Background

The client Bethan Miskell does press flower artwork and wants to sell her artwork online. Bethan had not started the business and she wanted to set up a brand to promote her artwork and her message. As her business was in the beginning stage, she did not have ideas for a particular style yet, but she mentioned some preferences she would like us to follow on the design in our first meeting.

Restated brief

Bethan wanted to use her artwork to emphasise and celebrate the importance of plants or weeds that may be overlooked or not seen as typically ‘pretty’ but were increasingly considered to be ‘hero’ plants and essential for biodiversity. We needed to create a unique brand to convey Bethan’s intended message.

The three deliverables are a logo, a business card, and a ‘thank you for your purchasing’ card. The brand logo will be used across all platforms like Bethan’s website and social media. Also, it will be applied to the cards. Our client also mentioned she did not need a physical mock-up of the cards, so we only need to create them digitally.

The target audience for Bethan’s business is people who are interested in floral decoration and the preservation of nature. These people tend to be women around the age of 50 and above. The effectiveness of the deliverables was measured by receiving customer feedback from a set of questions, and by frequently reviewing the brief to ensure the items meet the client’s requirements.

Research and ideation

First, we explored different kinds of logo designs like monograms, wordmarks, symbols and lettermarks and explained to Bethan about their characteristics. Bethan did not like the lettermark. We thought wordmark could work best for introducing Bethan’s business as she wants to use her full name as the brand name. It is simple and recognisable to combine words with images.

We found that businesses usually have some logo variations so that they can fit on different platforms more flexibly. For example, logos with a longer width can be used on website banners. However, it is not suitable for an Instagram circle icon, so they need a more abstract one. We therefore decided to create a primary logo, a secondary logo, and one for social media.

We also did research based on the keywords that Bethan used to describe her business which were ‘biodiversity’, ‘botanical’, ‘organic’, and ‘wildlife’. She created a moodboard with mainly plants and a layout of logos she liked and wanted us to get inspiration from. Besides her moodboard, we studied other competitor websites and their social media which are related to botanic for inspiration like Jam Jar Edits, Pressed Floral, and Refined Studio.

Bethan especially mentioned that she liked the style of Heidi Clover’s logo, so we knew that she wanted simpler illustrations and typefaces. It helped us to develop some suitable initial sketches for her.

Design development

Logos

Bethan did not like the handwriting style or rounded and curvy fonts, but she wanted bolder spaced-out typography. Based on her requirements, we found a range of simple and neat san serifs for her to choose from for example, Josefin sans, Articulat CF, Serenity, and Quasimoda. We also experimented with different weights of the same fonts, but we could not make a decision before combining them with the illustration to see how they balance. I personally did not like Josefin with the sharp ascenders as it did not look friendly and Serenity because the bold soft strokes looked weird on Bethan’s business. We suggested she choose Quasimoda which looked fresh with a thinner width and a normal x-height.

For the illustration, at the beginning, we tried to combine illustrations of plants into Bethan’s name and showed them to her. Bethan liked fern more because she thought fern could represent the ‘hero’ plant. Therefore, we carried on designing different styles of ferns for the symbol. For example, the line illustration, without or with strokes and details, and the shape of leaves. Bethan and my team chose the thinner fern between her name for the primary logo because the other looked more decorative and heavier.

The secondary logo is based on the primary logo but just changed the layout to make it narrower and could be used on other suitable platforms. Our supervisor suggested we show three options to Bethan for both with and without filling. They were with or without dots surrounding the fern, the horizontal ferns between Bethan’s name, and the vertical fern next to her name. We all liked the filled option and the vertical fern placed next to Bethan’s name. It incorporates the primary logo better as both of the ferns are vertical. The fern with dots option was not suitable because it was too complex for Bethan’s style.

For the social one, we provided four plant options and two different layouts for Bethan to choose from. Because she chose the primary logo with the fern, we suggested using the same plant across all the logos to make them consistent and the brand identity could stand out more. She liked the idea of placing the plant in between the two letters to make the logo look balanced. In the end, we created the logo sets in both white and black so Bethan could use them according to her needs more easily.

Business card

The business card is 85mm in width and 55mm in height. For the front, we considered two concepts mainly. One was used illustration that was connected to the logo. Another one was to use Bethan’s artwork. We asked Bethan if we could borrow one of her artworks and scan it for the press flower elements. She liked the idea of including her artwork’s elements on the card as a mini version of her artwork. It can promote her business more effectively because people can immediately understand her style instead of spending more time to search her artwork.

