✨ Introduction
Exactly one year since our successful launch in Spring 2020, Cornell Creatives has managed to grow a community in an entirely virtual world. But behind the community of 500+ creators and 2,000+ followers, we have a group of passionate and dedicated Board members.
For our second official Semester in Review, we interviewed our Cornell Creatives board members to find out how each of our teams persisted and fostered community during the Spring 2021 semester. It was really exciting to be able to connect with our design, tech, publicity, and writing teams and hear about all of their accomplishments this semester.
Keep reading to find out what goes on behind the scenes!
💻 Re-Designing the Cornell Creatives Website
The Cornell Creatives dedication to creativity extends most obviously to our website, with its unique, colorful, and welcoming look. The team is made of Information Science, Computer Science, and Fine Arts students, as well as others who are new to design.
This semester, the design team focused on developing and rebranding the Join and Events page on the Cornell Creatives website and creating graphics.
Ryun Shim, one of our graphic designers, reflected upon the graphic design team’s biggest project this semester:
“For graphic design, the biggest thing we've been doing was the rebranding for Create 101. So it’s been really interesting to see a lot of changes from last semester to this semester.”
The graphic designers also collaborated with the writers to create graphics to go along with each article, as seen below:
Ainav, one of the Co-Brand Team Leads, talked about how exciting it was to see the progressions of the Join Page designs.
“Watching the development of the join page was really interesting to me because Amelia and Chenchen went through so many different ideas.” She particularly enjoyed the fact that all of the designers were all able to contribute to it. Seeing how it looks now was such a reward, according to Ainav. (Amelia Lochhead ‘21 and Chenchen Lu ‘23 were the UX designers this semester.)
Amelia also added how her favorite part was seeing all the pages coming together, especially after collaborating with the graphic designers.
Reflecting upon this semester, Leone Farquharson ‘22, one of the graphic designers, explained that one of the biggest challenges was “the barrier of communicating” especially because “the concept of time is kind of just very weird right now.” Even with weekly zoom meetings, the struggle of building community virtually stays present.
Check out the Cornell Creatives website here!
👾 Tech Team: Collaborating, Pacing, and Creating
The tech team focuses on coding and updating our website, but this semester they faced the challenge of only having two members.
But Donna and Kaysie were able to overcome the challenge of having a small team, even if it meant making sacrifices to prioritize the quality of their web pages. Kaysie, Branch Tech Lead, explained their mentality about producing content this semester:
“At first, I was really sad that we might not be able to finish all of these really cool projects in time for the semester. But then I had to realize that it's okay if we don't tackle everything. It's better to have quality web pages out rather than having more web pages of lesser quality out.”
Donna Ilyukh, who will be Tech Lead in the Fall, agreed that though it was challenging to set a timeline for projects, in the end she learned more about budgeting time well and learning to be her own manager.
One of the most memorable aspects of this semester for Kaysie was attending the Brand Tech Syncs.
“I always love seeing the process of the designers thinking of the feature and then seeing the evolution of the designs.” Once the designs were passed over to tech, she explained that it then became their responsibility to do their designs justice. Kaysie explained that she “always found those meetings really powerful.”
🌟 A Month of Poetry with the Publicity Team
This semester, the publicity team was very excited about the success of their Poetry campaign in honor of April being National Poetry month.
Louisa, one of the Co-Publicity Leads, explained how it was nice to see our followers interact with the content made for publicity month.
“I think the most successful thing that we did was the blackout poem. Initially I wasn't too optimistic about how people would receive this whole thing, or if people would actually interact with it.” Louisa was particularly happy to see “the variety of things that came out of one poem or one page.”
The main challenge for the publicity team, according to Ainav, was “finding content that people actually react to.” She went on to talk about the unpredictability of their Instagram posts, and how it really depends on whether or not people are sharing the content on their own stories.
Although remote meetings have posed their fair share of challenges for all of our teams, Louisa found that they were actually quite convenient:
“Virtual meetings are almost better than in person. You don't have to be in a physical space to conduct meetings, which I think is helpful, especially people who have tight schedules.”
✏️ The Blog Page: A New Way of Connecting with the CC Community
This semester, the content writers launched a new series called Community Corner, continued to work on the Create 101 series from last semester, and simultaneously brainstormed content for future series. Specifically, they have been working on the new summer series, Creative Roots, where they plan to “tell creative stories that tie together creative passions with creative roots.”
The Community Corner series allowed creators from the Cornell Creatives community to collaborate with writers and designers from our Board team. It was meant to give creators a direct voice and platform to tell their own stories, something Cornell creators often don’t get the chance to do. Check out the articles here if you haven’t yet!
The content writers also wrote six new Create 101 articles, spending weeks to brainstorm, interview, and draft articles that are instructive and based on the true experiences of Cornell students, both those who have personal side hobbies or Cornell clubs that are committed to creativity.
Watch out for the upcoming Creative Roots series, which will highlight creators and inspire your summer projects.
🌱 Launching Creator Studio
After much planning and anticipation, Cornell Creators was able to launch our first-ever Creator Studio program, a 6-week program that allows creators to start and complete a new creative project through the support of workshops and mentorship.
This semester, we had a writing, music, and video team, which was led by Asher Lipman, Rishabh Sabu, and Claire Meakem, respectively. Each team planned workshops and events for their members.
Kelly Ryoo, the Creator Studio Lead, told us her favorite moment of the semester:
“Watching the kickoff event and final showcase were definitely some of my favorite moments. For the final showcase, it was amazing to see all the amazing works that our participants were able to accomplish during our program.”
Kelly also mentioned how she’s excited to see how the program develops in future semesters, and how we can expand to other mediums beyond writing, music, and video.
Watch out for next week’s article that will cover specific projects done by members of the Creator Studio Program this semester! 👀
✨ Conclusion: A Word from Our Co-Presidents
Dear Cornell Creatives,
We hope you agree that it was an exciting and rewarding semester, with tons of brand new events and experiences to be had.
Did you join us for our Kickoff Event and for our Creator Studio program? Did you read our blog, or even see yourself featured in an article?
If so, we hope you enjoyed it! If not, there will be tons more new events and experiences coming up next semester. 👀
This semester, we believe Cornell Creatives continued to be a space for creators on campus to pursue their non-academic and non-professional interests — the ones that are sometimes minimized on college campuses like Cornell. Some of our favorite moments came from pursuing this mission of creating that casual, non-academic space: our Kickoff Event, the first ever Creator Studio program, and launching a new blog series called Community Corner that helped community members share their creative pursuits.
We also seek to help creators meet peers in similar creative spaces as well as encourage potential future creators to find their voice and pick up new creative pursuits. While Creator Studio made progress toward achieving these goals, we see room to improve the program by incorporating more different creative mediums in the future to make sure we’re supporting the broadest base of student creators we can. We’re excited to take the summer to brainstorm and plan new creative programs that we can launch in fall 2021 to even better meet these goals and empower creators!
See you next time! Until then, keep on making magic. ✨
Best,
Kylie and Jocelyn
CC Co-Presidents
🎉 Big Thank You to our Graduating Seniors!
Kaysie Yu - Tech Lead
Rishabh Sabu - Music Track Lead for Creator Studio
Euna Park - Content Writer
Yahya Abdul-Basser - Music Mentor for Creator Studio
Amelia Lochead - UX Designer