Student Activities Board Graphic Design/Social Media
Northwest University's Student Activities Board puts on all of the fun events for their undergraduate students. Their mission is create an opportunity for students to make friends, connections, and a sense of belonging.
In this student leadership position at Northwest University, I designed shirts, stickers, graphics, and created video content while developing project management skills. I also creatively managed social media to increase student engagement, showcasing expertise in logo design, print design, digital media, video editing, advertising, storytelling, and creative direction.
Here is some of my work.
Social Media Graphics
Logos for Events
Mr. Northwest (Mar 2022)
Mr. Northwest is an NU (Northwest University) tradition where each living area's floor nominates one male representative to showcase their talent and compete for the title of "Mr. Northwest". Every year there is a different theme for Mr. Northwest and our team settled on the theme "Beach Boys".
My role in this event was to create a logo, social media graphics, TV displays, posters, meet with videographer to create promo videos, write a script and direct a short-film featuring the contestants that plays at the start of the event and explains a fictional narrative correlating to the theme.
Logo:
My first task was to create a logo which captures the beach boys theme within 1 week.
I started my thought process by thinking of different things that relate to beach boys such as surfing, palm trees, waves, Volkswagen vans, sunshine, etc.
I then brought my thoughts to life with a poorly drawn sketch on my notes app. After illustrating my thoughts I then looked up inspiration such as surf shop logos, fonts, 1960' California surf.
I then brought the sketch into illustrator and started to look for the right fonts, test out different shapes for the logo.
I was struggling to make a simple yet creative design until I got helpful and brutally honest feedback from my team which led to the final logo. I chose orange, blue, and cream as the primary colors for the logo because orange and blue compliment each other and resemble the ocean and warm sky during the sunset.
Here is the different phases of the logo's creation.
Marketing – Video
After creating the logo I worked with the SAB videographer to create a narrative as to why the contestants are competing for the title of Mr. Northwest.
At the time I bought a random keychain that was a mini version of the beach/hippie Volkswagen van. After the countless hours looking at inspiration for the logo and seeing those vans, then remembering my keychain, I made the connection and got an idea.
The contestants are competing to see who is the best beach boy and the prize is a new car (the van).
We then started to write a character for each contestant, giving them a story and a reason why they want to win so much. Why do they need a car? Why do they care?
We ran into an obstacle of "how do we explain and transition this video well enough into the actual event where they compete?" So I thought it would be funny to say it was originally a surf competition, but since we live in Kirkland, WA there would be no waves.
The video would explain that instead of a surfing competition they would instead compete with their talents which transitioned into the start of the event.
Working on this video took networking, collaboration, project management, and creative directing skills.
This video connects to the marketing because it gave us direction on how we would promote the event on Instagram and throughout the campus.
You can watch the final product below:
Marketing – Graphics
After creating a narrative and making the video, we had to build hype for the event and promote. Keep in mind the students have not seen the video yet because it supposed to premiere at the start of the event.
The first graphic I made for the event was the basic event poster that would be printed out and hung up all around the campus. I also created digital versions for social media posts and stories.
I went for an old newspaper theme because I wanted to reference the story of the contestants seeing the advertisement of the competition as if it were an ad in the newspaper.
I also had to make graphics that were formatted to display on the TV screens across campus.
I had fun with the TV displays as I made a default graphic and one for all 6 contestants that included a funny quote they said in the video. Fun fact: I used some of my Lightroom skills to edit the photos of the contestants to make it look grainy.
Mr. Northwest is one of many other different events I had to strategically market with the Student Activities Board team. I grew in my graphic design, story writing, directing, communication, video editing, and iteration skills through this event.