We explored different layouts with the press flower elements placed partly on the bottom, in the centre or close to the edges. At the same time, we changed the black background that Bethan usually uses to some natural colours based on the keywords Bethan mentioned like, beige, brown, mint, teal, and dark blue. We found that dark blue worked the best because it balanced the style of Bethan’s original artwork with a formal business card style.

Our supervisor thought the idea which had a dark blue block in the middle with a press flower could be further developed. Rather than the one with flowers surrounding the block, she commented that keeping the format from Bethan’s artwork would be better. To make it look more interesting and livelier, our supervisor also suggested we extend the flower outside of the block.

We tried to use illustrations to decorate the card at the back, but we were given feedback from our supervisor that it was not consistent with the front design. So, we continued the press flower block. The icons that represent different contact methods look minimal, so it does not make Bethan’s artwork ‘overshadowed’. We used the ‘Lexend deca’ light typeface which is balanced with the icon’s weights and Bethan’s requirements on typefaces.

‘Thank you for your purchasing’ card

For the ‘Thank you for your purchasing card, we decided to continue a similar style and layout with the business card. It was the same size as Bethan’s business card. We kept the continuity by using the press flower from Bethan’s artwork instead of creating a new illustration. We showed a range of options to our supervisor for feedback.

In the beginning, we experimented with a block in the centre surrounded with flowers, it just looked like the business card with another format. Therefore, we did not keep the idea. To show the consistency of the two cards while making them distinguishable, we chose another geometric shape, a circle. We placed a similar group of press flowers from the business card into the circle, so they looked similar in style. We chose the typeface ‘Montserrat’ for the text from a range of San serifs because we liked the clean and elegant strokes. The size contrast of ‘Thank you’ with ‘for your purchase’ emphasised the sincerity.

For the final version, we wanted to show the consistency of the two cards while making them distinguishable with different geometric shapes. We placed a similar group of press flowers from the business card into the circle. We used the social logo for Bethan’s brand instead of the other two because the card is sent with the customer-purchased items. The customers must already know about Bethan’s brand so this logo is used like a sign so we did not want it to look too extra.

Reflection

We expected that the project would be completed in December, but our deadline was extended until January. Even though it was agreed by the client, I think we could manage the time better. We spent too much time exploring the logo design at the beginning which made us not have enough time for the cards by the end of the expected deadline. We can show more variations to the client at the same time so she can pick one that she liked earlier.

The thing I learnt from this project was to always ask for more details to ensure what you are making is what the client likes. The client may not have an idea of how they want the design to be presented sometimes because they are not professional designers, but they have their preferences and thoughts. We should not be afraid to contact the clients often to check if they have any updates or further requirements during the design process.

Also, this project improved my confidence in communication. I feared expressing my concepts and showing opposite thoughts to others, but I feel comfortable communicating with my teammate as we respect each other’s ideas, and the client is supportive of our work.

Introduction  

This real job involved creating weekly posts of the departments events and students’ projects throughout the year. This year we wanted to change the perception and aim of the Instagram, by broadening the design content for prospective, current and alumni students. Previously, the account has focused on events and design-based posts, however this year we wanted to boost engagement through trending posts, such as; Spotify and Barbie, as well as informative posts, such as; tutorial reels and Adobe shortcuts.  

Our goals 
The main goal we wanted to achieve when taking over the department’s Instagram was to create a broader design community. We felt it was important to broaden our online community, as it would help boost our engagement and further the creativity of account. Additionally, we also wanted to showcase the department to prospective students by creating a more engaging feed. To do this, we created a wider variety of content ranging from  informative posts and  current Instagram trends.  

Updating the account  

Rebrand
We decided that the Instagram would benefit from a small rebrand. This is because we felt this would help the feed look more consistent and part of one identity, as we had a varied number of design posts. We also changed the profile picture to the TGC logo, adapting it to each season or holiday e.g. Christmas, Halloween, Easter theme. This is because we felt this better represented the department than the previous profile picture of the yellow doors that no longer exist, and would be potentially confusing to prospective students.  

