My work as a volunteer at ESN Portugal begun as a local member, which included the Communication team.
Later, I was part of the Communication Committee, and was responsible for redisigning the entire Survival Guide, as well as providing work for social media.
As elected Communication Manager of ESN Portugal, I was responsible for planning and managing the social media channels of the network.
One of my first tasks in the summer of 2015, right when I started my mandate, was to start a Communication Committee recruitment campaign to expand and look for new talent in Graphics, Content and Multimedia, but we also started recruiting for a previously non-represented field, IT.
This campaign included the use of colours for each team, with banners shared by members of the Committee, as well as illustrated profile pictures with a short text introduction in the description, where each member told the network a bit about themselves.
In events at all levels – local, national, international, an asset we constantly needed were event banners, both to promote on members’ profiles, but to inform and make the event personalised and more pleasing to the eye.
Both during my mandate and as a member of the local section, I was tasked with designing these banners, some of them for conferences and debates, such as the one about the Balkan countries joining the EU, which was organised in partnership with the European Commission’s Representation in Portugal during NBM Lisboa, which hired us to write the minutes as well, a task which I was responsible for. Other banners were created for national events, like ESNolympics and National Platforms, or other campaigns, such as the Mobility Week, where we organised events, debates, conferences and activities and promoted them under the umbrella of Mov’in Europe and Mobility Week, an articulated event designed to promote mobility throughout Europe.
For the Spring campaign, we provided informative materials as well about mobility and I was responsible for researching and then translating that information into infographics to illustrate the growth of mobility, especially inside the country. We have also highlighted events from local ESN sections that we believed were good examples of promoting mobility, or discussions about its benefits and also its difficulties.
Erasmus National Meeting
The Erasmus National Meeting is an event which campaign materials I’ve worked in and overviews, during my mandate a Communication Manager of ESN Portugal.
As such, it was needed a fresh and young approach, and while most other forms of communication (such as graphics logo, posters, etc.) had already been tackled, we needed a few innovations.
We kept some traditional methods, such as still graphics, including this one appealing to the interaction of hashtags in which we picked a number of participants to be featured on our page.
GIFs were making a strong comeback , especially since Facebook was now allowing its members and pages to share them without having to open an external window. This gave us the opportunity to use motion, which in a mostly (at the time) still world of Facebook, it was bound to catch the eye.
But aside from motion, at the time, I was fascinated with an Instagram artist called Kiersten Stevens, who makes paper art.
Here you can find a few pieces of paper art, it’s simply paper cut cardstock which recreates the logo one photo at a time, each one representing a “vibe” of the event – barbecue/sports, beach, and party.
All of it was then simply coloured and positioned as needed, had its photo taken, and posted on ESN Portugal’s Instagram page, one t a time.
This allowed me to play a little bit on that field, since we usually make digital graphics and this stood out as the use of a more traditional medium to convey the message.
For the letter E I’ve cut out everything that reminds people of daytime vacation activities, such as sports, grilling and warm sunrays.
For the letter N, we went with the more relaxed side of vacations and included the beach, with sunscreen, flip-flops, a bikini, sunglasses, and bathing shorts.
For the last piece, I’ve cut out items that are reminiscent of a party and nightly activities, such as balloons, a turntable, a cocktail, a mirrorball, and some party props, including thrown confetti.
Promoting the cautious consumption of alcohol, and for our partnership with Pernod Ricard’s Responsible Party campaign, we gave out the usual streamlined communication online before the party, and in-loco merchandising, but also created a few dedicated GIFs and other materials for this event. We wanted to especially transmit the feeling of blurriness the exaggerated consumption of alcohol can create but keep it in an uplifting party mood.
