01. The Problem
I began a partnership with EDF’s Digital Marketing Team (DMT), a group of 4-5 specialists, to start consistently enhancing the quality of their social share graphics.
Up until that point I’d only created custom one-off designs for Instagram and Facebook that limited editing access and coordination, and they wanted more choices and control. These custom graphics showcased different styles and performed very well. Due to these successful results, the overall Marketing Department folks also caught on and wanted access to an autonomous way to generate similar quality deliverables, though they wouldn’t be able to be as custom and complex. This full group consisted of 30-40 colleagues.
02. The Solution
I created a two-pronged approach to templated social share graphics. One track consisted of a suite of formats in Photoshop for the more advanced DMT colleagues to edit and post. Then I set up several basic but clean and modern templates in Canva for the wider Marketing Department teams to base designs on.
I created both training documentation for the Canva tool and also conducted a full Marketing Department sister webinar (which we recorded for future reference) demonstrating this training. I also set up Canva with our EDF colors, fonts and overall “brand kit” settings.
03. The Process
Templates proved to be a successful approach to elevating EDF’s overall social media engagement due to the improved and consistent visual solutions.
After several months, I implemented and hosted quarterly design review webinars with the entire department to showcase successful examples by team members. I also covered varying design theories and best practices in more detail and demonstrated before and after workshopping processes that took mediocre designs from okay to great with the help of our mentoring on a dedicated Slack #design channel! Before priorities shifted, I even started an educational design email newsletter that built on showcasing these successful principles.
Unfortunately, when the department switched to more targeted OKR goal-setting, this project fell off the radar and gradually became more outsourced. But the training and guidance I provided for the few years it lasted helped a lot of folks become more informed and better solution-oriented visual thinkers!
