Capacity-building and education

With over a decade of experience working in-house for a national nonprofit, I know it’s crucial to find the balance between a consistent brand and a team that can get work done.

I’d love to talk with you about how the workshops, templates, and resources below can be customized to equip your team to nimbly and sustainably meet its goals.

In addition, I can serve as a creative infrastructure consultant to bring efficiencies to your creative team and output by:

  • Auditing your assets and making recommendations around core materials

  • Enhancing processes around project intake, client communication, or team collaboration

  • Developing creative deliverable calendars

  • Optimizing project management and/or digital asset management systems

Workshops

    • Shared definition of design

    • Group critique of design

    • Introduction to the elements and principles of design for “non-designers” with hands-on exercises

  • Pairs well with Design 101

    • Analyze how design shows up in life and communication materials

    • Group critique of design

    • Review a spectrum of designed materials and discuss the thought process around communication goals, audience, channel, and format that inform design style, layout, density of content, etc.

  • Recommended to follow Design 101

    • Critical thinking about content, audience, channel, and format; brainstorm deliverables for different scenarios

    • Design planning and hands-on practice

    • Best practice for file setup and getting started on the computer (can be adapted for different apps)

  • A tailored training around your organization’s brand and visual identity. Can cover a range of topics, including but not limited to:

    • What is a brand and why do we care?

    • Core brand positioning

    • Logo use

    • Color use

    • Typefaces

    • Imagery style and selection

    • Design style and brand standards

  • Hands-on training to cover key tools, skills, and best practices. Training can center around one or more relevant project types and can be tailored to beginner, intermediate, or advanced users.

    • Overview of best practices for creativity and time

    • Review sample design project schedules

    • Set vision for research and concept work

    • Determining how and from whom to solicit feedback

    • Discussion of how to set boundaries and manage timelines and expectations 

    • Troubleshoot common process pitfalls

Professional Development Cohort Programs

  • This program focuses on the transferable skills of design principles, strategic design of messaging materials, and management of the creative process. It can be tailored to using any kind of software/apps to create visual materials.

    • 5-7 month program for up to 8 participants

    • Five 90-minute group trainings, each with pre- or follow-up work that would require 1-4 hours of work

  • This program combines design theory education with hard skills for advanced-beginner or low-intermediate users of Adobe Creative Cloud apps. It covers all of the material from “Think Like a Designer” with additional time and depth to gain greater expertise in design strategy and Adobe Creative Cloud tools.

    • 8-10 month program for up to 8 participants

    • Nine 45- to 90-minute group trainings, each with pre- or follow-up work that would require 1-4 hours of work

Resources

    • Establishment of new on-brand template(s) in Canva, Adobe InDesign, or other app as desired, by Laurie Heller

    • Hands-on trainings in how to use the tool and modify templates

  • Learning and reference tools may include:

    • Brand basics

    • Understanding file types

    • Color modes and when to use which

    • Photo selection

    • Elements and principles of design

    • Data visualization best practices