Profile picture
Within this rebrand we were able to improve our feed layout, as our feed looked very one dimensional due to only showed design-based posts and the occasional photos of the department. As a team, we wanted a more varied and personal feed and to achieve this, we began to post more ‘in class’ posts of student’s progress work and final deliverables, to help the account feel more connected to the people in the department. We also introduced posts that gave tips such as the Adobe shortcuts series as we wanted to create the sense of community, as well as posting digital mockups of final work. The improvement of these posts has helped increased our engagement.

Posting schedule 
One of our goals was to continue posting consistently and to post more varied content. To do this, we created a schedule each month on an excel spreadsheet which allocated a post to each team member. We found this strategy was successful as it helped us be organized and make sure that we weren’t posting similar types of content. One problem we faced with this strategy was that sometimes team members would forget to post their allocated content. A solution we found to this, was to schedule the posts earlier on Instagram so that the post would still go up in time.  

New content

To increase our post insights and better our follower engagement, we researched into current Instagram trends and related them to typography and graphic design. Examples of this include; creating a yearly ‘Spotify Wrapped post’, a ‘Barbie post’ and conducting interviews with our lecturers to find out ‘designers icks’. Out of these three posts, the post that was the most successful was Spotify Wrapped which earned over 130 likes, reached 1,351 accounts, 188 non-follower accounts and 3 comments.  

We also introduced more informational posts to our feed. This is because in our research we found that informational posts help followers feel like they are part of a community. We felt that these posts would be helpful for current students, designers and people who are interested in graphic design and typography.  

The informational posts we introduced are:

• Tutorial reels
  Tutorial reels were one of our posts with the highest level of engagement, as it reached over 1000 non-followers, with a total watch time of 5 hours and 18 minutes. These posts consisted of quick design demonstrations on  different Adobe software’s that can benefit our followers’ future projects. The tutorials were aimed at current student followers, and aspiring designers.  

• Adobe shortcuts
  This is a post that showcased some basic shortcuts for Adobe software’s. This post had a high level of engagement as it reached 89% of non-followers to our account and had many impressions, meaning it was accessed through home, profile and hashtags 2086 times. The reach is the number of accounts that have seen the post. These posts were aimed at current students as well as designers within the industry.  

Reading list 
The idea behind this post was to share what we felt were important design books that all designers should have a look at. This post also had a high level of engagement, with 198 account interactions through likes, saves and shares.  

Q&A stories
These posts on our story brought a sense of community as it allowed us to talk to people. Although these posts did not have the highest level of engagement, it was still rewarding to be able to talk to people and answer their questions about design, the department and our course. 

Engagement and following  

The most successful posts have been the reels we introduced, providing the audience with short, informative illustrator tutorials, with the ‘how to merge type and shapes in illustrator’ reaching nearly 2,000 accounts. This shows that reels were incredibly successful in boosting the Instagram accounts engagement, due to the wider accessibility Instagram gives to reels throughout the platform. This accessibility has enabled the Instagram account to reach 69% of non-followers, helping to boost the accounts audience reach. Further to this, since December 2023, the reels have boosted the interactions by 320%. Further to this, the following has grown by 70% over the last 3 months. 

Our thoughts  

Being part of the department’s Instagram team has enabled us to get experience with understanding what makes a post engaging. We learnt that reels were the most engaging type of posts for non-followers due to Instagrams pre-existing algorithm. Whereas, the most engaging post for the current followers were the regular posts. By creating a consistent balance between the two types of posts, we were able to boost the accounts interactions and engagement levels.

As well as this, we consistently posted and maintained a monthly posting schedule which allowed us to introduce new types of posts. We felt this was important as before we took over, the posts were mostly submission/process posts and we felt it was important to offer informational posts that would help designers and students. Including informational posts has helped create a more varied feed and increased engagement with our followers.  

What we learnt
This experience of running the department’s Instagram account has taught us how to effectively work together to run a design team, the importance of group collaborations on new design ideas and problem solving, and lastly it improved our time management skills as we created a posting schedule for when the account would gain the most follower interaction.  

Background

Taking over Baseline Shift for the 23/24 calendar, myself, Habibah, and Ben had new ideas from our experience on the previous year. As with the previous year, we wanted to provide a more diverse range of speakers – whether this be in the sense of design sector, backgrounds, race, gender etc… We also knew we wanted to make Baseline Shift feel more approachable and interactive for students: we noticed the way our own year group felt about Baseline Shift was not aligned with our goals: some students attended, but most did not interact with the sessions or speakers, which is what we felt the sessions are all about.

