My position here at the Student Farm is one that many may not see, but one that is integral to the expansion of the farm community. My official title is graphic design intern, but I see myself as creator, strategizer, organizer, designer, and so much more. To get more technical I design event flyers, work on the Student Farm website, plan social media campaigns, edit videos, and create holiday and other specialty posts for social media.
Due to COVID-19, my position has been expanded to sustain communications duties as well. If you messaged the Student Farm social media this summer, I am most likely the face behind the chat messages! I have also been running our blog and working on collaborative projects with other students.
When I learned of this position at the beginning of my sophomore year it was also the first time I had heard of the Student Farm. I wondered what exactly the Student Farm was all about and if this was an organization I wanted to be a part of. What really struck me in this early phase before I had the chance to even meet anyone, was the strong sense of community and the drive the students seemed to have. After working with these students for nearly a year now, I can attest to their hard work and community-building efforts. In fact, the highlight of each work week for me is the meetings I have with the Student Farm director, Leslie Pillen, and students that I am currently collaborating with.
I have learned so much from my work with the farm. I’ve experimented with design, but I’ve also learned job skills and arguably the most important thing, lots of farm puns! One of the most valuable skills I learned is how to work effectively as a remote employee. I’ve learned how to manage my time, not procrastinate, and manage school work versus farm work, even when my work space for everything is on the same desk. When I was hired last fall we had no clue what 2020 would look like, but I now have this incredible asset of experience working remotely when some others have struggled with the learning curve of a work-from-home set up.
This was my first design internship and it was an amazing first one because I could experiment with strategy and design while still staying in line with brand guidelines. Had I been given the task of creating a new brand for my first internship, I think I may have been overwhelmed, but by starting with an established brand I was able to build and evolve off of this and do more, create more, and strategize more, and I became more confident and comfortable with the brand.
I’ve also been able to learn about farming along the way! One project I worked on is the ongoing series of home gardening videos we started publishing towards the beginning of COVID-19. I have edited all of these videos, and therefore watched each one quite a few times and have soaked in some farming knowledge along the way. This has made me more excited about fresh produce, cooking, and gardening than I was before, and has given me the opportunity to learn something I would not have in a classroom.
I have seen the hard work of everyone involved and have become passionate about my own work with the farm. Before this opportunity, I never really thought about how a student designer like me could have a place with the Student Farm. I quickly began to realize that the reason my position was posted was because of the passion behind the program and its growth. I learned first hand that the Student Farm and those involved are not static, but dynamic and are always looking for better, more efficient, more inclusive, and more exciting ways to do things. They know how much someone in the design field can help when it comes to publicizing events and staying active on social media, and because of that I have always felt appreciated at this job.
My favorite project has been the four year impact report. I got to really bring out my artistic side and had the opportunity to spend an extensive amount of time on it in order to bring it as close to perfection as possible. I also had the opportunity to design a series of related posts for social media as each section came to completion. I created the images you see by painting onto a piece of felt and then cutting out a ‘stamp’ that I then hand painted, stamped, and scanned or photographed. It was a blast to be able to bring in a more fine art approach to this project and I think the handmade element ended up bringing a lot of personality to the finished project.
This internship will be a positive memory that I will hold onto forever mainly because the people I got to work with inspired me to push myself not only in design, but in strengthening my job skills, trying other forms of media creation, and of course meeting new people with a collaborative mind like mine. If you are on the fence about getting involved, I urge you to try the farm out, they are some of the hapPEAist people you will meet!
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