TEAM
Jeffrey Omura, Candidate · Erin Koster, Campaign Manager · Jessica Wu, Head of Communications · Adam Green, Treasurer · Alyssa Gomez, Jr. Designer
Jeffrey Omura, Candidate · Erin Koster, Campaign Manager · Jessica Wu, Head of Communications · Adam Green, Treasurer · Alyssa Gomez, Jr. Designer
COVID-19 is having a direct impact on our small town economy and health. Many community members were trying to donate their time via social media, but it was unorganized and getting lost in all of the other messaging and content. How would I make these vital volunteer connections to bring relief to those in need during the COVID-crisis?
I was determined to prototype a new product that helped make volunteer connections easy. I built out a solid brand with clear brand messaging, a simple and easy-to-use user experience, and created an online social presence in partnership with www.townmag.co.
I had over 50 volunteers use this platform to post their information. The one downfall was that I could not know (and for good reason) if the product was working. I sent various follow up surveys to volunteers to see if they were reached out to for relief - and the rate of use was around 25%, which exceeded my expetations.
Jennifer Wehrmaker, VP of Marketing · Melissa Gieringer, Head of Communications · Beatt Productions, Videography and Production · Rajvi Bhatt · Sr. Email Marketer · Jennifer Cho, Jr Designer · Kush Patel, Jr Marketer · Mary Delawder, Sr. Developer
The secondary market for returned, excess, and broken inventory doesn’t have the best reputation; think middlemen, back-alley transactions, craigslist meet-ups. B-Stock’s product offering is a platform that allows businesses to sell their overstock in a more transparent and direct way to other business buyers. How do you brand and market a tool that transforms an industry, especially one that hasn’t changed for years?
We decided after a design-thinking offsite, that a rebrand of the business was necessary to build trust within the industry from both buyers and sellers and establish ourselves as thought leaders in the liquidation space. We wanted to, not only create a solid brand, but to take it a step further with a brand story. Our goal was to confront the ‘seedy’ side of the industry, and to show that our platform was the solution to the liquidation problem. We set out to update brand design, create relevant content, relaunch a new corporate website and with a bit of 5th grade humor, confront the issues that plague the industry with a specific campaign upon launch.
The year 2020 provided a time for reflection, and as the founder and creator of TownMag.co, I knew it needed a rebrand after 5 years running. With growth in mind, and more definitive brand and cultural values, I needed to make sure this brand represented everything that TownMag.co had become.
I created a new brand that was more inclusive of other communities and school systems if this product were to expand. I also made sure to make the brand more accessible from typefaces to color scheme. The product itself has been improved, with more accessible way for users to submit their alumni stories via video, voice, or text. Read more about it here.
High school is an incredibly important and challenging time in life and big decisions are made right when students graduate. American public schools are like bubbles, and though safe, they can shield a lot of important information. Alumni of public schools usually leave and never return to tell their stories, especially young adults on the cusp of their careers. How can I create a space for alumni to share their stories with high school students?
I set out to create a product in the form of a website that allowed alumni to share their own stories for current high school students to read. help future generations reach new heights and discover a multitude of divergent paths in life beyond the doors of Watertown High School.
We took TOWN and pushed it into reality. In April of 2018 and 2019, I partnered with WHS to host a Townies Talk Panel at Watertown High School and an Alumni Networking Dinner at Fino Wood Fired Pizza. Alumni Story Tellers were invited to return to the high school to share their stories, answer questions, and inspire current WHS students. We were excited to be off-line and in real-life, to share ideas, and inspire the community! We really appreciate the teachers who encouraged students to attend the event and we think the 90 minutes was valuable time that not only helped students understand specific careers paths, but also life in general.
Behailu offered graphic design and photography courses to their after-school students. I was tasked with teaching them to use the Adobe Suite and the fundamentals of graphic design. What curriculum strategy will empower young high school students to excel at learning the principals of graphic design, the tools and basics of Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects and inDesign, while creating higher self esteem and exploring themselves and their own power?
After my first semester at Behailu, the second semester allowed me to refine and change my approach. Students were not interested in the technicalities of graphic design or learning about the pen tool; I realized quickly I needed to engage them in a different, more meaningful way. The one thing teenagers are most intrigued with? Themselves. I made sure to incorporate self-exploration throughout the remainder of the curriculum. Quickly, the projects they were completing were beautiful, honest, and skilled. View full curriculum here.
Objective: Students will learn to give a productive critique of each others work. Every student will have a chance to show their work but will not talk about it until after we critique it. We will start on a new tutorial about typography and image and how to combine them effectively.
Objective: Students are going to use their photography and Photoshop skills to explore how to express emotion and movement through their own portraits.
Objective: Students will work together to take photographs of their own hands and through design and self reflection, they will envision what lies in the palm of their own hands, acknowledging their own power to attain their dreams and goals.
Objective: Partnering with the Behailu poetry class, we will be taking students poems and laying them out on a poster for them to display while combining visuals that represent the poem.
Objective: Students are going to use their wildest imagination and put our Photoshop collaging skills to the test. Jumping into what Surrealism is and the history of surrealism, students will then create their own surrealist scenes.
Objective: Students explore how typography and image can be combined to create meaning, and how to combine them effectively.
Michael Lattig, VP of Marketing · Adam Vollmer, Founder and CEO · Lily Roosevelt, Marketer
The bicycle industry is an industry where there are many one time purchases of the product. Successful brands however, convert their buyers into brand ambassadors and into lifestyle brands. How does an electric bicycle start up not only sell their product and lifestyle brand, but encourage others to sell it for them?
In an effort to engage our customers past the point of just buying our product, we started building a brand that focused on the electric bike lifestyle and also encouraged our buyers to become brand ambassadors. We created the Faraday Riders Club and amped up social media outreach. We used the solid marketing base of the Faraday community to launch a new product via kickstarter, and raised above and beyond the goal to get the bike into production.
Inspiring students to be excited about computer coding could be a pretty hard sell. Inspiring students to love math is overall an incredible feat. How do you brand a curriculum-based product to 6th graders and inspire them to learn more? On top of that, how do you create a math workbook that is on brand but also designed for optimum usability?
The goal of the brand is to show students how they can actually be superheroes by learning to code and present the many different ways they can use their ‘coding super powers’ in their futures. Their first superpower task? Creating a video game (who doesn’t love that?) To redesign this brand and the math workbook, I used a human-centered design approach, visiting classrooms in Boston, interviewing teachers and students. You can read more about the design-thinking process and my thesis here: Senior Thesis: Exploring Human-Centered Design