This year, our goals were to bring the students into an environment which was more laid back and encourage them to get involved. This meant:

• Making ourselves known as members of the team
• Interacting with students and talking about the weekly speakers
• Starting relaxed conversations with speakers
• Encouraging in-person sessions over online sessions

Having been on the team for a year, we were aware of distaste towards the branding for the project and is something we also wished to consider. Unfortunately, due to the team’s availability over the summer, this took a backseat and we were restricted with our time to completely rebrand. Instead, we adapted the previous branding to feel more simple. We wanted to involve the new team members in this process and took on creative director roles, assisting the new team in creating the branding.

We wanted the team to feel excited about our calendar in hopes to pass this enthusiasm onto the students. We invited speakers whose work we found inspiring ourselves (such as Jake Paul, Kieran Mistry, Katarina Duvnjak) as well as designers and professionals who we felt offered important messages. We wanted to do our best to create a calendar which aligned with the projects running. As a result, the Autumn term was heavily print related to align with the Part 3 magazine project, while Spring Term had a digital focus to work alongside various UX, UI and motion graphics projects. From our end of year feedback, students left the following comments about the selection of speakers and design sectors covered.

‘Hearing from less traditional speakers (motion graphics etc) was really useful as it’s something we don’t get much experience of in the course.’ – Part 3

‘Good variation, but would have been nice to have had more people from a print background’ – Part 1

‘There was an excellent range of speakers from several disciplines/career paths.’ – Part 1

Overall, it appears that students still enjoy hearing about print work. Despite our Autumn term calendar being nearly exclusively print speakers, it could have been beneficial to hear from a wider range within this sector – our calendar focussed largely on magazine work to support Part 3, but we could have incorporated poster design, exhibition design etc to have a more varied schedule. It does seem however, the introduction of other specialities was appreciated and raised new areas of interest for many.

We also noticed a vocal preference for in person sessions, which we did our best to encourage with our speakers. This naturally is not possible for everyone, and due to the rising costs of public transport it is very understandable for speakers to present online. Technical issues occurred in video presentations, which was not optimum, however for the most part speakers were able to present their sessions smoothly. Interactions between student and speaker were lower in these online sessions, which was a challenge to change. People were far more inclined to network with guests when face to face or in private. Despite the challenges of online sessions the team has been pleased to hear of students contacting speakers after sessions. For these reasons, the online sessions have still been of great value in assisting networking within the Department even if we do not see this first hand.

Team roles

To run the calendar smoothly we maintained weekly blogs, promotional posts, and emails. To manage this, we divided the roles with myself as team and promotional leader, Ben leading blog posts and Habibah leading the hosting. Considering their specific areas of interest and preferences, we agreed with Tilly to assistant host sessions and Amber to assist promotion. We also ensured to rotate the roles across all team members. This way, the new team members could learn how they would run the roles themselves in the future and avoid boredom among the team.

As team organiser, I have been responsible for ensuring the team was comfortable, happy, and meeting their weekly responsibilities. In attempt to automate some of this, we created a schedule sheet denoting the team weekly roles and the expected criteria/deadlines. Despite this, we struggled with members of the team not engaging with their roles and responsibilities. This affected the team and meant others were carrying more of the weight than others, but also meant that the distant team members would not benefit from the connections the rest of us were making.

I approached this sensitively through politely reminding and correcting as needed. As time progressed, deadlines were consistently not met on time or to a suitable standard. To maintain a positive relationship across the group, I ended up correcting or taking on extra roles to keep the schedule running properly. In hindsight, the co-leaders of Baseline Shift and I could have been more assertive to the situation. We tried handing more autonomy of the roles over to the new members of the team, but this still resulted in last minute cancellations, late, and poorly executed deliverables.

Working with this team member and managing the issues which came as a result was difficult: being sensitive to all members of the team and distributing roles equally resulted in hurried outputs, which was noticed by students. A Part 1 student said, ‘There was slight issue some weeks with a lack of clarification if the session was in person or on Blackboard.’, which came as a result of last-minute information because of these inconsistencies. We noticed lower attendance in weeks where this was an issue, and it highlighted the importance of consistent and reliable information.

Weekly feedback and highlights

Through contacting speakers and attending the sessions, I feel connected with individuals and design companies as well as being more prepared for the realities with the industry. Many speakers this year highlighted the importance of ai, which we had not heard much about before. The industry insight on ai from speakers including Aanand Tank and Sam Asplen was refreshingly positive – these two speakers both explained that ai is a tool and not a threat so long as we learn to adapt and develop parallel to it.

