On the beginning of september I started an internship under the Erasmus + Programme. It consists on managing communications in La_SEI, the School of Economic Intelligence and International Relations at the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). This is a documentation of the work I’ve done during this time.
SEPTEMBER:
Before the internship even begun, the school asked me to do a small brief to test my skills, where I would design a book cover. On September I begun by finishing that commission and publishing the book itself (I wanted to do editorial work on the inside but because of a time limit set by an investor, it had to be published almost in a draft stage).
Then I continued by defining what the brand identity should be. There was already a semblance of visual identity by the colours and logo of the website and publications. So I refined what was already there and decided to incorporate the visual element of stipple illustrations for a more cohesive outcome. I also decided the typography that the school would use; which is ‘Roc Grotesk’, an extremely versatile typeface available on adobe fonts.
On my first weeks I also re-instated Twitter and created an Instagram account. Social media management was one of my main duties here and I decided to have them operational as soon as possible. Along with this I also designed the first posts and promotional material for diverse courses and publications that the school offers. I also studied the viability of transitioning their WordPress website onto Webflow (something I intend on doing to my personal website soon).
On September I also attended as a representative of the school, along with a lecturer and three master students, to a series of lectures hosted at the Madrid National Library where our lecturer and the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan talked about archaeology in Central Asia.
During this period, I also finished a commission I did for my friend and fashion student Lucía Guedán, where I designed their website logo along with a short animation.
OCTOBER
On October I mainly worked on more social media posts and created posters and flyers for one of the school’s main courses: ‘Lie Risk Detection’. I was also tasked with putting the poster up on several faculties in the Autonomous University of Madrid.
I also attended a second event on ‘Casa Árabe’, where the school was invited to a book presentation, along with a panel of diplomats, ambassadors and intellectuals.
NOVEMBER
On November I took part on the ‘Lie Risk Detection’ course, which I now have completed. I also worked on the promotion of the course ‘Anatomy of Love’, where I created several social media posts and a poster. The course will begin on February, where I’m also inscribed.
I also attended to another event hosted by the Embassy of Azerbaijan. Here we began planning an event which is currently postponed. This belongs to a series of events we have planned for January of which I can’t speak right now on account of a confidentiality clause. The event, which hopefully would take place on January, would include a fashion show provided by the Azerbaijan Embassy along with ‘gastronomic intelligence’ belonging to that same country. I also created a team of students to provide voluntary help for the organization of these events.
DECEMBER
On this month I mainly worked on the web, where I finished transferring all content from the old website to the new one, along with finishing up the visual identity and all formatting necessary so that adding new content is as simple and efficient as possible. I estimate the publication of the new website around the beginning of January. I also created social media posts and managed communications with the representative of the Azerbaijan Embassy.
I also made a short trip to London to help out on a Blackpepper pop-up (a creative agency that one of my course mates created) that consisted of the upcycling of clothing with a handheld printer.
JANUARY
This month I exclusively worked on the website, which I have now finished! It’s not yet released since it still needs approval from my boss (and some re-touching), but I’ll hopefully be able to link it on the next entry. Creating a fully operational website from scratch in a platform I wasn’t already familiar with has been an enormous challenge, but I’m very proud of the work I’ve done. This will allow my successor next year and different members of the school to add and sort content with ease, aside from quality user interface and easy access to information within the web.
This month we also resumed communications with the embassies of Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan with the objective of making a series of exhibitions around March! It’s still in paper but it points to a very interesting next couple of months.
FEBRUARY
On February several key contacts were made, we began planning an event with The Garden of Peace, with whom we’re planning an event where an olive tree garden will be planted on the university. We’re also finishing details with the embassy of Azerbaijan for preparing an exhibition set for mid-april. I’ll talk more about this once it’s more set in stone.
I also designed several posts concerning publications the school has been making. Alongside with this, I’m currently planning the launch of a new master’s degree, of which I’m currently defining visual identity.
Aside from this, my web prototype was accepted and I’m currently developing the final product! which I plan on launching next month, before any events take place.
MARCH
March was a relatively relaxed month, my boss decided to launch the website on summer, and so I continued optimizing it but without the pressure of inmediate release. On that time, I started working on the a master’s degree promotion campaign, designing brand Identity and posters to set around the university, aside from gathering contacts for external promotion.
On a different topic, sadly, the Azeri embassy stopped responding to any correspondance we sent them, so the event we had planned was postponed indefinetely.
APRIL
This month we had the release of the master’s degree, which was mainly on what I worked for the first half of the month. After that, I started organising a book launch event of the volume I designed the cover of at the beginning of this internship (visit the september entry) which initially was planned for the end of the month.
Sadly, this could not be possible since I did not recieve much cooperation from the school and basic information such as location, time, or attendants were not available to me. So we made the decision to postpone it to mid-May in order to plan it more properly. In the meantime, I designed posters and physical deliverables for the day of the launch.
MAY
Aside from putting together a LinkedIn account for the school, this month was mainly devoted on preparing the event and its launch. It was a talk by five members of the school, along with a representative of the Club of Exporters and Importers of Spain, which contributed on the book. We planned for a 45 minute talk and discussion of different elements of the book guided by these experts. I was in charge of setting up the space itself, designing rollups, posters, bookmarks and flyers; and making sure that everything was running smoothly.
I proposed making an open invitation, where we could track the number of attendees and fill out the room’s capacity (80 people). This question, making the invitation open or closed, didn’t seem from the start of much concern for the school. I pressed since last month to obtain a concrete answer and I only really got one two weeks before the event was due, the invitation would be closed. I was assured by the speakers that the room would be filled by 50 attendees.
Seven people attended. Five of them, counting me, were students. There were six people on the board of experts. I hadn’t laughed that much in a while. The biggest ‘I told you so’ I’ve had in my professional career. At least, what I was in charge of turned out to be great, but sadly I didn’t have control over this. Isn’t that fun.
JUNE
JULY
NAMENOTFOUND// 