#brandtern

Hey guys, design Brandtern Laura here. I’m the last intern to blog making this week number 7 in our Brandtern Experience, which is pretty crazy! Working in the creative department has made for an awesome learning experience for my summer. I’ve jumped in on a ton of projects in various stages of the design process, from package design to social content and everything in between. I can’t get into too much detail about specific client work, so I thought I’d talk about a fun little project for the agency I worked on a few weeks back.

Gatesman+Dave hosts an annual summer party bringing together its employees and clients for food, drink, and games. This year’s theme: Shipwrecked. We needed a kickass invitation to email out to guests. When I joined the project, creative had already knocked out an initial brainstorm that resulted in eight concept sketches. The partners took a look at these and fell in love with the octo-party:

Our next step was to dive head first into the concept and come up with plenty of visual alternatives to display our party octopus. At our next internal meeting for the project we chose a clearer direction. Pictured is coworker Julie’s sketch with tentacles popping up out of the water (if that name sounds familiar, it’s because Julie was last years design Brandtern!).

We decided on a style similar to the Kraken rum commercials, as well as muted map-like colors. From here I sketched out a more solid layout to work from. This included correct proportions for an email blast, designated areas for copy, and a spot for the agency logo to name a few.

Once that was done I moved onto the computer and began piecing together images to create the masterpiece! Meanwhile in copywriting land, Brandtern Melanie was hard at work perfecting the lines of the copy that would be included on the invitation, as well as the subject line of the email. Side note: At Gatesman+Dave I’ve learned how closely copywriters and designers work together in an agency atmosphere. One of my favorite quotes I keep hearing around this side of the office is that “everyone is an idea person first.” The job titles may seem very defined and separate, but in reality the roles overlap and extend way beyond just writing and designing… so it’s a good thing Melanie and I get along.

 Next up for the invitation? Many rounds of revisions and adjustments as the piece works its way up the chain of command. We’re all generally on the same page here at the agency so this step ran smoothly and any changes were welcomed and helpful. This included playing with the header type to give it a more “wrecked” look, enlarging the tentacle items for visibility, and shortening copy (which happens a lot; you never have as much space as you think you do). Once I received the final approvals, this is how it turned out!

My job here was done and I passed it on to the development team! And in case anyone was wondering, they are often referred to as dev for short. So when people say they’re sending something to dev, they don’t mean some mysterious person named Dev whom you have yet to meet…. they mean development.

Bye guys!

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all doing well. Kelsey from Digital here! We now have only five weeks left at Gatesman+Dave, and it seems like I’ve just started yesterday! My time so far in the Digital department has been very informative and filled with new ideas and concepts. Each member of my team has been very generous with giving me tips and tricks to improve my skillsets. I now have a great list full of designers and developers to follow, websites and tools that make one’s life easier, languages and software that I need to become familiar with and several study guides to learn more about search engine optimization (SEO).

One of the best parts about this team is that I get to work with experts in all areas of digital. I got to sit down with the SEO Specialist and learned more about the process of implementing Google Analytics. She is the one who pointed me to those study guides so I could learn more about the terminology. I also got to meet with several of the front-end developers. Due to having some experience with WordPress built sites, I was able to help them with editing/updating content for the agency’s website. The site redesign just recently went live, so be sure to check it out! As for the rest of the projects, I will need to learn SASS in order to help any further. I have started to learn the basics from online tutorials and experimentation. Hopefully before the end of my time here, I will be able to dive a little deeper into this area. Although I do not have much experience with back-end development, the team here has been really helpful with answering my questions and offering advice on how to get started.

For the majority of my time, I have been working with Gatesman+Dave’s User Experience (UX) Designer. She has a wealth of knowledge in this area and has been incredible to work with. In order to help me gain a better understanding, she has walked me though the overall process of UX design from research to creating the sitemap and wireframes. Just recently, we have focused on a competitive audit and comparative review for one of our clients. This project was completely new to me, and I now have a greater appreciation for how much time and effort goes into this step. I even feel that UX design is now a possible career path that I would like to pursue. I really enjoy the great deal of thought and planning that goes into this process, and I hope to continue learning more.

