Apexdrop

ApexDrop was my first career opportunity out of college. They didn't have any immediate need for a Graphic Designer so I was hired on as a Campaign Developer. As a Campaign Developer, my job was to use brand assets from our clients (images, logos, verbiage, etc.) to entice our network of influencers to sign up/volunteer for collaborations with the brand. We would typically use templates to create web landing pages for the influencers to sign up. As a Camapaign Developer we would also be responsible for vetting the influencers who volunteered, accepting them into the colloaboration, and tracking their progress along the way.

Throughout my time as a Campaign Developer my use as a Graphic Designer proved more and more useful. My expertise would be called on to assist in updating templates and even consult with the 3rd party app development team on our app.

After about a year, the company decided that it was time to create the Graphic Design role and I stepped in as the first Graphic Designer for ApexDrop. All other previous design work, including the company's branding was outsourced. I became more involved in the release and upkeep of the app and our website (which was built on Silverstripe via third party development company). I also created pitch decks and internal/external presentations.

I worked a lot with the development company for the app, coordinating and prioritizing features and bug fixes. Since I was so heavily involved with the app and was familiar with communicating with our influencers, I was put to work as the single point of contact for app issues and questions. This was my first time beginning to understand the user's side of things. It made me think more about what they need in order to do what we wanted them to do. I also began to understand the limitations of design versus development. Sometimes the time it took to develop a much needed feature was outweighed by bug fixes or smaller updates. One example of this was onboarding. We didn't have enough time or direction on a solid onboarding feature, so I took to Adobe After Effects and created a couple tutorial videos. The CEO loved this so much, they started showing the videos on sales calls with potential clients to show them what we do.