The International Studies Association, an organization dedicated to understanding international, transnational and global affairs, has been a long time partner of ATION. For the spring of 2018, ISA gave our team the opportunity to create original content to be used by the association for their annual conference.

When stepping into our first meeting, ISA left the door completely open as to what our team could tackle for them as long as it pertained to their annual convention. We threw around different ideas throughout the meeting, including revamping their website, creating designs for their 60th annual conference, and updating their social media accounts. At the end of the meeting, ISA’s social media manager brought up her need for an introductory “How To…” video that could help ISA members prepare for the annual conference. After some discussion, our team decided to take on the challenge and began working on a “How To…” video- as well as a small side project making a YouTube tutorial video for the staff at ISA to kick-start their YouTube channel.

Our team’s organizers, Nicole Harvey and Skylar Agnello were in charge of the overall organization and completion of each task. Skylar was the main source of communication between the team and ISA, while Nicole was the same with ATION supervisor Bill Congdon.

Our team began the project by drawing up an initial storyboard, which we quickly presented in our second meeting with ISA. The storyboard was well received, but the staff at ISA felt there was too much information that needed to be stated; so splitting the video into two would be the perfect fix. We agreed, and got to work on two new storyboards for each video, the first on how to prepare before the conference, and the second on what to do after the conference. After an email of approval from the ISA on the “Pre-Conference” storyboard, Nicole, Joe, and Skylar created short 15-second example clips of different styles that the animation could be made in and sent them to ISA for their selection. After some deliberation, ISA decided on the “professional yet simplistic” option provided by Joe, and thus the project was sent off to animator Jimmy Brockett to begin.

The only roadblock our team faced was with time. Due to the ISA staff being busy with the conference, we were unable to get some of the feedback we needed as quickly as we would have hoped. Thus, we were forced to drop the second animation, as we would not have been able to complete it within the scheduled time frame. Instead, we put more work into our YouTube tutorial, created by our team’s Joe Schiro.

Despite this roadblock, our team pulled through to create a beautiful and fluid animated “How To…” video and YouTube tutorial, and in lieu of ISA’s potential future with ATION, left ISA with the storyboard of the second video for future use.

Project Team
Skylar Agnello
Jimmy Brockett
Nicole Harvey
Joseph Schiro

Spring 2018

Elevage Partners is a financial advising firm composed of a team of experienced financial advisors with goals and aspirations that executes careful, thoughtful & well – executed management of clients’ financial assets and retirement savings highlighting that with their tagline of “Plan First. Then Invest”. They pride themselves in crafting personal relationships with each and every client, they showcase that with their “Stand In Your Shoes” philosophy that is a driving force in all their financial planning. The company has been very successful with clients who are from older generations, but Elevage Partners has been looking to expand their clientele to the younger market such as millenials; and they feel that a possible company rebranding was needed. Our team’s task was to work alongside our client Brian to rebrand the Elevage Partners company by creating a new name and logo, plus a brand style guide. Since our client was also looking to expand to millenials, we recommended revamping their social media to give them a stronger web presence, optimize SEO, and legitimize them to the audience they are trying to attract. Our role in this was to draw up deliverables in the form of a social media guidelines write – up and a social media whitepaper.

The team that would be working together all semester was made up of Jared Cyr, Michael Ferreira, Justin Markert, Christopher Nista, & Joey Spagnuolo. Michael & Jared would be the project managers; and then the team worked together in two separate task forces in a divide & conquer strategy to tackle the tasks of the company rebranding and the social media.

Our initial meeting with Brian, who is one of the founding partners of Elevage Partners, went smoothly. We were not only able to learn to learn who’s working within the company, what their vision is, but through this meeting they entrusted us with steering the ship for the project. We had the luxury of working with enthusiastic & invigorated members of the company who were on the same page with our plans. Following the meeting our team immediately put our heads together in  brainstorming sessions to think of names, colors, and any other ideas on how we should rebrand the Elevage Partners company. We looked into the meanings of words, the psychology of colors, and even what other financial businesses were doing. We took that all into consideration, and combining that with the friendly personal image we knew our client was looking to project, we figured Amity (Definition: A close personal friendship) was ideal. After looking into the name, seeing if any other financial business uses the name or if there’s a trademark, we found the greenlight to go with Amity as no one else was using it. We crafted several logos with different designs, then we put together a poll which we sent out to our peers to do focus testing. After looking at the results, seeing which logos were the favorites & why, we took the results into consideration to pick the design we would go with. Color-wise we initially had our hearts & minds set on the logo being purple, our research showed it gives off a “wise” image. Our client liked our reasoning but felt better staying closer to green & other natural colors which is what we ultimately used.

