FFA
I spent all four years of high school involved in my local FFA chapter. For those who aren't familiar, FFA stands for the Future Farmers of America. It is an educational program intended to share agricultural awareness and knowledge. Since it's humble beginnings, FFA has expanded to include competitions intending to develop many different career oriented skills such as public speaking, research, project development and text writing.
I tried several different competitions and was involved with countless community service projects during my time in FFA. One of the most influential competitions I was a part of was my Agricultural Communications team. We competed together for three years. Each year has a different prompt where you are essentially selecting or creating a business to develop a communications plan for. You research possible target audiences and develop a plan to reach them. The team comprises of three individuals; a writer, designer, and social media specialist. Each individual competes in their own competition then they come together to do a presentation to a panel of judges. In preparation for the competition each team creates a 25 page portfolio outlining the project. This was the most challenging part of the whole project.
We were all responsible for creating text and editing each others work to make everything as cohesive as possible.
I was the designer within my team and created the image above for our senior year project. It was one of the first times I had the opportunity to develop a concept on my own and utilize techniques I learned in Photoshop to create something. I faced a lot of challenges with this image and of course as time goes on there are things I would change, yet I am still proud of how I stepped out of my comfort zone to see my idea through.
Next is the image I created for my design practicum portion of the state competition our senior year. I won first place with this image. We were tasked to create an advertisement for a new GPS system used in John Deere tractors with a 30 min time frame. We were given several images and a couple pages of text to work with. The advertisement I created was manufactured from 3 different images layered together. I had to cut the tractor out of one image, the sky of another, and the wheat out of a third. All of the text was taken directly from what was provided.
We got first in state our senior year and had the privilege to present our project at the National FFA Convention in Louisville, Kentucky the following Fall. We got 6th place nationally. This project opened my eyes to the possibilities of working in Communications and created a passion to find a career that aligns with the skills I developed in this program. I learned so many valuable skills that I will carry with me my whole life.
Click the button below to view our portfolio for the project.
