Michigan Advertising and Marketing (MAM) is a student organization at the University of Michigan which provides its members with the opportunity to work with and impact real businesses by providing them with valuable feedback, marketing insights, event planning, and creative material.
I served MAM as a Creative Design Team (CDT) member from September 2017 - May 2019. During this time, I designed fliers for several organizations and local businesses, including United 2 Heal, Iorio’s Gelateria, and Teaspressa.
Teaspressa is a coffee-inspired tea shop that began in Arcadia, Arizona. They expanded to Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2018. However, being farther from campus compared to other more conveniently located coffee stores, Teaspressa encountered difficulty with generating brand awareness amongst college-age young adults.
As the Creative Design Team member — and later Account Director — assigned to work with Teaspressa, I was tasked with envisioning creative campaigns and advertisements to attract the local university student population to their branch location.
During my time with Teaspressa, I designed two fliers: one for general use detailing a 10% discount for customers, and one to celebrate the 2018-2019 launch of the student-run food publication, Wolverine Cuizine.
Because the Wolverine Cuizine launch would be at the Teaspressa branch location while also featuring Gonana’s banana bread and ice cream from a local creamery, I thought it would be fun to parody Spotify’s highly recognizable UI in the flier and position the launch as a “best hits” food event featuring other artists.
Since Teaspressa already had an established brand, working with them taught me how to design in accordance to a brand guideline while still exercising my own creativity.
As the Account Director for Teaspressa in Winter 2019, I also served as a liaison between Teaspressa and our club members. This taught me how to effectively communicate with clients and lead a project team.
In May 2019, I became the Vice President of Creative Design at MAM. In this position, I managed and led our 15+ CDT members across our 15 different and rotating clients. I trained new members through weekly workshops and served as one of the lead designers representing the club as a whole.
Every semester, MAM goes through a recruitment cycle for new members. During Fall 2019, we wanted to increase outreach by passing out informational business cards. I presented two mockups for the executive board to choose from and we ultimately decided to go with a sleek, dark color scheme.
For Winter 2020, we wanted to further increase outreach by purchasing a stand banner to place at our club booths. I presented the executive board with three mockups for the stand banner and we ultimately went with a sleek, dark color scheme.
To boost member retention and appreciation, our executive board wanted to award members for outstanding work or achievements with their clients. I presented two mockups of the award to the executive board. We went with the colorful and modern design — using two different color schemes to differentiate between general members and account directors.
As the Vice President of Creative Design, I also educated new CDT members on design thinking and strategy through weekly workshops. Some of our topics included: visual literacy, color psychology, photoshop basics, and designing for accessibility.
I always aim for my presentations to be as accessible as possible, especially for those who were unable to attend my presentations in-person or would simply like to review the slides. As such, I leave thorough notes beneath every slide to emulate the verbal content of my presentations, so that those who may have missed the workshop can still gain a comprehensive understanding of the material shown. Feel free to browse through some of my presentations below!
Through my time as Vice President of Creative Design at MAM, I’ve learned how to manage both myself and others. I have to make sure all my presentations are ready to present by the end of each week and that all my CDT members submit quality deliverables to their clients on time. Because I had been a part of MAM for my entire university student career, it was so rewarding to see the club and its members grow and evolve over time.