Just from my short time here, I feel like I have gained a greater insight into working in the digital field. My team has been nothing but awesome, and I owe them a lot for making my experience great. I hope to learn as many new skills as I can so that I will become more useful to my team and gain more knowledge overall.

We are quickly approaching the midway point of the summer Brandtern program…Where did the time go?!  The Brandterns have all settled in, and we are all hard at work in our departments. However, that isn’t the only work keeping us busy...

We are also in the midst of creating our Brandtern final project, which will revolve around creating a webpage for The Brandtern Experience.  In our internship searches (that now seem so long ago) we all realized how much digging had to be done in order to gain a full understanding of the Brandtern program, and while we did enjoy some of our internet stalking, we thought we would try to make it easier for future generations.  (You are welcome, any future internship-searchers who may be reading this post!)

In order for the webpage to launch, it is our job to convince the agency that A. They need it. B. We can do it. And C. We can do it well. The making of our webpage (and all of the other components to go with it) is not an easy task, but with the combination of all the Brandterns’ skills and talents, it is certainly a doable one.

Kelsey (Digital) has been constructing wireframes, and she will soon be working on all the coding and the technical side of the webpage.  Melanie (Copywriting) will essentially make all of the wording flow (and sound pretty), and Laura (Design) takes care of making everything look good in terms of design.  They have already teamed up on doing so for our brand platform, but we’ll save that for the launch.... 

Cole (Account Planning) has been leading all research components on our target and when/how we can reach them.  First step was our survey, and our next step will be utilizing all of the data we collected in our campaign.  Rachael (Media) is taking on all media planning and buying elements with our hefty mock budget of $200,000.  (Unfortunately, we could not abandon all math by interning at an ad agency, but she seems to be handling it just fine!)

And lastly, what have I been doing?  I continue to rally the troops in making sure all our goals are being met and we are staying on schedule throughout the entire process in my Account Management Brandtern position.  It’s been a fun and exciting journey so far.  My fellow Brandterns have been awesome to work with, as well as everyone else at the agency, and I am excited to keep up all our hard work in the next half of The Brandtern Exp. this summer!

Here’s to a successful second half and even more success in the future!

-Ayla Apitsch

Account Management Brandtern

Melanie here! 

Tuesday, June 30th was Social Media Day, and there were celebrations around the agency and around the world. It’s practically a holiday here at Gatesman+Dave, and we celebrated throughout the day. We wanted to share our efforts for the day, and show the fun we had helping out the PR/Social team!

Here are a few ways we participated in Social Media Day 2015.  

1) Agency Social Media Laura and I were tasked with creating a new cover photo and profile picture for Gatesman+Dave’s Facebook and Twitter. After trying out a few different styles and looks, here is what we arrived at!

2) Agency #SMDay Infographic The PR/Social team created a survey that was distributed to the 70+ Gatesman+Dave employees. We compiled the results of the survey and then Laura, Kelsey and I were able to make this infographic showing the highlights of the survey!

3) Photographing the Photobooth Celebrations around the agency started with social media cookies and continued with a photobooth. We helped out by taking pictures and encouraging our co-workers to take a funny picture. Here are a few of the shots we got!

4) Brandtern Quiz We knew we wanted to contribute to the conversation around Social Media Day 2015, so with the help of Ayla and Rachael, we created this quiz entitled “Which Social Media Channel Are You?” With the assistance of Beth Thompson, our Brandtern Director, we even managed to have the quiz published on Advertising Week’s Social Club. Take the quiz below to find out what you are!

5) Live-Tweeting #SMDayPGH Smith Brothers Agency in the North Side hosted a Social Media Day event with Pittsburgh social media experts and novices alike to gather and discuss social media. This year the topic was “Social Good” and I was fortunate enough to attend the event and live-tweet it from the @TheBrandternExp handle. I loved hearing from so many organizations using social media as a vehicle for social good. Here are a few nuggets of information I was able to capture from the speakers.