Tufts Alumni Leadership Video Series
For five months, I produced a comprehensive video series for the Tufts University Alumni Association (TUAA) to use with their new website to assist Tufts Alumni regional leaders across the world in developing, marketing and managing their local chapters. The idea stemmed from the issue that every two years, TUAA and the Office of Alumni Relations (OAR) sponsors about 20 chapter leaders to return to Tufts to attend seminars to learn about alumni leadership. This symposium is expensive, does not effectively reach as many people as they would like and is heavy on instruction, not leaving much time for interaction among alumni leaders.
I proposed to create four video sessions based on the four major seminars presented at the most recent leadership symposium in June 2009 which included: Data Mining, Successful Programming, Alumni Leadership Development, and Marketing & Managing your Chapter.
At the end of the project, Tufts received 48 VIDEOS with a total of 1.5 HOURS of content.
The process involved:
- Writing four scripts (based on the transcripts of the live presentations)
- Voice-over recording
- Producing slides and screen-capture videos
- Encoding videos for streaming
The aspiration for this project was to act as a hybrid online course with the “learning” occuring online and then the interactive brain-storming and idea development happening offline in the regional chapters or back on Tufts’ campus for a leadership symposium.
NOTE: The video series is private hosted content of Tufts University. If you would like samples, you may request them by email.
Larysa Music Project
In the Fall 2009, I had the pleasure of working with model and television personality Larysa Poznyak on developing her online presence for her music career. Working together with a designer, music video editor, and her music recording partner, I managed and developed the following (All links are available through the main site at LarysaMusic.com):
- A website with blog, photo gallery, several pages, music player, event calendar and custom regions for posting updates
- Twitter page
- Facebook page with custom music player
- Myspace page
- Syndication of three songs on iTunes
- Creation of a virtual music store on Audiolife.com
NOTE: The sites may appear differently as I am not managing them for the client.
New Web Design Video Series
I’m working on developing a new web design video series wherein I dissect sites for design and user interface. The idea behind the series is to provide people with no web design experience a foundation for the form by way of critique, analysis, and suggestions for change. For those who are in the know, it will hopefully be mildly entertaining.
The concept was borne out of an interaction that I had with a good friend of mine, Sarena S., who recently applied to a documentary film program at a prestigious university (which shall remain unnamed… for now). She visited the website for the program and was reluctant to apply because it looked terrible. I described the site as “an 8th Grade computer art project that hadn’t been updated in 10 years.” I told her not to go by the site and visit the program director in person. Several weeks later she did and low and behold the program was amazing.
So, what are the lessons to be learned at this university?
Your website is probably the first thing a prospective students sees. Therefore, appearances are very important. I would argue strongly that children grow up these days with much more keen senses of design aesthetic in comparison to even a generation ago. Their understanding of design is subconsciously influenced by the abundance of visually stimulating experiences, the rise of personal computers, and haute design in every day products (see: Apple Computer). In the documentary film “Helvetica” by Gary Hustwit, there is a great comment made by a typographer. He said that if he asked someone 30 years ago what a type face was, they’d look at him with a strange look. However, if you asked someone today what they think about a font, that individual will probably have a lot to say about more than one font that they use.
After working at two universities, I do understand that money can be hard to come by for things such as marketing and the department website. However, before completely abandoning a decent looking site (which is possible for several hundred dollars), that department should really consider options like having a talented student design a site for them. That’s better than doing a garbage Dreamweaver template from hell. Or maybe even buy a templated content management system for several hundred dollars.
All in all, I look forward to producing this show in the hope that it will make people look at websites and their experience online more critically. Web design is a form of art after all.
There will be more on this to come…