S P E C I A L P R O J E C T S
O N I N S T A G R A M
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SPECIAL PROJECT
SPECIAL PROJECT
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In the fall of 2021, I organized "Loose-Leaves": An Autumnal Writing Contest. At the time, I was making my posts on Adobe Sketchbook, so most of the content below was hand-drawn. After announcing the contest with the posts below, I would share reminders for the upcoming deadline using stories. Once the contest was over, I created prize bundles and took pictures of the winners to share with our community on @illinoisenglish. Posts highlighting students and their work have been omitted to uphold privacy.
(Left) Towards the beginning of the contest, I created a series of stories to inspire the writing process using three simple steps. I also created a story bookmark on our profile for the duration of the event. This allowed interested parties to easily track announcements about the contest.
(Right) I used a variety of tools to promote this project. Immediately after the contest announcements, I addressed questions. I disguised familiar social media content-- like words of affirmation or comments on the weather-- as contest reminders. I created countdowns for the deadline and continued to issue quips to help with the writing process. After the contest winners were announced, I reposted the announcements to the stories to promote the success of our student writers.
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As a social media intern, I made a conscious effort to actively arrange our page in a way that made it easy to navigate. In February of 2022, I created an "Upcoming" story highlight where we could link all approaching events. In November of 2022, I redesigned the highlight icons to a simple white icon and introduced a "Resources" highlight for stories with important links. In January of 2023, I debuted our Linktree, drawing attention to the calendars and sites it featured. All of these upgrades were announced because it was my personal goal to be transparent as a designer.
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A few months into my internship, I began to observe that our stories attracted more viewership than our posts, which made them a great tool to generate interaction. However, if multiple slides of stories were posted on the same day, viewership decreased towards the last slide. I made it one of my goals to create fun, exciting stories that would keep the same viewers, number of votes, etc. from the first slide to the last.
When creating interactive stories, I both drew on already existing story models-- "This & That", "Word Scramble", etc.-- and created my own. I learned that open-ended questions invited less responses, unless they were guided, such as in the Mad Libs question ("plural noun?") or word scramble. Polls tended to generate the most interaction. Generally, for every 7 people voting in polls, 1 would respond on a slide with an open-ended question.
One of my personal mini projects consisted of creating a major-related mascot or character. In the brainstorming phase, I toyed around with the idea of creating cartoons in which Emerson shared the experiences of English students at UIUC. The cartoon idea never left the conceptual stage, but Emerson did make two appearances via story: one as a very simplistic doodle and the second as a more developed character (newer versions appear first on the left). Emerson, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was featured twice seeking wardrobe advice. After leaving the polls up for a day, I created the winning combination and the alternative. I cannot claim the idea for these outfit-based stories as my own, but I take great pride in creating Emerson and drawing him and his clothes by hand.
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For my final special project, I suggested that the three interns, all graduating, create a handbook of basic wisdom, learned lessons, and gathered resources to aid the team proceeding us. I did not head this project in the end, but I was eager to once again be transparent about methods that work without leaving our successors to figure everything out for themselves. I also found it useful to reflect on our creative methods and generate a shared educational resource, which we all gladly collaborated on.
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