Greg Bunbury and Geri Reid provided great sessions about design approaches and professional relationships. The focus on approach instead of content was beneficial across all interests and raised important questions about professional practice especially coming from people working in the field currently and adapting to changes.

Reflections

This role has given me confidence in networking first and foremost, while also showing me how to manage a team under time restrictions. Working with the team as a whole has been a positive experience, especially since this is the largest and most active team project I have been a part of. Reflecting on the two years, I have found that I often extend beyond my assigned responsibilities to ensure the job is completed in a timely and good standard. Although this made the sessions run smoothly from the outside perspective, it meant that a lot of the weight landed on me when other members did not follow through on their roles. Learning to allow other people to make mistakes has been a tricky adjustment, but has allowed others to see the weight of their responsibility and consequences of their actions. We could see the attendance to sessions was lower when promotional roles were late or incomplete, and students were far more encouraged to interact with speakers when the hosting was confident and enthusiastic.

My main takings from the time on the team has been the power of networking and communicating with other designers. Particularly, our approach this year has encouraged relationships between different years more so than in past years. Our roles on the team have made us known to students and professionals, which we are hopeful will benefit us in our careers and professional relationships to come.

About

Baseline Shift is a student led weekly talk, held every Wednesday, between 11am to 1pm during autumn and spring term. Available to attend by both undergraduates and masters’ students of the Typography and Graphic Communication department as well as members of staff, the sessions host former alumni of the University and well-established designers in the industry. These talks are in place to not only inspire but provide insight into career and networking opportunities to prepare students for the future. With James Lloyd as the client and supervisor, the student team are required to plan, promote, blog and host the sessions, through contacting speakers, creating timetables, and publishing digital and print material.

2022/2023

I was recruited to join the team at the end of my first year on the Graphic Communication course, for the beginning of the next academic term. As a confident speaker looking to develop communication and branding skills, this felt like the perfect job for me. Initially attending meetings in the summer break before hand with then team leaders Adam Powell and Sara Noguiera Perez, we discussed other suitable candidates to form a larger team. These positions were then filled with Mia Bryan and Ben Brown, two other Part Twos on the course. With a complete group of five, the team leaders gave us a debrief on expectations and tasks in place to carry out the job, and then allocated roles based on our existing skills and preferences. I was the designated lead host alongside Sara, introducing and contacting speakers, presenting the sessions whether it be online or in person. Ben and Adam coordinated the blogs, writing and editing after each session with Mia on socials, printing posters and publishing announcements across Facebook, Instagram and Slack. With the decision to slowly move over all roles to the three of us in Part Two and Adam and Sara taking a step back, it was important to have a few weeks each to complete another role to experience everything to run a team of our own the following year.

With the new team, and autumn term fast approaching, we still had a lot to do, including deciding on speakers, contacting them and fitting into a calendar, in order to begin the promotion. We each researched into designers in different fields of design and bought the names forward, using a carefully designed template to email them providing potential dates to talk. There were a few complications with doing so, such as availability, however after a few rearrangements and shifting, we were able to accommodate everyone, with the audience’s interest at heart, separating topics with different ones as well as having a mixture of both online and in-person talks. Based on experience, attending the talks as a student, I valued the in-person talks more as they felt more engaging than sitting behind a screen. We then tried to implement this where possible, which initially proved quite difficult returning from a COVID affected year, where majority of sessions were online. However, we aimed to fix this through even splits of online and in-person, so not too many sessions of the same location were bundled together.

We collectively decided the previous branding could be improved and updated, in terms of colour, type and logo. Due to different locations over the holiday period and busy schedules, it was difficult to arrange times to meet in order to progress. We solved this by individually designing elements. I chose the typography, whilst Mia focussed on colour and Ben logo. We each contributed to these to select the best options. Coming back to campus, the different parts could be pieced together to publish a term calendar as well as weekly graphics.

With the initial session being year tutor briefing, the first experience I had hosting was alongside Sara, introducing Malcolm Garrett. Following this, we each took turns hosting the likes of James Hunter, Rob Waller, Nick Sexton, David Pearson as well as previous alumni and staff for the Time Management and Feedback Jam sessions. Not being experienced in talking in front of such a large audience before, this was a learning curve. Understanding new word patterns and how to introduce speakers in an engaging way to prompt questions later on from the audience. With some people missing sessions or wanting to revisit, we saw the value that recording could be, so began doing so, later available to our students and staff.

