During our team’s research phase we focused on several areas to better prepare ourselves to meet our client’s stated business goal of hiring one new teacher.

We started by learning everything we could about forest schools and familiarized ourselves with their teaching philosophy and practices. We analyzed the local competition, which we found to have a limited presence within the US, and thus these schools actually viewed each other as collaborators rather than competitors. Our team also conducted some fieldwork, where we visited our client’s forest school and gained great insight into how a forest school operates and how to better market our client’s business to potential new teachers.

We took a deep dive into existing social media campaigns, on multiple social media platforms, to better understand how these platforms were being used to attract potential employees. From that research, we compiled a list of design styles used by other forest schools or educational institutions for younger children to present to our client which provided a focused design direction for our campaign.

Research Phase

1. Analyzed the competition

2. Researched existing social media campaigns to hire a new employee

3. Visited client’s school

4. Compiled a list of possible design styles

Our team started our design process with word maps to get to the heart of the question, “Why do people become teachers?” In our exercise we realized it’s because:

Why do People become teachers?

• They want to make a difference

• Make a lasting impact on a child’s development

Therefore, we went into this project keeping in mind that our social media campaign had to capture the fun/spirit of the outdoor experience while persuading a teacher why they should potentially make the leap into a forest school. Our content had to be informative, persuasive, and inspirational. 

In our sketches, we focused on translating our client’s current brand assets, that were available on their website, to content that fit within the parameters of varying social media platforms. Our goal throughout this process was to emphasize the visuals and minimize the available text while still remaining informative. 

As our team began creating a variety of design iterations, we learned the importance of creating scalable content that would translate on a smaller screen, i.e. phone screens. Most users who use social media use their phones and we needed to constantly test the legibility of our visuals and our text. 

Upon reflection, there were three major project challenges that my team faced and overcame while working together:

Project Challenges

1. Condensed Timeline

2. Different Time Zones

3. Maintaining Visual Brand Consistency

The first challenge was this project’s condensed timeline which spanned roughly eight weeks and at the beginning of the process, our team was nervous that we would be unable to deliver such a robust social media campaign in such a small time frame. Despite our team’s uncertainty, with consistent communication and well-laid out project planning, our team learned the delicate art of multitasking, time management, and juggling numerous deadlines.

Our second challenge was working with a team member who was traveling and lived in a different time zone. Due to COVID-19, our team never had the pleasure of meeting in person and conducted all our design work remotely. As we navigated best practices for remote collaboration, both internally and externally, we also had to learn how to work with a teammate whose schedule didn’t always align with ours. This challenged us to become more flexible. We realized that team collaboration didn’t always have to mean we could all meet at the same time; however, by being clear on project goals, team responsibilities, and project deadlines we were able to avoid any unnecessary delays or miscommunication.

The third and final challenge was to create clear brand consistency as we translated the client’s already existing brand assets onto their social media campaign. All four designers on our team had very different design styles and ways in which we analyzed and resolved design briefs. Therefore, we were challenged to think differently when creating our design solutions and to utilize our style guide as a tool, rather than a restriction, to create and maintain a cohesive design look across all our final deliverables.