When it came to social media, Elevage Partners had company guidelines set up but aside from that they weren’t familiar with social media as the company had an extremely limited social media presence. Realizing that it was more than likely none of us from the team would be able to see through the launch and the subsequent maintenance of the social media profile our solution was to draw up comprehensive company guidelines and social media white papers to guide the newly formed Amity social media accounts. These documents came to fruition after conducting research into recommended social media practices, looking into FCC regulations, and seeing what other established financial businesses had for their companies’ white papers. Once we gathered the information that was necessary and trimmed away what we felt what wouldn’t suit our client, we put together a social media white paper we felt would be a quality manual to success on social media.

Project Team
Jared Cyr
Michael Ferriera
Justin Markert
Chris Nista
Joey Spagnuolo

Connecticut Landmarks is a non-profit organization with a collection of historical landmarks all across CT. They own 15 sites in total all with different historical backgrounds and focus on hosting special events at these sites such as school trips, tours, weddings, Holiday activities and other social events.

CT Landmarks came to us looking for a social media strategy that would help them reach out to the community more efficiently. Specifically, they wanted to reach out more to LGBTQ and the Spanish speaking community. Our main goal was to create a sense of community throughout the CT Landmarks brand.

We accomplished this goal by creating a social media strategy document that CT Landmarks can use to interact better with their online followers and attract new ones. Additionally, created a posting guide for the month of November that they will be able to look back on for specific examples of what to post. We also visited three of the CT Landmarks properties to generate content for CT Landmarks to use and made mock ups of specific posts. Furthermore, we researched SEO for the CT Landmarks website. We proposed paid options as well as going into their site manually to improve SEO. Lastly, we spruced up the website by fixing broken links.

CT Landmarks presented us with multiple challenges that we tackled thoroughly and creatively. Our client was more than satisfied with our work which will make a lasting impact on CT Landmarks.

Fall 2017

Guess is a men’s and women’s fashion brand that originated in the 1980s. Guess licenses their watches to Sequel. Sequel commissioned ATION to help with Facebook content, special photos for their Holiday 2017 campaign and Spring 2018 campaign. Our team collaborated with the design team at Sequel to create content that met their needs and maintained a consistent branding look and feel.

Throughout the semester we had numerous photo shoots and learned how to set up shoots based on occasion, season, and style. Throughout the shoots, we sent sample photos to the Sequel client for feedback and approval. All photos were put into a Google drive, organized by shooting date for our client to select her favorites.  After the photos were approved by our client, we then edited watch faces to make sure they were clear to see and applied a filter which created an overall aesthetic for each campaign. Our final photos were then put in marketing sheets, for easier visual reference.

Fall 2017

Control Station is a software company located in Manchester, CT that produces solutions for monitoring plants. Plant ESP is their flagship software that operates in the background of the production, eliminating the need for routine manual checks, thus saving time and increasing efficiency for manufacturing plant managers and engineers. A six member ATION team was tasked with developing a way to convey the benefit of the complicated product to the target market.

The creation of an animated infographic and PSA style video that drew on a human element and integrated humor was perceived as an effective approach for the Control Station Team. The team coordinated a video shoot at UConn’s CoGen plant with an actor and shot the scenes for the video. Motion graphics, a voiceover, and cinematic edits were constructed as the team’s video deliverable. In addition, the team produced an animated logo for Plant ESP website and social platforms, along with a behind the scenes video.

