Public Relations, A Visual Affairs

Thus far, I have been working on Delish, a food expo coming up in January and a corporate rebranding project. I did not know what to expect starting out my internship. I expected an experience which involved me scrambling to meet press release deadlines and monitoring many social media platforms. However, my experience has been very different to that and the internship only proves how diverse the PR industry is. I was mostly surprised at how much designing I had to do! 

Throughout the PR degree in Curtin, we covered many topic, tips and tricks about speech crafting, media campaigns and press releases. Although that is still very relevant, the amount of visual materials I had to prepare stands as a testament at where Public Relations is moving as an industry. I, myself actually research and shop on Instagram for the latest and newest food and fashion trends. It's not a surprise, one of our most effective marketing tool is actually Instagram and Facebook, a social media platform itself! With the rise of internet, digital gadgets and social media, we are evolving into a visual society as a whole and this definitely shows in the industry. 

I have designed a few documents for university clubs prior but boy was it tough in the real world! I have edited photos and designed tickets, a brand style guide, posters, online newsletter, web banners and an infographic. 

It is almost essential to have a good eye for design and even better, to have basic design skills. Thankfully, there are also many online sources to learn. Google has been my best friend. SO! As with my previous post, let me impart my top tricks and resources when it comes to designing

• Adobe Help Forum (the amount of support the design community has is impeccable, god bless them) 

• Stock Photos - pixabay.com & pexel.com

• Visual inspiration - Pinterest, Behance, Canva & good ol' Google

• Typography is a REAL thing! Spaced out San Serif fonts are so pleasing to the eyes, it has creative super power and can transform an artwork from mediocricy into a masterpiece.

• Coolors.co - a colour palette matching tool that helps create colour schemes. Colours can make or break your design.

• KISS - an acronym for "Keep it simple, stupid", a design rule. It aims to remind us that systems perform best with simple designs instead of complicated and complex ones.

As consumers, we don't only perceive information verbally but visually from visual cues that we often don't realise. Throughout this internship, I have come to learn not only are we communicators but also visual storytellers. 

Concluding this blog post, we recently launched ticket sales for De Lish, the food expo and have a poster up on the office window! The team is very excited and I think its only apt for me to end this blog post with a picture of that!

If you'd like to know more about the event, head over to https://www.facebook.com/delishexpo/events !

Till next time,

Quin