Doing the social media, using a formatted template, made the process of designing weekly graphics a lot easier. Changing names, dates and titles as well as short description to match the session and the publishing these both around the departments as well as across social media; Slack, Facebook and Instagram. Whilst Mia was predominantly in charge of this, I spent the majority of Spring term controlling the socials as we swapped roles.

Completing blog posts meant having to note take during the sessions to write up an informational summary with pictures, quotes and a run-down of what the speaker said.

All blogs for Baseline Shift can be accessed at https://typography.network/baseline-shift/

Though the plan was to hand over roles gradually, it felt quite rapid, and Mia, Ben and I were left with the majority of tasks to complete ourselves and had to then adapt quickly to the changes. From this, we learnt a lot of things that we could take away as well as develop from to lead a team of our own.

2023/2024

The Real Job was again advertised by our supervisor to recruit two new people to join the team as the three of us had become team leaders. These spots were filled with Tilly Dobson and Amber Jones. Again, because this was during summer, we had to arrange calls accordingly to everyone’s schedules, with some working, travelling or busy to not only introduce Mia, Ben and I but also begin planning for the fast-approaching Autumn term. This often meant we third years felt responsible so resulted in us redesigning the calendar ourselves involving talks from Toshi Omagari, Steve Watson and Jake Paul as well as many others. We initially did want to create branding changes, however, ultimately ran out of time. To compensate, we made minor edits to elevate the existing brand, in terms of colour as well as pattern. We chose a more refined palette as well as discarding the use of texture. We found this made information more legible. Establishing both Tilly and Ambers preferences, we could distribute roles much to everyone’s liking, this led to myself and Tilly hosting, Mia on socials and Ben and Amber on blogs as well as having alternating weeks for everyone.

Taking on board advice and feedback, we found first years were not using Facebook like the second and third years were, therefore would miss out on notifications and reminders about the sessions. We then requested to become moderators on Blackboard where we could send out emails to the whole course. This taught us new ways of communicating, however as a new addition, we did find ourselves forgetting to do this in the first few weeks. Becoming moderators, also reduced the amount of technical difficulties we would having during online sessions as we could fix these juxtaposed to the lack of control we had in our first year, where James had to be present.

From our experience in the first year, we noticed how the team were not well known through the department. This is something we wanted to change. We wanted to feel approachable by everyone, to understand new inputs and insights to not only improve but connect and network on a deeper level. We did this by introducing ourselves and the new team members instantly whilst also remaining good relationships with both students and staff as well as being vocal about sessions. This resulted in many keen first years as well as masters giving their feedback and notifying their interest to join the team for the next year, with staff thanking us for the work we do repetitively.

Kickstarting the term, we showed the new recruits how to complete tasks straight away, including the recording of sessions and upload of blogs and slides as well as contacting, as this is something we felt we did not learn enough about during our time as second years. We took the lead during the first three sessions, where Tilly and Amber could assist, to letting them do their own sessions the following weeks, this enabled them to build confidence and understand how things work from an early stage, preparing them for the future.

However, not everything ran as smoothly as mentioned. Quickly, after term started, we noticed, not all members were attending nor were blog posts being published on time and the social media and posters were delayed in publication. We as well as our supervisor saw that from the rotation of roles between the second and third years were not consistent and the high-quality deliverables produced were lacking.

After becoming aware that team members had other commitments, we organised a spreadsheet where we could write roles to accommodate the days where people are available. This meant for myself and Mia taking on extra roles where necessary, which became more frequent than anticipated. I often had to make socials edits and send reminders to those on duty that week, often feeling like I was being pushy or bossy. However, understanding how team members work, we overcame this by creating schedules for publications of posts, posters and blogs for everyone to understand their responsibilities. Though this was created, it was not stuck to as we continued to see the drop in blog uploads. Another factor affecting this, was failing to remind our supervisor when blogs were complete, therefore leading to a backlog in publishing.

