SND46: Branding and Social Media

From mid-2023 to April 2024, I led the communications and outreach team for the SND46 Creative Competition. Doing so required me to develop a brand identity, create a social strategy and manage a team of volunteers.

This was my first experience leading a team in this space and creating a social strategy. The team consisted of students and professionals with varying social experiences – from basic social design to experienced social media strategy. The previous structure was strong, but lacked in the number of volunteers to help see it through. This was our chance to execute that vision with enough people who were willing to dedicate their time.

The brand

The SND46 media kit’s purpose was to explain how the design style and social cards were to be used in promotional and competition materials. Since the team consisted of volunteers, I wanted to create an style that was easy to follow with clear directions.

My goal with the SND46 branding was to keep the essence of previous competition logos and styles while adding a bold and fresh change to reflect the direction of the competition. Previous branding had a solid foundation of color, type and social card styles. I used that to create the 46 logo and gradient background. Once I had all of the elements in place, I developed a media kit that was simple at its core, but kept room open for creativity.

A bold change

The first promotional material for the competition needed to make an impact on social media. I chose strong typography to gain attention, then used the other slides to explain more about the competition changes.

I wanted to give the brand a friendly and familiar voice so the tone of our posts made the audience feel like they were viewing a friend’s profile. This mirrored the lifelong friendships SND members have often found in the community.

46 Days of SND

The idea of 46 Days of SND was presented to my team as a way to have content to post on social media every day. It developed into a campaign for the competition’s entry portal. The portal was open for 46 days, and we posted on social media every day about categories, volunteer information and past competition winners. We met weekly to discuss ideas and used a daily budget to keep track of each post’s status. In addition to social card templates housed on Canva, we used a Google doc template for captions and alt text. We posted on Instagram, LinkedIn, X and Facebook.

The campaign contributed to an increase of 500 entries submitted compared to SND45 and more volunteer interest than previous years. This also led to the creation of a new series, From the Archive, where we chose winners from previous competitions to highlight. This series not only helped to inspire our audience with nostalgic pieces, but also allowed us to highlight publications and previous Award of Excellence winners.

During the competition

My role at the SND46 competition was to update the website and social media with information about judging and winning entries. This included a meet the judges page on the website, a tease to live results in the competition’s Airtable database and social posts breaking down the awards and how judging works.

I led a team of four volunteers with the goal to create evergreen content that we could use to promote the competition all year. This included English and Spanish video interviews with judges, committee members and volunteers. My team helped me put social and web assets together, while I finalized and published the work. SND board member Marco Hernandez filmed all Spanish interviews and translated social posts from English to Spanish.

Some social content inspired a more elevated storytelling approach. One example was the social post, “The judging process.” I initially asked one of my team members to create a post based on how we explained the process to judges and other volunteers. She did a great job at adapting it to social, but after reading through it I felt there needed to be a different audience perspective – those who had little to no knowledge of how the judging process worked. I put together a slide post that used dots to represent judges on different teams and explained how and why the competition mixed and changed judging teams every day.

I also developed social templates for medal-winning entries that volunteers used to create social cards for each individual winner. This was based on previous social card templates, but with an added Bronze medal option and updated elements. We used Canva to make brand templates, and made an archival structure within its SND46 project folder. Gold medals got posted on social immediately, while Silver and Bronze medals were archived to use throughout the year. All social cards were uploaded to their corresponding winning entry in the SND46 Airtable database.

After the competition

Major awards and honors were announced in the weeks following the competition. My job was to post each update on the website and social media. The announcements were Best in Show, World’s Best Designer and Emerging Designer, World’s Best finalists, World’s Best winners and overall SND46 results and information. All website posts and design elements were adapted from previous years, but with updated information and branding.

Goals for the future

I’m excited to continue leading the Creative Competition’s communications and outreach team, but with a little more knowledge and more ideas on how to elevate our brand and expand our reach.

From the Archive will continue as a series to champion great work from around the world. Right now, we use a social card template with Instagram grid specs, but I would like to have a team large enough for us to adapt our posts for different platforms.

I’m working with the society to find students and non-editorial individuals who want to be part of the competition committee. Collectively, we want to gain more members from these groups, and inspire more SND student chapters.

Right now, my main goal is to incorporate other languages on our social platforms to give representation to our global community. We have solid start with our Spanish-speaking members, but we can do more.

One example is the first Gold medal awarded at the SND46 competition. Helsingin Sanomat won for their non-editorial branding and identity campaign, and we made a social card in both Finnish and English. SND46 judge Petri Salmén helped us translate the caption. My objective is to do this with every winning entry that we post on social.