For my whole college experience I was involved in The University of Alabama Dance Marathon, on the creative team. My first year, I served as an Art Director for the team, and worked mainly with campaign graphics and within our creative team. The next year, I served as the Creative Director and oh boy what a challenge. I learned so much about working with non-creatives, and dealing with corporate sponsors sending Illustrator files with millions of missing links the day of a deadline. Learning how to explain concepts for campaigns without sounding like a pretentious ass, was hard, but really helped take a lot of stress away and got our messages across without any hassle. In my final year at The University of Alabama I served as the Vice President of Communications and gave our visuals a refresh. Leading a team of all kinds of communications people allowed me to see past my creative bubble and truly understand where the PR team was coming from when they said “less graphics and more pictures please” when working on a campaign visual identity. UADM has taught me so much about working hard and playing nice and what it means to be a creative in a real life setting.
