EMERGE is over! I can't believe this semester is almost complete. The team did an awesome job at completing high quality graphics on time, and I was very impressed with the overall flow of the graphics and branding that we created for Emerge. The day of the conference went smoothly, and the marketing leading up to it was incredible. I really enjoyed watching the social media graphics get published on the day of. They look very consistent online! The challenge of creating graphics was exciting, and I am very happy that we have some great graphics to improve our portfolio. Yay Graphics Team!
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This week we had a lot of requests from people that did not use the Google form, but I think we did a good job of directing them to it. We are trying to accommodate last minute requests as much as possible but unfortunately, for the kind of quality we want to produce, we are really pushing for people to give us 5 days to create their graphics. This can be frustrating but also an exciting challenge for us. I think it is important to recognize that in our careers, clients will ask us for last minute projects and so this frustration we are experiencing now is good experience!
This week we are focusing on completing last minute projects and graphics for use on the day of the conference. I am getting very excited about seeing our work being broadcasted and I think the collection of graphics we have produced will be a great addition to our portfolios. I would say this week has been the most frustrating so far. We have been asked several times by the same people if we can create graphics quickly and without them filling out the google form. We are as nice as possible, but the google form really helps us to keep things organized on our end. And we need to ask for all the same information anyway, so it is just as fast for people to just fill it out. It is also frustrating that we have made it clear to people to spell out exactly what content they want on their graphics, and then when the content isn't perfect or hasn't been approved by Kathy, we experience a lot of unnecessary back and forth. This can all be avoided easily, which I think is the most annoying part.
I was really hoping that the graphics team would be able to create the shirt designs, but that didn't work out. I am very thankful that the team always knows how to turn a negative in to a positive, and although I think they are disappointed, it doesn't seem to be bothering them too much! This week, we will try to make our communication with other teams seamless and efficient, and get to the root of what they are looking for quickly. I think this week will be crunch time!! This week our team received at least 1 request per day - its getting crazy! But I think the team is enjoying it. We're focusing on getting tasks completed quickly and efficiently. I really appreciate that the whole team is using our chat to bounce ideas off each other, and discuss design methods and best practices. It is exciting to see the team talk about their visions, and then see the finished piece come together.
I can't wait to see all of our graphics and designs in use at the conference. I think it will be good for our team to see all of our hard work be published and effectively used. This week, I feel that one of the teams was confused about what the graphics team actually does. I received lots of back and forth emails about creating ads for sponsorship companies requesting to follow Emerge branding, even though the graphics team decided that it was best to keep external businesses separate from Emerge branded content... There may have been some miscommunication there, but now it is sorted and we have been given creative freedom on producing these kinds of ads. This week was a little frustrating! We had some miscommunication with the Internal Marketing group. They thought that we had not returned graphics to them promptly enough, however, we double checked our graphics and dates and it turns out that we were on time with our turnaround of graphics. This was particularly frustrating since the Internal Marketing team went above our heads when I think they should have spoken directly to us about their concerns first. Regardless, we are planning to meet with them this week to resolve the issues they seem to be having.
We were successful this week in getting our graphics out on time and creating awesome pieces (I think). They really embody the Emerge branding and are looking very consistent! This week got a little bit stressful as we had a lot more requests. We had a request that needed to be returned in only 2 days, which was a challenge, but in the end we got it done. Originally, we decided that requests had to have at least a 5 day notice. Though we got this request done, we can't make any promises to any groups about pressing requests because we are expecting to be super busy in the coming weeks.
I am excited to see what happens and how the team deals with the added pressure of quick due dates and lots of requests. This week was exciting. We had several new requests come in and so the whole team was busy with those. We really appreciate people getting their requests in early even though that means we will have to edit/add some details later. This was challenging this week but I think in the long run, getting tasks done early and editing them at a later date will be better than trying to finish them last minute.
For this week, our team needs to focus on improving our communication. For the most part, the majority of the team is good at responding quickly to messages, however, I think our entire team dynamic could be improved if all team members frequently checked the platforms that we communication on as a group. Looking forward to seeing what challenges this week brings! This week was probably one of the more challenging weeks. Our team got more and more requests throughout the week but we completed them on time and I think our work looks great so far. Our work really represents the bright colours in the logo, and embodies the message that Emerge aims to send. We focused on creating a branding creative this week so that our work stays consistent. We will share this with the Branding team lead and with the rest of the teams just so they have an idea of what their graphics will look like.
Next week we expect to get a lot more requests, and we will work on those to the best of our abilities. We are just starting to get a steady pace of requests coming in, so we hope this continues throughout the weeks to come. This week our team had a lot more graphic requests compared to previous weeks, which has confirmed the success of our system and processes. We are using a Google Sheets document so that it is online and everyone can view and edit it. When a request comes in, I input the necessary information in to the spreadsheet, and then I send a message to the team to ask if anyone would like to volunteer for the task. So far, the team has been very passionate and excited about volunteering for tasks. We then use a colour system in the spreadsheet when tasks are "not started", "in progress". "sent to client", or "complete". This helps our team stay on top of all of our requests.
I want to continue this system through the coming weeks and discover if there are any flaws in it. We will work as a team to jump any hurdles that come to us, but so far, everything is working out quite well. This week, the graphic design team focused on finalizing the branding guidelines document. We completed this smoothly, and sent it out to the other teams. We received a lot of verbal requests and requests through Facebook for graphics, but we directed those comments to our Google Form. We really want to make the Google Form the only way for people to request graphics so that our team doesn't miss anything. This was the most challenging part of this week.
Our team also received a few requests via the Google Form, and we completed those requests and sent them off to the respective team. We were asked to waive our required 5 day notice for one team, and though we got the graphics completed on time, we do ask that in the future (once our team starts to get busier) our 5 day requirement is followed. This is to ensure that our team has enough time to organize files, and complete the graphic to the best of our ability while getting feedback from the whole team. Next week, we are aiming to continue completing any graphics requests that we receive, following the branding guidelines document that we completed. |