DURATION

June - August 2018

MY ROLE

Digital Media Intern.  

Summary 

As a Digital Media Intern for a non-profit, I was in involved with social media management, weekly newsletter production, graphic design, photography, and web analytics projects for 3 months.

Due to structural changes in the company, I was actually in charge of marketing during my time as an intern. At the end of my internship, I helped out with onboarding a new full time staff member who was taking over my role. 

The ReBuilding Center (RBC) is a non-profit located in Portland, Oregon with a goal of promoting the use of salvaged and reclaimed materials. The RBC entails three major entities:

• The RBC Store sells donations of furniture, fixtures, and repurposed building materials, priced at 40-90% of market value. 
• The Education Program offers various classes year round encouraging creative reuse, including introductory plumbing and electrical courses.
• The Deconstruction Team salvages demolition materials from sites and repurposes them.

Newsletter Template Design

Before shaping the content of the newsletters, I took some time to revamp their pre-existing template on Mail Chimp. I wanted to push forward information about all of the services they offer, encourage their subscribers to make donations to their store, and share creative reuse projects made with materials they bought from the RBC back with us. Here's an overview of some changes I made: 

A More Modern Template 
Including the organization's new logo in the newsletter, with colored social icons to get encourage subscribers to connect on multiple platforms. 

Adding an Informational Section
This included descriptions of the three main services they offer, with links to provide more information and bring subscribers to the website.

Creating a Donation Button
Leading subscribers directly to the donations page of the website. I also added a call to action in the footer of the email, telling subscribers how they can share their creative reuse projects. 

Newsletter Production

I helped produce about one newsletter a week, called Today’s Finds, which were sent out to 11,000 subscribers. Today's Finds displayed the coolest items currently available in the store to customers.

It required me to venture out of the office, talk to the staff and the customers, do some exploring, take some photos, and come up with an exciting list of about 9-13 items to draw customers into the RBC. Check out some of the items I featured below!

Graphic Design Projects

During my time at the RBC, I participated in many quick graphic design projects for the organization. These varied from creating flyers and advertisements to updating business cards or gift cards. I also got to work on some fun side projects in my spare time.

Instagram Advertisement

Informational Flyer

Truck Sticker

Postcard #1

Loyalty Card Update

Postcard #2

Photography

One of my favorite ways to tell stories is by taking photographs. I took many, many photos during my time at the ReBuilding Center. Whether is was for a blog article, a newsletter, a social media post, or simply candid staff photos, there were plenty of chances for me to take some photos over the summer.

Social Media Branding

 It was part of my job to update logos and font styles across many design mediums, but I also decided that the brand identity across the social media channels needed to be streamlined. When I first arrived, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all contained varied sets of information in their account profiles, with different profile pictures.  I decided to give the accounts a modern twist by using a minimalist design. Here is are the old pictures for the accounts compared to my new design:

Original Facebook icon.

Original Twitter icon.

My streamlined icon.

Web Analytics & Site Design

Over the course of my internship, the RBC was partnering with a web analytics consultancy to help them manage their website. I was able to learn more about how the user's experience of a website can be analyzed using data. We were able to identify pain-points from the users, using stats from Google Analytics including time spent on web pages as well as exit rates, bounce rates, and drop off rates. 

These meetings led me to:

• Alter image/video sizes to reduce page load time
• Remove unused social media widgets 
• Create banner for webpage  
• Alter the content of specific webpages to make them more mobile friendly  

A banner I put together for the ReBuilding Center website. 

When All is Said and Done

I had such a great summer at the ReBuilding Center. I had the opportunity to dabble in many creative fields, take fun field trips, work with a diverse team of excited individuals, and learn so much about reuse and sustainability. The RBC gave me the freedom to pursue the projects I was passionate about, and base my internship work around what I wanted to gain from it. I gained experience in graphic and content design, marketing, and navigating my way through a large organization as a professional in my field. I feel so lucky to have been a part of this team! Make sure to stop by the next time you're in Portland.

On another note, I find that this concept of creative reuse has been continuously reoccurring throughout my experiences in the past year. During my study abroad in the Netherlands, I had a chance to visit the Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision which had an entire project focused on reusing visual and audio materials  from their archives to create music, making the material relevant and exciting to their general audience. I find this pretty exciting. Creative reuse is here to stay! 

Carina Dempsey 2023