Summary
Get eyes on your business with branding through consistency and recognition. Social media campaigns and promotional materials can elevate your brand and help expand your reach.
Social Media Campaigns
While at the BVIS program I was the Webmaster, which meant I managed the programs website and social media accounts (from Jan 2024 to May 2025). This amazing privilege allowed me to promote the program and highlight both faculty and student achievements. I developed a handbook of guidelines and brand standards to be passed down to future Webmasters to maintain the look and mission of the programs marketing.
Faces of BVIS had been an annual campaign where each graduating student was highlighted. I would work with the student and deliver them a questionnaire, then build a post around their work and identity, helping market them for post-graduation careers. I reshared student work and created posts to celebrate their awards and research.
I also created ongoing series of class spotlight and about UIC posts to give prospective students more insight into the program offerings. I highlighted upcoming events, did recaps of get-togethers, alumni awards, and news updates.
Digital Advertising
These digital banner ads were created for different clientele at Gannett. An ad rep would directly communicate with the client and provide me with the order request and notes. Very few assets were provided by the client, so it was up to me to familiarize myself with their brand. I would often have to pull images or logos from websites, or recreate them, and rely on stock photos. For well known brands, I would replicate their current ad campaigns and for small businesses who had little in pre-existing marketing, I would have more creative freedom. All of these ads had a very quick turnaround and tight deadline, so I would create advertisements for about seven clients a day.
Each ad request would be submitted in five sizes, so the design I chose would have to work for each aspect ratio. Because they were digital ads that populate on the edges of websites, they were usually 5-8 seconds long. As Gannett had us working in Adobe Edge, Blastor, Quick, Paramount, and Rich Media, the assets used were often composited in Illustrator or Photoshop before being exported as PNGs to be used in the animation.
Custom Icons and Marketing Packets
While freelancing after graduating from Iowa State University, I was contracted to work on a few projects for Precisionary. I helped them promote their Compresstome tissue slicer technology through several technical information packets. I designed custom icons which were incorporated into their brand identify.
Product Redesign
Created for a graphic design class, this exercise was to take an existing product and redesign the packaging. I designed the packaging for Children’s Benadryl to be more modern, using illustrations licensed from Cirodelia via Adobe stock. I chose illustrations that showed happy children and modified to them to fit my chosen color palette and to better visualize children relieved from their allergies.
Promotional
While at Model Farm, the creative agency at the Iowa State Media Group, Keen came to us with the opportunity to help them promote their new construction business. The only branding they had was a logo and they wanted to develop a larger brand identity. They were to attend a conference and requested we design some banners for them as well as a brochure that promoted their business. Stock photos were found that represented their business and brand standards were created.
Chelsey Crile 