As a volunteer graphic designer for the non-profit organization "Girls Are Powerful", I provided a wide variety of assistance to the founder in order to meet the group's needs. One major task that I completed for GRP was a brand overhaul, given that their branding hadn't been very tightly controlled and some of it was outdated. By working with the founder to understand her vision and future goals, I was able to consolidate their brand assets and provide a brand guideline to help them moving forward.
I started out sketching several logo ideas on grid paper (not shown here), and then scanned and traced the best ones in Illustrator. The brand's vision, mission, and values really center around the pinwheel, so I stuck with that imagery for the logo and focused more on giving it a cleaner and more modern look and feel. I also maintained GRP's original base colors, as each of their core values were attached to a brand color. I presented a narrowed set of options to the founder, after which we worked together through several iterations in order to come up with a final design that she approved.
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The Girls Are Powerful brand at the time that I joined was managed by the founder, as she did not have a graphic designer before I came on. The previous designer had provided a single-page mood board for brand reference, but it was lacking in breadth and depth. As I worked through the logo redesign, I also compiled a comprehensive brand style guide to help maintain brand cohesiveness.
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I created templates for the Girls Are Powerful Instagram and Facebook pages so that they could maintain brand integrity while posting to social media.
The GRP founder likes to acknowledge holidays, historical figures, and other female-related events so I frequently created custom icons and images for these occasions.
GRP hosts local events several times throughout the year in order to get girls involved, and I designed flyers and mailers for these events.
There were a few photo shoots during my time with GRP, for which I did the editing in Photoshop to create professional-looking images to use on various platforms.
To generate some revenue, and to get girls engaged, the group has a small line of products for sale on their website. I generated improved product photos and mockups for advertisement.
Along with the logo redesign and brand update, I created a large-format banner for GRP to bring along to events.
I am proud of my time volunteering for Girls Are Powerful. I believe deeply in their mission "to empower girls to foster strength of character, change the way they view and feel about themselves, and embrace their unique individuality." If you, too, are interested in this wonderful organization, find out more at:
Girls Are Powerful had the pleasure of having Aayla volunteer for several months as a graphic designer. She assisted us on several graphical projects where she brought her design talent and expertise into our space. We admired her love and creativity and appreciated her drive to exceed our expectations. As a professional, she never missed a project deadline and was very patient with as we uncovered our needs. She would be a great asset to any organization team!
— Shawntan Howell, Founder & Executive Director
