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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

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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.

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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.