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Greenlee School Website Redesign

The summer before I left the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, my supervisor and I, with additional help from the Iowa State University College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, worked to redesign the Greenlee School’s website. This transition was made to transition the site from Drupal to WordPress, which the College also used, in order to streamline the school’s content and posting capability.

This was a very involved process, which included focus groups with the website’s primary users (students, parents, faculty, staff, alumni), many brainstorming sessions and a moving a lot of content. In the end, all of our work led to the creation of two separate sites, one for the school’s general audiences and another specifically for Greenlee School alumni. 

While the project wasn’t completed and implemented before I left in August 2016, the bulk of the work — streamlining, moving and classifying existing content, determining necessary pages and classifications — had been done. My supervisor, who remained at the Greenlee School after I left, saw this website overhaul through to completion in the summer of 2017. The delay was due to many factors, including a backlog in technical assistance, the departure of the school’s director, and the hiring of my replacement at the school.

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2016 Greenlee Glimpse

The 2016 Greenlee Glimpse was the final project I took on for the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication. As I transitioned out of my position as the school’s communication specialist, I was fortunate enough to be able to take on the project as an independent contractor. In this capacity I was able to work remotely as the editor of the third alumni magazine I created for the school as I traveled across the west coast in the fall of 2016.

Working on the magazine while traveling couldn’t have worked out better. While internet connectivity proved challenging to find at times, I was able to visit and interview one of the school’s alumni who lives and works in Los Angeles and was named as one of Forbes’ 40 Under 40 in Advertising and Marketing in 2016. This feature story ended up being the cover story, using images that I captured during my interview with Stafford.

As usual, I worked with Greenlee professor Deb Gibson and her feature writing students, who contributed content for the Glimpse. This year I again chose to design the publication myself and felt comfortable taking more risks with some design elements in the magazine, which I believe turned out well and made the magazine more visually appealing.

I wrote two of the feature stories for the 2016 Glimpse, which was a great exercise for me while traveling. Conducting interviews, crafting narratives and acquiring artwork for these stories kept my mind active while I was exploring the western United States. My feature stories on Greenlee alumnus Tyler Stafford and outgoing Greenlee School Director Dr. Michael Bugeja are below.


 

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Professional Media Internship Brochure

Outside
Cover
Greenlee School 499 brochure cover

This project was a long time in the making — almost a year, to be exact. When I was first tasked with creating a brochure about the Greenlee School’s required 400-hour internship program the school was in the midst of updating its curriculum.

If you know anything about the wonders of bureaucracy, you know that promptness is not one of them, especially in higher education. Once I had an initial draft of the copy and design mocked up this project got put on the backburner until the catalog changes made it through the school’s curriculum committee and were approved by the university.

Fast forward through two busy semesters and that finally happened! To be honest, when I finally got back to this brochure this summer I was glad to have sat on it for a while. After some time, I was able to come at it with a new perspective and am really proud of the finally product that I put together.

It’s really easy for brochures to become messy with too much information, but I worked to pare down the information to keep it simplistic and clean and ensure it didn’t repeat info provided in other materials that students would likely already have seen. It was great to be able to use a lot of images my team and I took over the last two years in this project, which the Greenlee School should be able to use for quite some time.

Outside
Greenlee School 499 brochure outer thirds
Inside
Greenlee School 499 brochure inside thirds
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Advertising Campaigns Class Feature Story, Photos

Each semester,  students enrolled in the Greenlee School’s Advertising Campaigns course work for a real client on a semester-long project to find solutions to the client’s advertising/marketing/public relations needs.

The spring 2016 semester campaigns course, taught by Lecturer Catherine Huggins, worked with Terrace Hill, the official residence of the Governor of Iowa, which is also a museum and a National Historical Landmark. The class worked with Iowa’s First Lady Christine Branstad and her assistant Diane Becker throughout the semester to identify Terrace Hill’s advertising needs and find potential solutions for the small staff and volunteers to carry out.

With such a high-profile client, I wanted to keep tabs on this story throughout the semester, with the intention of doing a comprehensive piece once the project was finished. First, I made sure to attend an on-campus meeting that the class held with Branstad and Becker, taking a few photos and getting a feel for the project, the client’s needs and students’ perceptions of their task for the semester.