Client Noah Vertefeuille gave the following testimonial:

“As an ATION alum, I knew when presenting this project that it would be a challenge. I also knew that if anyone could rise to the occasion, it would be ATION. I would highly recommend an ATION team to anyone in the future!”

Project Team

Nicholas Donati
Nick lent his abilities with Motion Graphics and videography to the final deliverable, responsible for adding 2D effects to the video. He also provided film equipment and transportation.

Alicia Fitzmaurice
Alicia served as a Project Coordinator and helped the team communicate their objectives to the client and Professor Congdon.

Anna Jannott
Anna was instrumental in making the storyboards for the ideation stage of the project and kept the team on script during their CoGen plant shoot.

Christopher Nista
Chris was important on the shooting day in order to get behind-the-scenes footage for the case study. Chris also used his understanding of design principles to help with weekly assignments and completed 2D graphics for the final deliverable.

Max Nonken
Max assisted in script writing and lent his abilities with videography and editing for the final deliverable.

Ben Schultz
As Project Coordinator, Ben helped the team define their roles, schedule shoots, and foster production. He also met with the staff at the plant, took pictures before the shoot, and obtained DMD-brand clothes as a gesture of appreciation to facilities manager Tim Grady.

Fall 2017

The Peter J. Werth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute aims to promote student entrepreneurship by providing access to resources, fostering startups, offering courses, and raising awareness of opportunities to explore their ideas. It allows students to network with professional entrepreneurs, funds student projects through awarded grants, and create student maker spaces to promote campus innovation. A five member ATION team was tasked to create digital content – namely an animation or video – that highlighted the values of the Institute and its members to create awareness for their programs.

At the start, the team was met with a few challenges. The largest of all was the ‘to be’ announced rebranding of what was once called the UConn Entrepreneurship & Innovation Consortium. This would, therefore, cause a re-edit of the project. However, even with a postponed announcement, the team was able to take the project at face value to meet the overall goals of the assignment.

Initially, the team came up with three concepts. First, a traditional, live-action interview with members of the Institute. Second, a character based animation where a character would assimilate into life as one of the member programs. And thirdly, an infographic animation that used statistics and graphical elements in an explainer style video. After meeting with the client, Kathy Rocha, the third option was selected due to its versatility with future changes within the Institute.

The team, consisting of Joey Spagnuolo, Rachel Wright, Katie Sawosik, Dan Araujo, and Joel Torres, honed in their strengths to produce quality content. Joey took the lead as co-project manager and scriptwriter; Dan was lead animator, video editor, and asset creator; Rachel was also a co-project manager, assistant animator and asset creator, and both Joel and Katie were co-asset creators and assistant animators.

A professional, yet eye-catching color palette of blues and yellow was crafted for the delivered animated video, combined with clean, flat vector 2D graphics. This was paired with a voiceover from one of UConn’s drama students and an inspiring background soundtrack.The team also surprised the client with a printable infographic based on the information in the video that could be distributed to both members and clients.

Ultimately, the exciting project came with a few challenges that were overcome through working together. The team successfully accomplished the initial goal: to create a video that explains the Institute and its benefits at a glance and were happy to utilize their digital media skills in a real-world application.

Project Team
Dan Araujo
Joel Torres
Joey Spagnuolo
Katie Sawosik
Rachel Wright

The UConn Entrepreneurship and Innovation Consortium is an interdepartmental initiative between the Undergraduate Programs, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the Vice President for Research. It is their goal to deliver entrepreneurial training and venture development services to the greater community at the University of Connecticut. More specifically, the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Consortium is an umbrella organization at the University of Connecticut focused on creating and improving the entrepreneurship environment at the university. Its focus is to make the University a hub for entrepreneurship. They ultimately hope to make UConn synonymous with Entrepreneurship, and vice-versa.

In addition, the HackUConn 24 hour hackathon event was entering its second year, and had gained a sponsor for the event. This greater investment in the event demanded a focus on growing it from it’s initial size to something greater. To expand the event, as well as reach a larger audience, the tasks at hand were to create promotional content, record and document the event, and use this documentation from the event to create more promotional content in the future. The Entrepreneurship and Innovation Society was another source of input on event details for the hackathon.