Q&A with Senior Designer Ashley: How Command Education’s In-House Marketing Team Supports Students!

A: Depending on the full scope of a student’s project, the Marketing and Design team offers support on a wide range of creative assets, including logo and brand design, website building and development, book layout, design and publishing, and other marketing materials including flyers, brochures, posters, social media templates, and more. Some of the projects we have helped students creatively develop include:

• Printed flyers advertising a nonprofit drive collecting sports equipment.
• Social media video graphics used to educate local teenagers about financial literacy.
• A web platform on which a student provided coding and computer software demos for their peers and younger students.
• An author website for a student who self-published a book of their original short stories.
• A zine publishing peer-reviewed creative writing, poems, short stories, and artwork for a literary club.

A: Initially, students and Senior Mentors work together to develop the foundations of a passion project by identifying and building upon the student’s skills, interests, and ideas. Together, they strategically establish milestones, as well as identify and write copy for design and marketing collateral, completing a thorough design request that establishes the needs and the goals of each design task that the student requires expert assistance with. Once the project has a distinct identity, including a name or title, a mission statement, and a target audience, the Marketing and Design team steps in to bring the design elements to life. At this point, the Marketing and Design team discusses creative opportunities with the Senior Mentor and student, as well as ways to raise the project’s profile, and any specific requests the student may have for marketing collateral.

A: While the process outlined above represents the usual design process, our team’s involvement varies from student to student. Some students are ambitious self-starters who want minimal support on their projects; others need or prefer more hands-on support. In these cases, a member of our team may join one of the mentor-student meetings earlier on in the ideation process to brainstorm and outline the steps needed to complete their project and to discuss potential options and how we can best support their needs.

A: We meet students where they are, whether they are new to graphic design or if they have a clear vision and ample experience. We ask students who need more guidance to consider and expand on their vision for the materials and provide examples of sources of inspiration for their project. Doing so teaches them to conduct a competitive analysis, articulate their vision, and mature their graphic sensibilities. When a student finds themselves stuck, we also work with them to create a comprehensive guide with potential options that may fit their needs. No matter their skill level, our process is student-centered, and students always take an active role in ideating and executing their vision, developing design literacy in the process.

A: In this day and age, gaining digital literacy is essential for standing out in the college admissions process and setting a foundation for students’ future professional success. In large part, the success of students’ clubs, start-ups, community initiatives, or small businesses depends on how compellingly they can share their vision with their communities. By giving students the tools they need to envision and execute design projects, we help them to become better communicators, share their vision and passion more effectively, and create a digital space that they can continue to build throughout their college careers.