Portfolio

Vol.1

Shades of Brown The creation

The summer of 2020 was a transformative one. COVID-19 was rampant, the nation’s lungs stung with tear-gas, and the chants from the BLM protests, and the world seemed to burn with chaos. With this in everyone’s forefront, I was going through my own period of reflection and coming to terms with my racial identity. An ember of an idea came into my conscious as I continuously attempted to explain my newfound understanding of my racial identity. I remembered a site I had made for a class, sitting collecting dust on the internet and decided to resuscitate it to continue my journey. In a creative frenzy, I wrote my article titled Guess What, I’m Black and then began to create an aesthetic that matched the tone and theme of the writing. Before I knew it, I had made a kind of brand identity for a single piece of writing. I decided that my voice wasn’t the only one pertinent to this topic and I began to recruit others to help me with this passion project. There were a few provisions to the people I chose; they had to be Black but not African-American (the series is dedicated to creating a voice for misrepresented people of color from different cultures and sharing how their culture and color intersect in their daily life), they had to be well-connected (either on social media or in a professional setting), and they had to be passionate about educating others and themselves about this topic. I quickly recognized several people around me that were highly involved in activism and used their voices and platforms for good. I worked with each contributor to create a schedule and gave them promotional materials, cohesive to the series branding, for them to push out on their social media anticipating the release date. This passion project that started with a 19 year old girl wanting to share her newfound understanding about her identity became a series with incredible guest contributors and reached thousands of people across twenty different countries. I am incredibly proud of this series and the quality of the content produced and I hope to make more like it in the future.

Vol.2

Marquette Votes Branding Lead

Regardless of what political opinions you have, I think everyone can agree that the 2020 presidential election was one to remember. I was ecstatic when I was asked to lead a group of interns for a new initiative on campus to encourage students to vote. Marquette Votes was born and I knew that to become a recognized organization, we had to have cohesive branding. I set out to make a branding guide for Marquette Votes, complete with a logo I made, logo usage rules, brand colors, verified resources, and who to contact for help. I passed along the branding guide to the whole of the organization and presented it to my group of interns with some added details on tone and aesthetic. Each intern was the designated ambassador to a certain department or class in Marquette University so I worked with each one to create specialized advertisements and resource guides for their specific area. I was also able to brainstorm and put advertisements into motion that shared voter registration information, mail-in voting locations, and resources in general pertaining to the election. I am very thankful that I was asked to work on this project because we saw tangible results on a very relevant and important event. This was the first presidential election I was eligible to vote in and being so involved in the effort to help others vote was incredibly rewarding and paralleled my reasons for joining the advertising world in the first place.

Vol.3

Marquette Gymnastics – Founder

I found myself hesitantly pondering an impossible question, “Do I accept a ride from a complete stranger (a female’s mind always goes straight to serial killer) or do I brave the 2 hour bus ride alone, at night, in a city with one of the highest crime rates in the US?”. Ultimately I chose the stranger and I was incredibly lucky that they showed the compassion and generosity that they did that day. You may be wondering why and how on Earth I found myself alone at night at a gymnasium and the answer would be rooted in my love for gymnastics. I am fiercely independent, albeit sometimes to a fault, and I was determined to find a way to continue doing what I love. Fourteen years. That’s how long I was a gymnast for. I wasn’t ready to give it up when I went to college at Marquette University and found that they didn’t have a gymnastics team. After my harrowing experience I decided that I should not need to put myself in harm’s way to practice gymnastics, I would start a club at Marquette. I researched and asked around and finally got in contact with the director of recreational sports, who informed me that I would need to come up with a list of 20 students who were interested, a 3 year budget, a facility to practice in, a mode of transportation, and a proposal to present to the board. I took on this monumental task with no previous knowledge and was able to put it together in less than 2 months. I created advertisements and pushed it out on my social media, leveraged my connections to the Marquette Student Government social media and several school fraternities and sororities to release the flyer, and handed out the flyer to the gymnasiums on campus and had them put them up on bulletin boards. Before I knew it my phone and email were flooded with students eager to learn about the club and join. I partnered with another student, who reached out to me after hearing about the club, and together we contacted gyms around the area and got price quotes, developed a budget, fundraised, and advertised the club. We were able to advertise through shoutouts at school talks and functions, social media, print media, word of mouth, and were even featured in the school newspaper and a segment in the school TV channel.

Newspaper: https://tinyurl.com/ejwtwv98

TV: https://youtu.be/uG0Ds7KRqvA?t=722

I am proud to say that we are now a recognized sports club with over 50 members and a full executive board. We have worked hard to organize the club and train officers so they are set up for a future of success.