I’m very grateful for the opportunity Deanna Gummer, my supervisor, the Marketing Coordinator, and the Old Dominion University Department of Communication and Theatre Arts have given me. I was fortunate to have worked with Deanna for the Alumni Magazine’s Spring edition. I loved working with Deanna, and after the magazine was finished and distributed, I asked if she had any internship positions available. She took me on and gave me an experience I will appreciate for the rest of my career.
Before the semester began, we were ready to get to work. We wanted to create a new campaign that would be demonstrated on the ODU Dance Instagram (the Dance Department belongs to the Department of Communication and Theatre Arts) and the ODU Communications and Theatre Arts Instagram pages. We wanted to highlight
the Dance program’s people, including faculty, alums, and students. From this idea, ‘Whose Shoes’ was born. During the Summer Dance Intensive, we had our first opportunity to take photos for the campaign. I brought along my Sony A7III, a ring light, and a can-do attitude. I photographed James Morrow, Dr. Kate Mattingly, Christina Yoshida, Lauren Sinclair, and Myaja Watson (student). I also took a video during Professor Sinclair’s class and created a video promoting the "Whose Shoes?" campaign before our first.
I created graphics for each “Guess Who?” and “Reveal” post on Canva, and Deanna was able to suggest edits and proof the copy on Canva itself. My favorite products from this campaign were the promotional video, photograph, and graphic of Myaja Watson’s ‘Whose Shoes?’ post. I liked the video because I could test Adobe Creative Cloud’s ability to move video from the mobile application Premiere Rush to the desktop application, Premiere. Overall, this was a fun campaign that allowed interaction on the Instagram pages.
During my internship, I expressed to Deanna my eagerness to work with design and layout, and she got me those projects! My first project was creating the banner for the Communication Master’s Program, which was beginning its Facebook platform. I used ODU branding and my creativity to make their banner on Photoshop’s desktop and mobile app. For Dance’s Antiracism in the Arts Symposium, I designed the original programs for the four symposium sessions on InDesign. That was a lot of work and created from scratch. Deanna came in with so much help and editing the original and printed versions looked very good. The director of the Strategic Communication program, Dr. O’Hallarn, approached Deanna about some needed flyers for the department. They were the perfect projects to work on my layout and design. I created an “Upcoming Spring Classes” for the Strategic Communication program and included a QR code that led to a Visme document with class descriptions. The last major design project I created was the Job Vacancy Flyer for the Strategic Communication program. That flyer was shared on social media, email, and Dr.O’Hallarn distributed flyers at the PRSA ICON 2022 in Dallas, Tx.
The thing I liked most about my internship was that I could work with different programs and on other projects. Our target markets are most reachable on social media, and our efforts were focused on social media products. I’m grateful Deanna didn’t limit me to social media products. She let me work on different Adobe programs for projects such as ODU Rep Theatre’s “Macbeth” promotional material. Deanna also pushed me to get involved in the planning and project management side of our job. I created an SM calendar for the department on Excel in which marketing leads for each department could add their social media posts coming up. I also learned to use Hootsuite for scheduling our products on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter.
I’m grateful Deanna was my supervisor, as she had a wealth of information about Marketing and Public Relations and was very excited to teach someone else. I feel like I learn best by doing, and an internship benefited my learning experience. I’m very sad to be leaving Deanna for the Spring semester, but I’ll be taking what I learned to my new internship and beyond.