News

This summer, Upstream 360 had an intern team featuring Erin Morgan (creative), Syd Boyd (production), Josie Zink (project management), and Mara Thomas (copywriting). We were tasked with coming up with a capstone that encapsulated all of our skills and what we learned through our three months at Upstream 360.

For our project, we decided to work with a local client to go through Upstream 360’s full process. The Book Bus is a local bookstore with a brick-and-mortar shop (The Book Bus Depot) located in Sharonville, OH, and a converted VW truck that pops up around the Cincinnati area. All profits from The Book Bus go to donating books to kids at underfunded schools and supporting literacy in the Cincinnati area.

Our first step was an internal ideation, and we discussed several different options for what we could produce for The Book Bus. Our focus at this stage was breadth rather than depth as we wanted to know what the client needed and wanted to focus on.

We also drafted Inspirational Design Targets that represented the person we wanted to target with our video. We made two separate people – one customer who wanted to shop the store and one business owner who wanted to contribute to The Book Bus’ mission.

At our WOW Workshop, we made sure to write each one of our angles and stories down, so no idea was lost. Our illustrator, Erin, drew a visual for each. We initially explored what aspects of The Book Bus to focus on, and then found ways to highlight those aspects through storytelling. Looking at the drawings all over the walls when we were done, we discussed with the clients which ones they liked the best and which ones they wanted us to explore further.

In the week following the workshop, we looked at the leading stories, found the things they had in common, and determined the threads that tied them together. Once we created the story we wanted to tell, we built a structure for the video and a plan for how to move forward. We decided to focus on interviewing several people with different kinds of involvement in The Book Bus, so we wrote the questions that would guide our story.

Syd took the lead for video filming and editing and worked tirelessly to turn the vision we had all come up with into a reality. About once a week, we met to discuss her progress on the video as she transformed hours of interview footage into one cohesive story. Each time, we made sure that the draft aligned with the goals of the client and conveyed what we wanted it to in an interesting way.

Along with the video, we made a print graphic for The Book Bus to give potential donors information about their mission and some of their goals for donating books. Erin used the old print flyer The Book Bus had been using as a jumping-off point and created one that retained the information of the original with a fresh new look.

This project was challenging, yet fun, and exactly the capstone project we were looking for. We had such a great time working with The Book Bus and learned a lot about what it’s like to work directly with clients. Getting to showcase each of our unique talents in a way that was impactful to our community was special for all of us!

After hours of work and rounds of revisions, here’s our results: