roles

Social Media Marketing · Brand Identity · Graphic Design · Video Editing

client

Laney College is one of the biggest and most successful community colleges in the Oakland. I primarily worked with the Division of Career and Technical Education (CTE) as well as their Culinary Arts and Environmental Control Technology (ECT) departments.

Both the Culinary and ECT departments have very high success rates (close to 100%) for getting their alumni well-paying jobs straight out of college.

Additionally, recent funding made it possible for a large majority of students to have completely free tuition. Both of these aspects were a high-value features we wanted to highlight through marketing.

CTE Open House Flyer
CTE Social Media Templates
CTE Eventbrite Cover

Culinary Advertisement Flyer
Culinary Videos + Intro/Outro
Culinary SM Carousel + Covers

ECT Videos + Intro/Outro
ECT Carousel + Videos
ECT Flyer

objectives

Our quantitative goal was to meet a quota of sign ups on the Eventbrite page and attendance of the actual event.

We wanted to represent Laney as a reputable school by establishing brand awareness and elevate the public esteem of Laney College as a whole through templates, repeating visual elements, and developing a style for Laney’s future use.

Our goal was not to rebrand or reinvent the wheel but to simply build upon what was already existing.

pains

Despite Laney’s ECT division being the most prominent trade school in the Bay Area, enrollment rates had gone down which were a result to the HVAC industry’s labor shortage during the peak of COVID-19.

Additionally, the Laney branding was a bit underdeveloped and inconsistent at this point.

problems

All three versions I had created were absolutely not what the client had expected. I focused too much on the “reputable” aspect that I understood the prompt as “serious.”

The design was too monotonous for a student demographic, and the client referred back to a previous asset that they wanted the ECT brand to embody.

Overall, they wanted it to be more colorful and playful for the student demographic. We also wanted to add more photos for engagement, but there was so much information which made it a challenge.

solutions

With direction from the team and taking into account their underdeveloped branding, I made the decision to play around with more modern type in order to add back some of the playfulness and youth the client wanted.

Additionally, I wanted to experiment with their repeated triangle graphic element. To balance out the sharpness, I used fully rounded corners and only solid colors. As for the photography, I played around with eye trace and created a visual funnel of photos going up, using rounded triangle shapes to combine some of the new added elements.

Another issue that came up through the process was that enrollment rates were still lower than expected, so we decided to update the Eventbrite cover since initially we wanted to prioritize everything else for the budget. We ended up exceeding our goal of 400 Eventbrite sign ups!

objectives

The primary goal was to expand the carousel using minimal but effective copy to have lots of photos without blowing out the resolution. Additionally, the team wanted to make sure each slide had visual cues on the carousel (the arrow and lines) to indicate that the design continues to the right.

problems

Some issues in this project included not having enough photos with good lighting since the kitchen used overhead lights. Additionally, the compositions were difficult to manage.

solutions

Luckily, there was already some consistency on the department’s social media page so I was able to continue the patterns of geometric color blocking. With the color blocking, I was able to adjust the composition to make some of the awkwardness work by first setting the imagery then moving around the copy.

objectives

Because of the previous experiences with the client, ECT project was straightforward as the client and I were aligned on branding, aesthetic, and feel. I worked with our copywriter to collaborate on wording to repeat throughout the marketing as well. 

Promoting free education was our first priority and highest reward as the school had very recently obtained funding.