Transformed by Travel
Laying the Foundation for a Premier Photo Contest
Cultural Vistas (CV) holds an annual international photo contest to collect the year’s best work exchange photographs and stories from their participants.
The former Picture This! Photo Contest struggled to receive high quality submissions because it lacked direction, relevance, and structure. As Contest Owner and Design Lead, I led a team to build and implement the new Transformed by Travel Photo Contest brand and strategy for four years/iterations.
Our improvements to the contest service and experience saw significant increase in submission quantity and quality, greater representation from all of CV’s exchange programs, and a growing pool of alumni photographers who were excited to submit high quality user-generated content each year and act as exchange advocates for the organization.
Role:
Administrator, Brand Strategy, Design Lead, User Experience, User Interface, Web Development
With:
Jeremiah Berger, Creative Director, 2015–2018
Lauren Aitken, Content Development & Social Media Engagement, 2015–2016
Anna Boisseau, Content Development & Social Media Engagement, 2016–2018
Emily Commer, Event & Outreach Coordination, 2016–2017
Piotr Narel, Social Media Engagement, 2018
Recognition:
PR Daily’s 2017 Nonprofit PR Awards Finalist
Planning
This was my first time running a contest, so I dedicated much of the first year to learning how to plan and implement logistics. Most challenging for me was writing the Official Rules because they functioned both internally as a detailed contest plan and externally as a binding contract.
Competitive AnalysisI researched direct and indirect competitors to gain an understanding on contest planning and sought legal counsel from an experienced board advisor to write the appropriate legalese to inform and protect both sponsor and entrant. These Official Rules became a solid foundation for a growing contest in the years to come.
A caveat was that I found only one direct competitor, so we saw an opportunity to pave the way for a new rewarding photo contest experience for the work exchange community.
Branding
I led discussions with the Design and Marketing teams to rebrand and reposition the new Transformed by Travel Photo Contest. We found the name to represent the type of content we wanted to see: transformative, meaningful, personal, and cross-cultural. I managed content developers to help me write web content in plain language for our international audience, and I personally designed the visual brand.
Personas, How Might We’s, and Word AssociationsMy initial approach for art direction was untethered, and I unwittingly created visuals too abstract to relate to our audience or goals. After reevaluating, I revised my approach on the second year to follow gallery aesthetics. Visuals were minimal and pristine to give more weight to the photos, which were more relevant to our audience. The final logo was clear and recognizable, and worked well on multiple platforms and settings.
Offerings
It was imperative to me that high quality content was rewarded with high quality prizes, but we had a limited budget to work with. The Marketing team and I made a case for the untapped potential of the contest as an advocacy program, that with more money and resources we could reward our winners for their ongoing patronage and encourage them to advocate for CV’s cross-cultural mission at events, for the blog, or on social media.
Instagram Takeover by Jules Guiang: CV Alumnus, Contest Participant, Exchange AdvocateWith our larger budget, we rewarded winners with more prize money, sponsored an international round-trip flight to Washington, DC for the grand prize winner, and hosted events to showcase our finalists and have our winners to speak. These changes generated more interest from exchange participants within and outside of CV programs, created a more robust competition of higher quality submissions, and gave us exchange advocates who were more willing to share their stories abroad.
User Interface
To successfully balance my responsibilities as Senior Designer and Contest Owner, I had limited time each year to improve the contest’s web experience. This was more difficult because I needed to design and build everything myself. This forced me to plan small improvements for the contest’s two main features, the submission form and gallery archive, into each iteration, building them up separately before ultimately combining them on a website into one cohesive experience.
Contest Launch (Web Archive)
Gallery Archive (Demo)
Wireframe Sketch
