I found out about this opportunity in June of 2017 from a
remote internship I was doing with an event marketing firm. My then-supervisor
emailed me saying that there is a design internship opportunity with ACTFL and
she knows a linguistics professor who works there who could recommend me for
their Marketing department. I applied with a very long cover letter touting my
breadth of design expertise and knowledge of four different languages; I even
included a languages section on my resume, since I think it is pertinent to who
I am. Within two days, I had a phone interview, which lead to an in-person
interview. Before my in-person interview, I made an infographic of ACTFL’s
current brand and social media statistics and brought it to the meeting with my
future supervisor, making it a centerpiece of my pitch to them. I was pitching
myself and my skill-set. In retrospect, this decision was a little bit risky,
and I could have come off as arrogant. However, it worked out this time and
that 11 x 17“ infographic is still on my supervisor’s wall as a memento of our
interview. I worked the whole summer of 2017, and was later promoted to
part-time staff, working on a contract that gets renewed once in a while.
ACTFL is to foreign language educators and researchers what
MLA is to English educators and researchers. We are an organization that
regulates, improves and expands the teaching and learning of world languages,
including extinct languages like Latin and endangered languages, like Navajo
and 'Ōlelo Hawai'i. We have very active social media accounts and marketing
department, as well as a new marketing campaign called Lead with Languages that
targets students as opposed to teachers and sponsors scholarships and studies
abroad.
Lisa Campo was my direct supervisor. She is the marketing
and communications manager at ACTFL and has a history of web design, email
design and copywriting. Her role is to analyze social media marketing
statistics, create promotional graphics and, when the workload becomes too
intense, manage and hire contractor designers to help her out. She wanted an
in-house intern in order to share the design workload and her knowledge. I have
learned a great deal from her about the design workflow at a non-profit
organization.
Almost every marketing campaign since June 2017 has involved
me in its production. Due to my versatile portfolio, I have had my hand in animated
ads that we have placed online, video promotions for scholarships, website UX
analysis, email design, as well as print projects, such as mailable booklets
and postcards informing ACTFL members of news regarding the 2017 and 2018 ACTFL
conventions, ACTFL’s active online community and study abroad grants for
teachers and pedagogy students. In addition, I have worked with my supervisor
on materials for the company itself, including a re-design of our strategic
plan and new templates for official documents, presentations and academic
journals by the linguistics researchers at the ACTFL's Center for Assessment,
Research, and Development.
My most proud projects included motion graphics, especially
animated ads that I have created with Lisa to promote the ACTFL Annual
Convention and Languages Expo that garnered about 6,500 attendees last year in
November. In addition, work for Lead with Languages is more playful, because it
caters to students, which allows me to explore more artsy and less corporate
solutions to design problems. The most recent proud moment was seeing my name
on the ACTFL Annual Report 2017, released April 8.
I learned how to manage my time well and make a lot of
useful lists and wireframes. At my desk, I have two rows of sticky notes
denoting my tasks. One row indicates short-term projects that I need to complete,
which are usually limited to one week. The second row lists long-term projects
that I have going on and need to devote my time to during the off-chance I do
not have short-term projects to work on, which is very rare.
The most important skill that I have learned through my time
at ACTFL is how to “front-load” my projects by exploring different options and
making wireframes early on, making the design pipeline process much smoother
and faster. I quickly put my ideas for each task on paper, then develop them further
on screen. It has proved to be efficient and very helpful when it comes to my
academic projects as well. I regularly make paper prototypes before turning my laptop
on to work on the digital render.
ACTFL has helped me to realize how much I enjoy usability
testing and that I have an interest in branding. We are currently undergoing a
brand re-design, with our new website still in development. The new site will
be the flagship of the new ACTFL brand and I am very excited to be a part of
it. I will be continuing to work with ACTFL this summer.