We found that during our first year on the job, people would get confused for in person sessions and where they would be hosted. Especially for first years, the campus is fairly confusing, so many students would get lost or arrive in the wrong place. This was resolved by having the same room for all in person sessions in the Agriculture building, a short walk from our department. When in person, the only files which could be presented were PDF’s in order to be recorded successfully, however where this had not been communicated with the speaker, they came with Keynote, where they would display motion graphics, This unfortunately led to no recordings being produced for the sessions and people missing out. However, this encouraged more people to come and promoted this way where we saw attendance dropping towards the end, due to submissions. These became compulsory for first years, with second and third years only having to attend a proportion maintaining a steady amount of numbers throughout the year.

Other technical issues we had when hosting the sessions include, team members forgetting to remind the speaker of their talk resulting in them to join late, where they couldn’t test if their material works whilst screen sharing, or having internet issues. This resulted in myself having to briefly explain the Blackboard tools to the speaker as well as take over hosting to ensure the rest of the session runs smoothly. Where James was not present to moderate, like he was in previous years, we felt responsible for the mistakes and told the speakers to join 15 minutes prior to the start time to test everything out. This taught us how to overcome issues and have accountability. One instance where a team member forgot to contact the speakers and send reminders resulted in only having one alumnus for our Alumni Talks session instead of between three to four. Though sending out frequent reminders to the team, to contact people as we all had different roles, this fell through. However, through previous networking, we were able to find someone short notice to fill in a space, so the session would not be too short further highlighting the power of connections within the industry.

Another issue we had was the miscommunication between both staff and students regarding strikes. Unaware of the strikes due to take place, the Baseline Shift sessions were still expected to happen, until a few days before, where we had to then explain the cancellations and let down many that were excited to attend. This taught us how to communicate in an empathetic way whilst also remaining professional. Similarly, we had unexpected change of plans where we had to reschedule sessions, due the speakers’ circumstances. Though under pressure, this taught us a lot about time management, trying to book these sessions back into the calendar, in hopes to accommodate everyone.

Conclusion

Being a team leader for Baseline Shift has been both one of the most rewarding yet challenging experiences. From opportunities such as networking, to organising a team, communication was the most essential tool. Understanding how to communicate, tone of voice and delivery of message was crucial to ensure the efficiency of the team as well as building relationships with fellow students and staff. By making ourselves known, we became friendly faces throughout the department, easily approachable by many. By sending out a feedback link at the end of every session, we could gather insight for the speakers as well as how we did as a team, however by sending out another survey, more team based, we could understand how we were as leaders, and how to improve team organisational skills as a tool for the future.

Overall, we received a 4.5 out of 5 for the diversity of speakers and topics, with follow up responses being how it was valuable to hear from people in different design careers compared to previous years. This is something we wanted to do as even we as viewers felt, we were mainly seeing people from the same field, often getting repetitive. We wanted to have more people of colour as well as more females, in which we successfully did. This feeds on to respondent’s comments of how these sessions have impacted them, with students mainly saying about networking opportunities and the power of Linked In. We were glad to see this, as not only do we feel connected to speakers through organising but everyone else also has points of contacts within the industry. The additional comments in the survey thanked us with one comment from a Part One sticking out in particular for me,

‘Most of the team have made themselves visible to the rest of the students, which is hugely important as they feel approachable (important for something like Baseline Shift which involves everyone). Everyone on the team came across professional and passionate when introducing speakers, and Habibah went a step further to reach out personally asking for feedback, and just having general extended conversation about Baseline Shift, helping to spread the enthusiasm. Well done to everyone involved!’

It feels very rewarding knowing that we have made an impact in the design course and our organisation is inspiring for others to join the team.

Upon reflection, I find myself to enjoy competing tasks immediately and gain satisfaction when things are according to deadlines. However, working in a group with a range of demographics, I have learned to become mindful of this and how to work around other peoples commitments to ensure fairness and an efficient team. When leading a team in the future, I aim to be more sensitive to create a cooperative group encouraging discussions and to foster collaboration.

Having hosted over 40 sessions, taking the lead on the last 22, we have learned how to organise, plan, promote and lead a small team and understand how to rise from issues and struggles we faced along the way. This job has been extremely beneficial in adopting key skills and values needed for the world of design and management such as;

• Time management
• Leadership
• Communication
• Networking
• Public speaking
• Social media management
• Blog writing
• Contacting professionals
• Event planning
• Technical skills
• Flexibility

I now have new skills and contacts in the design industry which wouldn’t have been possible without completing this. It was a pleasure being a leader for this team and wish the next group the best of luck!

*There is no Trello Board for this Real Job as advised by our supervisor