For my freshman year work study, I was hired as an assistant in the film library for the Institute of the Study of the Americas (ISA). ISA oversaw the Latin American Studies (LTAM) major at UNC, and part of my role included producing content and publicizing both the major and the film library. One of my favorite projects while working at ISA was revitalizing their monthly film newsletter & integrating my passion for graphic design into some of our outreach.
My design work incorporated many of the skills I had learned about User Experience and User Interface (UX/UI), such as creating text and content that could be interacted with by people of varying seeing abilities. Additionally, I helped establish a style kit for the film library, always being sure to include the UNC logo at bottom right of my monthly newsletters. In my designs, I tried to be very intentional about including both film content that reflected a diverse group of perspectives, but also art and imagery with which the study body could identify.
For my first newsletter I chose to include films that were related to themes of queer and transgender identity, since the newsletter would go on to be published during Transgender Awareness Month in November. The coloration in the style kit included the signature trans flag color palette of blue, white, and pink.
During my second semester with the Institute for the Study of the Americas I created a newsletter for Women’s History Month in March. These title each featured powerful female leads in to highlight the theme of the awareness month. Some of my other projects with ISA included promotional posters to emphasize upcoming courses being offered via the Institute. One of the posters I created was for a Latin American Studies class, “The United States and Latin America.” In addition to creating visual content for the classes, I would often attend class sessions outside of the LTAM major to promote the courses. This would include a short presentation about the concentration, some of the courses being offered, and how the major can be paired with other majors at the University.
I served as a paid work study intern for three semesters, the first full year as part of my aid package. However, during my sophomore year I became ineligible to work there as part of my work study due to an additional scholarship I had earned. Still, ISA chose to hire me back after being granted enough aid to hire me as part of their team in spite of my ineligibility as a work study student. I went on to work with them one more semester, right before I studied abroad in Barcelona. During my final spring semester with them I continued to design, help publicize the major, and even helped plan their yearly banquet.
Working with ISA was some of my first experiences with graphic design. Though this slightly preceded my experience with Adobe Illustrator and Figma design, I knew the importance of integrating certain style guidelines that were typical to that of AI. I was happy to have my start with ISA and still continue to integrate a lot of what I’ve learned from my first desk job and employment with the University.
ISA also taught me some of the first steps of my career in Ad/PR. A lot of the initiatives we took part in as a more underrepresented major was trying to target students which we felt like may be proper fits for our major program (Spanish language learners, students in adjacent fields of study) and created our content and campaigns in response to the trends we noticed. We also saw an uptick in compilation style-media recommendations, such as former President Barack Obama’s annual track list and movie recommendations. With the help of my team of work study students and faculty, I was able to contribute to the growth of the newsletter, visual content as a whole, and outreach during my two years with ISA.
