Creative Directing
MATE ROV Competition
During Spring 2021 semester, ETSU’s Digital Production class took on a social rebrand campaign alongside ETSU’s Business College for the MATE ROV Competition. This competition is an international underwater robotics competition that attracts 41 different countries. The challenge is for students to try and develop new ways through STEM to complete sets of challenges while learning how to develop innovative ways to help find solutions to waterway pollution.

LinkedIn Banner Image for MATE ROV Competition
This banner was created by me for our clients new LinkedIn page.
Phase 1 - Research
The start of the social rebranding campaign started with taking a deep dive into MATE’s social posts as well as getting a feel for their brand. This process took a few weeks worth of gathering as well as talking to the client. This first phase was a combined effort of the creative team, comprised of Digital Media students, as well as the Accounts Team, comprised of students from the Media and Communications. All photos in the gallery were part of MATE’s already existing content.
Phase 2 - Breaking Down Content
Phase 2 of the social rebranding campaign started with breaking down the content we found and identifying what was a connect and what was a disconnect. All members of the team contributed to this process, but after putting all of our thoughts down, I was put in charge of organizing the information, along with fellow creative team members Sidney Moore, Ashton Alvis, and Deanna Silkowski. This brainstorming process pushed our team into the next phase of the campaign, which became out “Big Idea Smackdown.”
Phase 3 - Big Idea Smackdown
Phase 3 of the campaign is when the whole team got together and brainstormed what our big idea for the campaign was going to be. This process comprised of creating personas that MATE could identify with, a slogan the campaign could center around, and determine what sub-teams would be needed and who would lead those teams.
Phase 4.1 - Rough Concepts
Once the team decided on “Take BlueTech to New Depths,” the concepting phase started. I was tasked with creating LinkedIn mockups on both mobile and desktop views. This allowed the team to determine what ideas had legs, and what ideas needed to be reworked. The bright water and organic shaped backgrounds were created by Branson Street and I used them as a basis to make social post mockups to go on the Social Media mockups.
Phase 4.2 - Refreshing the competition's website
A major goal was for the creative team to help MATE refresh the competition’s website and breath new life into the site’s UX/UI. Initially, Isaiah Harwood and I led the concepting and layout of the new design, and was assisted by Tyler Marlow, Deanna Silkowski, Jacob Hensley, and Erika Versoza.
Website Iteration 4 in action
The design was created by me, Tyler Marlow, and Isaiah Harwood. The simulated transitions we created by me. This mockup was created using Adobe Xd.
Take BlueTech to New Depths
MATE Monday
The images in the following galleries is where I led as Art Director and Leslie Barboza led as Point of Contact. All post designs scheduled for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were all under my umbrella of responsibility. The titles of the photos give credit to the actual artist unless specified otherwise.
Isaiah Harwood and I developed the style guide for social media posts, as seen on the right, however, the “Wave Design” and overall MATE Style Guide were created by Isaiah.
The three images in the galleries to the right were created by me. The 3D rendered ROV robot, M8-R was named by me, however it was modeled by Sidney Moore and textured by Branson Street.
Women in Tech Wednesday
Wednesday’s posts are also where I led as Art Director and McKenzie Templeton led as our point of contact. However, I did not make any of the posts except for laying out Pioneers in Tech and creating their backgrounds with the help of Tyler Marlow.
Tyler Created the blue-print assets for Adele Goldberg, Annie Easely, and Katherine Johnson. All the other blue-print assets were created by me as well as the layout design of all the posts.
The rest of the Wednesday posts below are created by Branson Street and Paige Gleason.
Fun Fact Friday
My only role for Friday’s posts were as Art Director and Celesta Lagares led as our point of contact.
All posts created for Friday were created by Deanna Silkowski.
Deanna created carousel posts for Instagram that took a deep dive into some of the teams.