After the class’s initial meeting, teams had the semester to conduct research to base their campaigns on. Knowing that each team was working autonomously, I decided it would be best to meet with each team again before their final presentations and then to attend the presentations and see the final campaigns each team presented. I snapped photos (below) of the presentations and was able to interview Mrs. Branstad and Ms. Becker for the my feature on the class’s project.

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Greenlee School 2016 AEJMC Print Ads

Iowa State advertisements for 2016 AEJMC Conference

As a j-school accredited by the Association for Educators in Journalism and Mass Communications, the Greenlee School has sponsored the annual AEJMC conference each year since I’ve worked there. In the past, Greenlee’s opted for smaller sponsorships (which meant smaller ads)(link to past ads).

This year the school opted for a larger sponsorship (meaning a full-page ad) and the ISU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences took out a full-page for the following reasons:

  • Director Michael Bugeja won the 2015 Scripps Howard Foundation’s Journalism Administrator of the Year Award, a prestigious award that we wanted to highlight and celebrate
  • The ISU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Greenlee are starting the search process for a new director for the Greenlee School and search committee members will be holding interviews at the AEJMC conference.
  • Greenlee was unanimously re-accredited by the AEJMC this spring, maintaining its reign as the longest continuously-accredited j-school in Iowa

After reviewing other school’s advertisements from past AEJMC conference programs, I started this assignment with two thoughts. 1: I wanted to focus on simplicity and effective use of images, as these were the common characteristics of the ads that caught my eye. 2: I wanted both ads to be cohesive as a spread and for both to effectively adhere to Iowa State’s brand standards, since I was ultimately representing the university as a whole in this spread.

My first task was to find a strong image of Dr. Bugeja for the celebratory portion of the ad. Here were some of the options, including the image we ended up using.

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After receiving the copy for the college’s search ad, I offered some edits to make it as concise as possible and include some of Greenlee’s key messaging. My supervisor and I decided that because the copy of the ad was focused on Dr. Bugeja and the search, we wanted our spread to feature strong student experience visuals to add some personality and convey the Greenlee experience.

After four different versions, I finally settled on the following layout for the spread:

Iowa State advertisements for 2016 AEJMC Conference
Iowa State advertisements for 2016 AEJMC Conference
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2015 Greenlee Glimpse

Planning for the 2015 edition of the Greenlee Glimpse began as I put the 2014 magazine to the spring before. Ahead of the presidential election, Iowa claimed its usual spotlight as the first state to caucus in the nation and politicians descended upon the state in droves. With that, some professors had their classes covering candidates’ visits on campus or in surrounding areas. This inspired me to feature those students and Greenlee alumni working at professional news outlets, for the magazine’s cover story. 

In my second year producing this publication, I decided to design the 58-page publication myself and am really pleased with how the layouts — especially the feature spreads — turned out. Having shot photos throughout the year, the I had plenty of material for the magazine, which made the job so much easier.

I really lucked out with the cover, though. I wasn’t sure what I was going to use until I attended a Bernie Sanders rally at Iowa State just before the state’s caucuses. I went with my camera and ended up sitting right behind the press pool, which made for an awesome focal point, complete with an American flag backdrop. I couldn’t have planned it better if I had tried.

My cover story “Covering the Caucuses” can be read below.

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2014 Greenlee Glimpse

The 2014 Greenlee Glimpse was the first major publication I was solely responsible for producing. This project began as soon as I started my position in June 2014, with planning content and organizing the mailer that goes out to all of the school’s alumni requesting their latest news.

Throughout the fall I worked with students to complete stories and visual content for the magazine, while overseeing a complete redesign of the publication. Working through the publishing process was certainly eye-opening. It required me to analyze the publication’s audience and reach, determine the best format and style for readers, as well as the appropriate quantity of magazines to order based on both the audience’s and the school’s needs.

Managing such a large project and keeping on top of deadlines — my own and others’ — did prove challenging. But the process required me to use time efficiently and be immediate and decisive throughout the planning and production processes. Though it took longer than I had anticipated, I was very happy with the final publication — a perfectly-bound, 56-page, 9-by-13 inch magazine with a fresh look and feel. Later in the spring, the school’s namesake, Bob Greenlee, also complimented the magazine, saying it was one of the best he had seen through the years.