of people who are signing up, which I believe is a part of graphic design. I have to create something eye-catching and interesting enough for people to stop and to look at and hopefully increase the interest in the sweepstakes, something which is at the core of graphic design. We have to be able to have people remember the work and to have them perceive the meaning and intentions behind the art.

This project was different from what I had previously done in school mostly because it feels as though I may have been creating something that I myself would later have to promote and send out to other people as opposed to just submitting it to my supervisor and leaving it at that. I had to be able to use my work in conjunction with my writing skills to increase the effectiveness of the outreach for the sweepstakes, and that alone made it challenging for me. I had to step out of my comfort zone and essentially cold-call people with large followings across the internet, which is something I never thought I’d have to do. But it has been a great learning experience and I can’t wait to see what the results might be from this.

COMD 4900 Internship

Updates on the Sweeps for a Cause Project

For this week we discussed increasing the numbers of donations given to the sweepstakes and how we can continue reaching out to influencers. One option that was discussed during the meeting was to have some video element that could be created and sent out to the influencers. One other volunteer responded saying that he was working on an introductory video that could help any influencer that was willing to work with us navigate the Good Buzz platform that the organization had, as it was a little difficult to navigate through at first.

From that project I volunteered to create a video for Instagram that could also be used to send to influencers as well that detailed how the prize of $4,000 could be merchandized as well as how to enter and how to donate.

 

For the video I want to have the options for spending the $4,000 prize in a few different ways. I use a vacation, date night, and a shopping spree are what I want to use for the video. I also want to have the circles and rings that are found on the logo of Sweeps for a Cause in the design in the background.

For the first version of the design I used a circular crop of a picture that was provided by the organization. I added the word vacation to it but it felt like it wasn’t interesting enough to use. So I decided to use another picture and another approach to adding the word vacation.

 

As mentioned before, this was the picture that I planned on using for the video and for other social media graphics. I chose this picture because it has strong contrast with the yellow of the trees and the blue ocean, and also because it has a strong diagonal moving across the image that I want to use as part of the final piece.

 

For the newer version of the design I had the text behind the landmarks in the picture, creating a feeling of a diegetic design. I also had the text reach all the way across the circle, blending into the background to create a more dynamic and interesting type treatment. I had to be careful with placing the text since I still wanted the word vacation to be legible, but there were some sacrifices that needed to be made with the letter “A”, since I had to have it partially hidden but have there be enough of it visible to be recognizable as an “A”.

From this design I continued on to the other two designs for “Date Night” and “Shopping Spree” using a similar method.

The image here was provided by the organization in the assets we were given for design. For this version I had a similar type treatment where parts of the word are covered by the image of the champagne glass and the stream of champagne. However there were some changes here with the type. Instead of having the word be completely covered by the image, I reduced the opacity of the letters that were being covered by the image, such as the glass over the letters creating a sort of opaqueness to the text.

And the final part of the video, the shopping spree. Much like the others it has the same type treatment to it, this time having the watch and the pants covering the text. This picture was also provided by the organization for us to use.

Now to bring it all together. The video was to be created using Canva in order to have other volunteers provide feedback and make any changes if needed. By using the built in mobile video templates for the size it made it easier to have the correct dimensions for an Instagram reel. I wanted to leave the background white with the colors of the logo used for the circles and rings that would fade in and out along with the text to create movement. The first shot will show the tagline of “How will you spend $4,000?”.

The Video