My first time visiting the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, seeing paintings by Monet (my favorite painter)!
Summer 2022
Hello! My name is Alena Arthur, I am an Undergraduate Graphic Design student, with a Minor in Advertising and Public Relations at Rochester Institute of Technology. I grew up with a drive for art and design, I am so grateful to be able to follow my dreams as a graphic designer.
As a Graphic Design Student, my studies have taught me a wide range of skills. In just two years I have gained proficiency in typography, logo design, color theory, HTML & CSS, motion graphics and type animation, prototyping in Figma, poster design, editorial design, screen printing, calligraphy, and much more.
Within the industry, I am interested in branding and brand identity. I strongly believe in the importance of having a solid brand identity, that is unique and fitting to the brand. I do not design for the client, I design for the consumers who are actually interacting with the product or service at hand; my job is to make their experience with the brand easy and understandable, while still catching the eyes of consumers.
This past summer I was the Graphic Design Intern for AARP National -- Membership Lifecycle Management. Over the course of 12 weeks I worked closely with the Graphics Lead, Christian Hurst, to perform all functions of a digital designer in conjunction with the Design Director to create digital advertisements for social media, banner and display, microsites, AARP.org, and other websites to promote Membership Benefits to the target audience. One of the main projects I worked on was the Labor Day Campaign; the Design Director and I conceptualized and created multiple unique variations to go through corporate testing, and ultimately established the final identity of the AARP Labor Day Campaign for 2023.
I also had the opportunity to communicate with Channel Leads about project requirements; take on projects from other departments, and update a variety of creative assets with static and dynamic variations. This experience has taught me so much about the industry, and what it takes to be part of the Creative Team for an organization with over 35 million active members. From this internship I gained knowledge about different deliverables and formatting for social media advertisements, the corporate testing system, new creative software techniques, and how to create advertisements using set brand guidelines. Thank you to everyone at AARP National who made my time with the organization so beneficial!
During the 2023-2024 school year, I am participating as a Social Media Coordinator for RIT Graphic Design Club. As part of this position, I lead the Social Media Team in coming up with our rebrand. Our rebrand was very necessary to engage with the younger generation of designers, something that the previous branding was lacking. Our rebrand included updated colors, and visual identity, however we are using the pre-existing logo. A major change with this rebrand, is using assets that pertain to the subject matter of the post; doing this helps engage the viewers, and gaining more interactions with the posts in turn.
I am one of three Social Media Coordinators, not including our Social Media Manager. The coordinators are responsible for creating assets for social media and print. My job as a coordinator was to create a majority of our social media graphics posted on @gdclub_rit, which can also be found in my "GD Club Work" Highlight on my Instagram, @alenaartdesign. I have had so much fun with the position, it is exciting to see what I create for each post, since it is different every time!
Another exciting opportunity I was provided with for this year, is to be on the Choreography Committee for RIT Vis Viva Dance Company. I have been dancing competitively since I was seven years old, which in itself has granted me with so many amazing opportunities; one of these being awarded with the highest earning for the Performing Arts Scholarship at RIT. I have loved dance ever since I have been able to walk, it has been another creative outlet to express myself. Vis Viva is a student-run dance club on campus, that accepts all dance levels. As a Company Choreographer, I work with two other choreographers to create dances for the whole company, over one hundred people. It sounds like a challenge, but it has been nothing but fun; when it comes to the things that drive me, I become a natural leader. Dance has taught me so many important life skills, the most important one being leadership. As an advanced dancer, I am used to being looked up at and being a role model. I enjoy helping people try things they have never tried before, and being a support along the way.
I was born for this.
