You Won't Always Win

POLICY CHALLENGES

Choose Your Battles.

One of my first tasks as an intern, was to assist with the creation of Public Relations materials. I was very excited because I had been looking forward to testing out my creative skills with a graphic design program, called Canva. I was given two weeks to do the draft but I had it done by the very next week. I met with my Supervisor and presented the e-flyer that I had created. We made more changes to the content and layout, before sending it away for second-level approval. When word came back, we were told that my work was rejected because of a photo that I had used, of our Bentley campus. I had sourced the photo online and initially thought that the photo was owned by Curtin University, because it linked back to Curtin’s website. I hadn’t perceived any issues with using the photo, because I could see that the photo was copyrighted by Curtin. I would have been happy to take my own photo, but I didn’t want to disadvantage the team by taking an ugly photo which could have made our marketing materials look unprofessional.

I soon learned that using photos for anything Curtin-branded, is actually a very complicated process; so I clarified with my supervisor whether or not we should just submit the content to the University’s official marketing team, who could design the e-flyer and present it in the manner which they felt was best. My supervisor asked the question, but the response we received, was that it was our responsibility to create our own marketing materials. The second time around, we had to use Curtin’s logo and select our photo from the cloud-database, Google drive. My Supervisor was given access to a Google drive folder, which was full of photos that were specifically available for our School to use. 

We were allowed to use these photos because they had not expired yet, which is something that had never occurred to me; photographs can have expiry dates!

In an effort to make sure our work was approved this time, I decided that we should take inspiration from the existing handbook. We imitated the colour scheme so that there was consistency between our marketing materials and how Curtin had already branded the school. This time, our final draft looked much warmer and more personable. We used a photo of an elderly woman and a smiling carer. The smiling carer in the photo, was actually one of my Supervisor’s colleagues. It was nice to learn this, because somehow, it softened the experience of having to redo our e-flyer all again. Again we sent it away for approval and again it was rejected. This time, we were told to abide by a template which we could download from the Curtin communications toolkit. I was fairly distraught, but at least now I know that some organisations keep template-toolkits. 

After one final attempt, we sent our content within the exact confines of the template. They sent us back the approved version. Oh, but both our photos had been replaced. One was replaced because of image quality (okay, fair enough). The other one was replaced because I guess they didn't like the one we chose - and didn't realise the damage that they were inflicting on my soul by replacing it unnecessarily.

 In essence, you won't always win - but don't feel defeated, demoralised or like nothing you do is good enough. Choose another battle, and keep going. You can do this.

- Mivalaa

Onward, Noble Steed.