Airlie Berkshire Farm
Client Project Experience
Alia's Visual Literacy class was tasked will reinventing the "Airlie Berkshire Farms" brand to market more effectively to the students and community of American University. To view more photography, visit the Portfolio page.
Here's the pitch my class and I presented to our client,
Airlie Berkshire Farms.
Click me!
In our pitch, our class focused on how to better connect the "hidden gem" of American University's Airlie Berkshire Farm to the rest of the school and the student body. We wanted to push Airlie to the students who crave a connection with nature while living in the city of D.C. for the first time.
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We focused first on modernizing Airlie cosmetically but then quickly shifted our focus to new and engaging ways for the Farm could re-introduce them to university and AU's community through social media, events, and mechandise.
The Airlie Client Project - My Experience
by Alia Messina
One of the many valuable things I learned while working on the Airlie Berkshire Farm client project was the power of saying "Yes" and the value in being collaborative and adaptable.
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My responsibilities for the client project were being a producer for an episode of a cooking show we created for the farm called "Airlie at Your Table", creating new Email Headers, creating a new Pinterest page, and creating mockup merchandise that included hand-making buttons and stickers at our university's Makerspace. Taking on all of these responsibilities for the pitch was ambitious but I was grateful to have the opportunity to contribute so much to our overall presentation.
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Most of the challenges I faced during the client project happened during the filming of "Airlie at Your Table." Previously, I had only ever produced theater so learning how to create a list of shots for a professional-style cooking show and learn how to work on a set was daunting in the moment. Having quick deadlines and constantly changing tasks in a class-wide project was chaotic but it lead to a lot of memorable learning moments about project-based work and the importance of collaborative communication.
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If there was something I would do differently last time, I would ask for more client feedback and be more receptive to it than I already was. Learning how to ask for and implement feedback is a massive part of working in communications and exercising visual literacy. While we worked on rebranding and developing a new personality for our client, getting feedback along the way eventually turned into the most important checkpoint along the way. With no guiding opinion it's hard to have a product both you and the client are happy with in the end. So, learning how to ask for commentary on the state of the project so far, taking No's in stride, and working to earn those Yes's was a difficult but rewarding process.
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Overall, I'm extremely proud about what my class and I were able to accomplish and learn while working on the Airlie Client Project and hope to continue working with Airlie Berkshire Farms and American University in the future to implement the design choices we pitched to them in December of 2023.
