severino for city council (2020-2021)
Shaeleigh Severino is a youth activist and community organizer, and was a senior at St. John's University when she decided to run for New York City Council in District 32, one of the only "red" districts in the city. If elected, she would be the youngest woman on City Council and among the first queer and Afro-Latinx people in city government.
I also happen to be a close friend of hers, running in the same student activism circles as her while we were in school together.
when i was told that positions for graphic design interns were opening up, i jumped at the opportunity. i had no idea how much work i would be putting in and what sort of impact it would have on the campaign at large, but somehow at the peak of my tenure there i ended up holding the position of deputy director of communications. i oversaw nearly everything related to the campaign’s public image: proofreading social media posts, designing material for Instagram and twitter, acting as art director for other design interns, creating our official and comprehensive style guide, and acting as liaison between my supervisors and an outside marketing firm that they had hired. i put in a great deal of time and effort in my few short months on the team because it was a cause that i was so passionate about, and at the end of the day, i only wanted the best for my good friend shae.
the first of many pieces of mine that were published by the campaign, these postcards were the first-ever printed flyers that campaign staff and volunteers used for canvassing. hundreds were given out outside of polling places across district 32 on election day in 2020 – i was there, and being able to watch people respond to my work in real time was absolutely thrilling.
as a grassroots campaign, our most crucial focus at the beginning of the campaign’s run was being able to raise donations so that the board of elections could let us even continue. as deadlines approached, i was tasked with coming up with dozens of post ideas so that we had enough to upload multiple on a given day.
especially since the pandemic’s beginning, infographics have been the chief means of communicating information to the masses in a world where engaging in-person education isn’t possible. i published multiple examples of these on an array of subjects, but i was particularly proud of this one, mostly because of the painstaking effort that i took to make a perfect illustration of the map of new york city and of district 32 to utilize as visual assets.
endorsement posts were another huge undertaking of mine. i drafted countless templates, and while not all of them were officially used by the campaign, they helped to set the tone for what our future posts would look like as more important figures and organizations would begin to show their support.