Team Designing- The Creative Soul of Fp || MSU FootPrints

House Of Designs : All the visionaries out there || FP'23

BY Team FootPrints ||

I am here to elaborate on the point of view as an Organizing Team Member having primarily selected for the Graphic Designing work in the FootPrints – think BEYOND, a three-day national-level technical event held at the MSU, Baroda from the last 22 years. However, anyone from any field is welcomed in this department, as FootPrints gives chance to enhance your all skills where your technical department doesn't matter, your grades don't matter, and your public relations doesn't. The only thing which matters is your strong intent to learn something new and exciting. Once you start Graphic Designing along with your all-other departments, there is no looking back and also you cannot quit in the middle of an event because now it's your primary responsibility to serve the best designs with all the aesthetic looks and it must be accepted by Core Committee Members of Designing, Head Organizer and the at last the Coordinator, which allow us to be more creative (good for team). I know you might be wondering," Why are these many layers of approval needed even?".

Team Designing

The simple answer to this is, a journey from amateur to experienced, your creative thinking shifts from normal to advance level and this even helps you with all the problems you face during event preparation. You might be thinking that what it takes to be a perfect designer for the event, the simple answer to this is, there is no perfect designer, there's only a simple design observed by creative people.

The major work at FootPrints, as a Graphic Designer is to design all the social-media posts, website designing, on-day flex designing, and Souvenir designing, etc.., but the irony is that this much workload is more than enough to keep you busy throughout the event, before and after the event combinedly known as pre-event and post-event. We are not claiming that the designing team is the busiest throughout the event, but the truth is the same! It is believed that the selected members for this work are the most active and creative minds, which can be utilized in parallelly all other departmental works, say Kaleidoscope – series of Guest Lecture and Techzibitions, FSE – FootPrints Stock Exchange, Content Writing, Website, etc.., these mentioned departments are like the front face of the event where new ideas, research and regular reminders are needed, where the one who can tolerate load can only be selected.

Along with the upper-mentioned departments, there are few departments like DECO – Decoration in college, Local Sponsorship and Partnership, Propagation of events to major colleges and Universities, etc., designing OT can be helpful because naturally, their soft skills are well trained. As a Core Committee Member along with Graphic Designing, more departments are added like Global Sponsorships and Partnerships, Kaleidoscope Guest Speakers approach, etc.., In short, Team Designing has always been an asset to FootPrints, from the past 22 years and more exciting years to come.

Perks of being on the designing team is that you always get priority in unveil departments like Rolling Squares – Entertainment zone, it is a very exciting department since it includes artist management, hospitality, and dealing with new artists across the city (For on-day entertainment, which comes under Informals) and provide service to them when they visit. Maybe it sounds confusing that if the designing team has so many benefits, then why there are only a limited number of OTs joining and ready to give efforts in all the work? again, the answer is simple designing is the part of the event, not the whole event, so it’s completely based on choice.

Now let us talk about how one can manage so many departments along with Designing. All the work starts 4 months back when DC starts and lasts up to the last day of the event. Throughout the event, there are around 200 social media posts, 40-50 stories, banners, backdrops, invitation cards, souvenirs, Team t-shirt, Propo (the one worn during Propagation in various colleges) t-shirt, Merchandise, Team identity cards, logo, Deco tracing, and unexpected last-minute works. You just have to keep calm cause along with mentioned work many other departmental works are also there. It’s possible to manage if consistency is there along with dedication. In general, it teaches you how to manage corporate affairs, work distribution, and time management by giving your 100%. In the initial phase, the workload is managed by CC themselves, since OT is an amateur to the completely new software. CC train OTs in the best way possible. One thing is great, out all the other departments, this is the only department having "Team" in it, it’s always ‘Team Designing’ and not Designing CC+OT, which is a little bit sentimental for us.

Further, as event dates are close enough, the OT work escalates like no other along with CC, since many designing works are completed by themselves. Due to some sort of belief called secrecy in the event. And one more perk is every new announcement, website launch, souvenir launch, kaleidoscope launch, and finally RS launch, all the launch needs social media post, which is designed by OT itself, chances are you may get an undue advantage for the same.

Now let's talk about how an original new design is made, how one's idea is executed, and going through a long approval process. Since you are now an original creator, you cannot just steal from a big creator and post it on official event handles, you can surely take inspiration from someone's design like pictures, concepts, color schemes, and fonts, but you have to create your own unique 

Souvenir Of 22'nd Edition

design, that's where satisfaction lies with your inner designer. Initially, scroll down all the handles you know from where you get inspired, or just pick up a paper & pen and make a raw design and then give it a final touch-up, discuss the same with your fellow teammates and ask for their opinions, finally grab your laptop, Photoshop and start working on it. It might take an hour to make the design of your choice, but, wait till it’s complete and last but not the least, the approval from the prior mentioned hierarchy begins. They all discuss the same, may reject it completely, and ask for new ideas, which takes much time or they may not reject it completely. All these things are normal in this department, but don't worry you will get used to it. Because more departments are active at the same time, their primary aim always was to reject and then approve. If OT did the work, then correction is a must since they are amateurs, and they accept their mistakes in the first place. If the design is approved by all the three layers, then it’s passed on to the Digital Marketing team and they post it to all official FootPrints – think BEYOND handles.

"Missed a lot of things but got to learn a lot of things!” By this quote, as a part of Team Designing, you might miss a lot of trips of Local, Propagation and, even saved you from DECO! From being the only OTs present in DC every day till the Day 0 of the event, where you are completing the task within ass-tight deadlines, sitting in a corner for like crazy hours putting together new designs and observing the whole DC, along with the CCs every day for like 2 months in a row. During this time, we polished our observing skills and client requirement process a lot. We used to get bored since each of our friends were busy doing field work and we were working on the same design for like 20 times at the same corner better called "Designing Corner".

Designing Corner

Truly there were plenty of last-minute changes and we did all of them, at last, the designs were negotiable and at last accepted. But nevertheless, we were more motivated through our CCs, designing CCs were there for all of us OTs, be it anything, they ensured that they had our back, indeed they were one of our own in true sense. They never made us feel less important, probably we might have disappointed them in certain ways, but they never lost their control, and they always helped us to be the best OTs and motivated us to give our best. Working along with Designing CCs till we got it right and one time moment for us too. It's not easy to be like them. Like everyone makes mistakes but one needs to learn how to overcome the same rather than wasting time in regret.

Combinedly, our experience was quite good, we learned great things from the team, we learned values, between ourselves to maintain proper respect for the hierarchy in a DC time. There was a time when only three of us (OTs) were present in DC, which was boring though we managed to survive and never let our inner designer die. Designing Corner was the place where we created countless memories from frustrating with a design to printing work on Day 0, from fighting for propogation trips to discussing silly hashtags which spoiled our mood, but there is a long way ahead. Learning is a part of life and couldn't be stopped, at the end of the clock, we had a bunch of perfectly balanced sweet, and satisfying memories which brought me, my Designing OTs, now Ex-OTs. Designing was the department then and now a family!