2026 Summer Marketing | History of Football Course Poster

My first summer marketing assignment was to create a promotional poster for the History of Football course. I was instructed to make sure the poster is eye-catching with a strong cover image, so that students walking by will take notice.

★ Design Iterations: Because the project was operating on such a short timeline (the poster needed to be distributed quickly, as it is marketing for the summer), I immediately started creating a polished draft for the poster.

To follow existing visual design guidelines for the course, I used the color gradient and photo assets that were in the course box folder. I was also inspired by the online course promotions for this year and wanted to make the poster look consistent, so I added in some dynamic, rounded lines. I additionally included stars to break up the text and evoke imagery of Texas. 

After creating this draft, I received feedback that the design needed to be a bit more punchy to fully capture the eye-catching effect needed to advertise the course and the bold spirit of football. I was advised to take a look at newspaper headlines for football. Taking these considerations into account, I refocused my design approach to align with a newspaper theme, and created the following designs:

These designs were much more effective at capturing the energetic, bold spirit of football with the typeface and focus on a central image. The client decided to go with the right design, and the design was slightly edited to better emphasize that the “summer and online” aspect of the course.

★ Final Design:

★ Project Status: Completed (04/02/26)

★ Project Reflection: This is the first project I have worked on with such a tight deadline. My first iterations were created on one shift, and the next shift I was asked to finalize the poster. I learned a lot about managing my time and prioritizing both good design and functionality of a product; with such a short working time, I made sure to prioritize including all necessary text and information on the poster, even if the design was not yet perfect. Additionally, I was able to alter the poster to better communicate the exciting, bold nature of the course, making it a more engaging and effective promotional material.

✨🍓 Week 4: Training Progress 🍓✨

✧⋆ Helpdesk Place Card Redesign ⋆✧

✧⋆ After showing the last designs to the client, they loved it! 

✧⋆ This card will be placed in over 1,000 classrooms this Summer to help UT faculty and staff. I'm so honored to be contributing in a way that will help UT faculty and staff get the information they need!

✧⋆ Passion Project ⋆✧

✧⋆ Last week's STA meeting we covered how to present properly. I learned that a vital part of presenting is storytelling, to be able to walk the audience through an entire project from start to finish assuming they knew nothing about it is key.

✧⋆ My passion project involves the work I've done with the Texas Cultural Trust! I won't get into too many details, but this project has taught me a lot about how to communicate more effectively with stakeholders.

✧⋆ We learned that the project was out of our scope. We needed to tell our client a more realistic goal, but this only happened deep into the project. Our team had already expressed these concerns way before, but we never talked with the client about these concerns. I took away that I needed to not be so afraid to speak up and not waste anybody's time.

✧⋆ I have presented to my organization who are already aware of many of the details, so having to present this project in front of people who had no context was both a challenge and very helpful.

✧⋆ Tier 3 Course Studio Graphics ⋆✧

✧⋆ I was tasked with making an animated intro for a class of my choice. I decided to go with an informatics course called Online Communities. I started ideating with my iPad, sketching out general placement and icons I was thinking of including.

✧⋆ Storyboard: I wanted to have each icon rotate back and forth in the animation

✧⋆ Final: I decided to make the course name and number look as if it were a message and I animated it like one! I made it so that only the white icons rotated back and forth as I found it too much with every graphic. I went to Illustrator first to make all the graphics, made each layer separate and named it properly, and brought that into After Effects to animate.

✧⋆ Overall ⋆✧

✧⋆ Having to present was really useful! I need to improve on my storytelling and rehearsing beforehand would help me with my stuttering issue and confidence.

✧⋆ I haven't used After Effects too much, so having to animate studio graphics was out of my comfort zone. It was really interesting to learn and I am a lot more comfortable with making keyframes now!

Training Progress

This week I have been focused on making studio graphics. It’s been a bit of a journey, I ended up with a lot of iterations of the Digital Wall Monitor.

Moodboarding

I started out trying to figure out a direction for the class I selected (I320 U/S: Online Communities)

The direction that was approved was the first one. So thats what I went with going into making the other graphics.

Digital Wall Monitor

I had some trouble trying to keep things simple… given the inspiration I wanted to be maximalist, but a background is meant to be a background! Not the main visual. Especially whenever it comes to an online class, you wouldn’t want the background to be distracting. Here are some of my iterations:

This was my first iteration. I was advised that the bottom left was too attention-grabbing and that I should get rid of the numbers, since your eye darts to read it.

I blurred the numbers out of curiosity with how that could look instead of just getting rid of them entirely, but I eventually ended getting rid of the numbers.

This iteration I really tried making the attention go to the center rather than the bottom left… but it became way too distracting. I needed to tone this down a fair bit.

This iteration was one of my stronger ones and closets to what the final ended up being. It still felt like a little too much was going on… but I focused on adding more dimension by making the center pop out more as if it were stamped atop of everything else.

Final Digital Wall Monitor

Mockup

She shines bright like a diamond

Overall Reflection

Understanding that the background is meant to support the subject was my most important takeaway. Of course designing very intricate details is fun, but it can adversely work against you. I’ll keep this is mind whenever it is time for me to take on a real class. Simple is better!