Overview
My team of Christina Igl, Jason Moeller, Imari Cheyne Tetu, and I, partnered with the MSU Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures and used the semester as an opportunity to focus on building a client-designer relationship. Therefore, we prepared a few different deliverables including a campaign strategy presentation, a quick reference brand and voice guide, and a governance guide.
Role
Throughout the series of deliverables, the four of us would transition roles to gain experience in project management, researching, writing, and editing. Therefore, on each project, I may have had a different role or set of roles.
Methods and Tools
Brand research, Client communication, Team Work
The Goal
We partnered with WRAC as a means to practice working with a client that we were relatively familiar with. Therefore, each deliverable was intentional and designed for real-world application. Despite their individual goals and purposes, we strove to maintain WRAC’s branding throughout our deliverables and create effective communication strategies and tools for our client.
Approach
My group, which was composed primarily of graduate students and one undergraduate student, came together with the goal of tailoring our content strategies to one group or organization in order to gain the real world experience of not only working with a specific client but also in tailoring content to fit the clients’ needs. Therefore, Imari Tetu, a member of my cohort, proposed partnering with our program’s department, the department of Writing Rhetoric, and American Cultures (WRAC) at Michigan State University. Additionally, Imari’s experience as a technology research assistant with WRAC allowed us insight into their needs, goals, guidelines, and more.
Because of the dynamic nature of our team, we would often shift roles between projects to offer each of us the opportunity to further develop skills in the different roles. That said, we often strategized and established roles before each project. For example, Imari was the project manager (PM) and editor for the governance guide because she was most familiar with WRAC’s operations. Throughout the partnership, we would hone in on each of our different knowledge bases and skill sets to ensure our team’s effectiveness and development. Other roles included researching, writing, designing, and editing.
Once our partnership was established, we began familiarizing ourselves with the WRAC brand in order to produce an effective quick reference guide that summarized the key details in the brand in a manner that was quickly accessible. Essentially, this one pager would highlight some of the most prominent details in WRAC’s branding including colors, fonts, style, tone and more without the need of sifting through the very large brand guidelines document. From there, we moved to creating a governance guide to define and connect WRAC’s system of content creators. This one pager gives insight into the inner workings of the organization’s roles and procedures in a manner that is easily understood and readable. Finally, we proposed an overall content strategy for WRAC and how we felt they should handle the merging of their two master’s degree programs in a way that could be best understood by their variety of audiences. Because of their vast audiences, we had to make very intentional design decisions to ensure that each need was met. For example, the archive recommendation would allow alumni and current students to locate information regarding their degree programs. In addition, the social media and email campaign would inform stakeholders of the change whether it be faculty and staff, prospective students, current students, or others.
Ultimately, the process of creating these deliverables was extremely useful in developing a multitude of skills. I was able to practice working collaboratively for a client; something that would be very valuable should I pursue freelance or contract work. In addition, the opportunity to interact with the client and other stakeholders for feedback was great experience as this will be expected in any industry work. Overall, our client was impressed with our work and I gained and developed extremely valuable skills for my future in the industry.
Deliverables
The Quick Reference Guide
The Quick Reference Guide was designed to give WRAC content writers just that; a quick reference that addresses common questions and key concepts to refer back to when developing content on behalf of the organization. This will help maintain the overall brand that WRAC presents, particularly in regard to the organization’s voice, tone, editorial and visual styles.
The Governance Guide
The Governance Guide was developed to aid in the transition of WRAC Technical Graduate Assistants. It presented the roles, responsibilities, common content, as well as the workflow in order to aid the assistant, or outsiders, in the practices and procedures that exist regarding content strategy and development.
The Campaign Strategy
The Campaign Presentation was created as a deliverable strategy for WRAC to eloquently handle and announce their MA merger in an appropriate way to their audience. This deliverable is essentially a collection of suggestions with justification for our client, WRAC, based on their branding.
Outcomes
Although these deliverables were created for hypothetical use, I gained valuable experience in working with a client as part of a team. In addition, our client was very pleased with the results and implemented some of our design and suggestions into their merging campaign.