October Monthly Meeting: Positioning Yourself with Canva
This October, WLI has continued to kick off the year with a running start by inviting members to explore the way they want to be perceived and what elements they wish to communicate this. To facilitate this Dr. Burkhalter kindly presented various opportunities to explore the reputation we want others to associate with our image thus creating our own personal brand. Through this interactive presentation, students were encouraged to brainstorm five different words they would choose to best describe themselves relating to skill, value and qualities they wish to convey to others. We asked ourselves; “Would other people describe me this way?” and “How can I represent these qualities on tangible pieces or platforms like LinkedIn?”. To further communicate our brand we identified favorite colors, shapes, looks, objects, quotes or trends that we find appealing and representative of ourselves and shared with one another finding commonalities amongst preferences and visuals selected. Lastly to tie this all together, Dr. Burkhalter prompted us to open Canva and piece together all elements we found representative of ourselves by combining colors, shapes and elements chosen to solidify our brand and create a LinkedIn banner to communicate this.
The ladder end of the meeting consisted of members sharing their LinkedIn banners to the screen for others to get inspiration and see their brand communicated through style preferences. It was inspiring to see the creativity used and elements each person chose to. Members then shared why they chose the elements that they did, mostly stemming from the words Dr. Burkhalter encouraged us to make and pointed out specific aspects they included that represented these qualities.
Overall, the event fostered a new found understanding of the importance of personal branding by shedding light on different methods to communicate the style and image we want to be associated with which highlight qualities we want others to see. We found creative ways to express ourselves both professionally and personally and connected through specific design choices. Dr. Burkhalter encourages us to highlight all the wonderful experiences we have encountered and accomplishments we have achieved but understand that we are evolving and our brand will keep growing as we continue along our journey. As the semester continues, we will be able to continue to be intentional in the experiences we look for and expressive of the elements we choose to identify with.