Design Collective
Long Story Short…
I wanted more inter-cohort community at my university, so I took initiative and organized an event called Board Game Day, which was an independent project that combined board games, food, and designers. This led to the formation of Design Collective in November 2024, Miami University’s student-run organization for designers. The club offers networking and professional development opportunities for future success. I served as the Event Coordinator, promoting and hosting 10 events throughout the semester.
Our first official event was an Adobe Workshop, which helped audience members enhance their hard skills in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and After Effects. I created the posters and advertised the event.
'Designing Love Letters' was an event for Miami's creatives to stretch their design muscles with a holiday-themed prompt. Other holiday-themed design events involved Halloween and Easter.
The Design Collective team surveyed the Communication Design majors and found that most students felt unfamiliar with InDesign. With this insight, I helped create an event that used InDesign templates for members to edit and customize. The template introduced them to many InDesign basics, such as type settings, paragraph styles, image embedding, color swatches, and more.
Design Collective hosted the 'Absolutely Tote-worthy' event as a fun, hands-on way to build community. Attendees screen-printed designs onto tote bags, jeans, and hoodies.
We carpooled Design Collective members to head down to Cincinnati's SEGD Portfolio Review and Networking event. It's important for members to get portfolio advice while also connecting with other designers in the larger community.
Professional headshots were available for all members in a reserved photography studio.
I helped man the Design Collective booth at Sparkfest, Miami's annual public festival of student creativity, to promote our events and resources.
Graphic Design Beyond the Degree: Real-World Insights
Design Collective's "Graphic Design Beyond the Degree: Real-World Insights" was a panel with three Miami Alumni held in April 2025. I created, promoted, and moderated the event with help from Miami’s Career Center. As the panel moderator, I experimented with active audience participation during the session, having people stand up and talk to each other between panelist questions. Audience members gained confidence in their creative career, got many networking opportunities, and received advice from Macey Chamberlin from Lemon Grenade Creative, Grace Hall from Medpace, and Maria Johnson from vineyard vines.
The turnout was great! There were 32 audience members in attendance, which was similar to the number we were expecting. There were freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors!
The panelists informed me that they loved the panel because I summarized their responses after each question, which made them feel heard AND gave more opportunities for the audience members to absorb their knowledge. From left to right: Macey Chamberlin, me, Grace Hall, and Maria Johnson
Audience members were encouraged to introduce themselves to each other in the spirit of networking. Some took the opportunity to greet the panelists as well.
A group picture was taken for all in attendance to post on social media!
Audience members stuck around an hour after the panel to continue discussion.
Audience members stuck around an hour after the panel to continue discussion.
Major shoutouts to Taylor Conteh and Madeleine Hood at Miami's Career Center for making the panel possible!