Downtown Surrey BIA: Web & Graphic Designer

At a Glance: my role and contributions!

The Downtown Surrey Business Improvement Association (DSBIA) is a non-profit organization that works to improve and promote businesses in the City of Surrey. For 8 months, I was the lead web and graphic design intern where I did branding, created graphic materials, promoted and curated events, and maintained the DSBIA’s website. I worked alongside communication co-op students as well as business owners and heads of the BIA staff in order to represent the businesses and organizations encompassed as well as engage the community in a positive and safe way through each event and project.

Event Branding

During my internship, I was part of a team consisting of other co-op students that curated two large events, Movies Under the Stars and Explore the George. I mainly worked on creating a brand for them and producing graphic work such as posters, flyers, iconography, and other promotional materials. The work I produced was displayed and distributed to the community and residents of the City of Surrey.

Movies Under the Stars - A Free Family Movie Event

Explore the George - Business Campaign

Graphic Communication

Other graphic work that I did during this internship was creating visual communication for the DSBIA through business publications, small promotional work, email, and newsletters, as well as informational sponsorship packages. For these areas, I considered a number of things such as each of the different stakeholders and audiences viewing the work, creating consistency with DSBIA or event/business branding, and the various formats and sizes that the work was printed in and distributed to.

Major Publications & Newsletters

These publications included major business relational communication. For these, I had to consider how the DSBIA would be presented in front of the board of directors and prominent business owners. What I took into consideration was providing clarity and ease for those who would receive these documents, loaded with a lot of information and large sections of budget plans. Even though it was necessary for these publications to be formatted in a certain way, I also worked to create greater readability as I tried to make the documents more engaging when used in reference at large board meetings or distributed to the involved businesses in the Surrey area.

General Graphics & Brochure Collection

The following brochures, posters, banners, and other graphic work was definitely more open-ended as I had more freedom creating the graphics to represent the various business and events. As well, the audiences for these materials catered much more to families, children, and youth in the city, where I sought to incorporate more appealing imagery and colour. One of my favourite pieces of work was the DSBIA’s Safety Banner for the Roundup Safety meetings and presentations held in various locations. I felt that this work was a cornerstone to the learning I went through in graphic design because I find that I was able to translate a different tone of communication from the DSBIA that suited the seriousness of safety in the community since usually, the events that they hold are more fun and youth or family-oriented.

Challenges

Some of the challenges faced with designing these marketing materials involved creating good layouts, retrieving sponsorship logos, as well as giving them all the same sort of theme so they could be represented as one event. In my case, having a solid design or layout meant that the information should be presented clearly, as well as be able to attract families in the community to come out to the fun-filled events. It was also very challenging to stay organized as there were many projects that kept piling up on top of each other having the same deadlines.

Final Thoughts

Overall after having worked on these projects, I was able to gain many valuable experiences that can now be applied in other areas such as school, future co-ops, and related work in the design industry. These experiences involved time management, communication, & organization. I have improved my skills in personal organization, especially through overseeing different stakeholders in a project addressing their views and constraints. I feel like these projects have not only improved my work habits but have also given me the confidence to be a great designer.