Canva
Challenge: Texas A&M AgriLife employ’s over 5,000 people who are all working to promote themselves, their work, and AgriLife as a whole. How can a team of 3 graphic designers possibly create invitations, flyers, social graphics, gifs for that many projects? How can we slow down the constant influx of unplanned, responsive projects?
Solution: Sometimes we have to set aside our insistence that only “good” designs come out of Adobe programs and us as designers. If we can teach employees to take care of themselves and be good stewards of the brand, then we open ourselves up to doing bigger projects with bigger ROI.
To do this, we created a suite of digital and print Canva templates for employees to choose from. We then provided trainings through “Professional Service Lunch and Learns,” and began launching talks and trainings throughout the entire Texas A&M University System. This opened an opportunity to review the brand guide, show off our brand new photo repository, teach a few design essentials, and create lasting partnerships. Perhaps most importantly, it reduced the graphic design team’s “responsive” projects from 70% down to a manageable 20%, opening up the capacity and energy to focus on bigger campaigns.
Unexpected Results: More use of brand site for templates lead more proper branding and more visits to our photo repository.
