AdvanceRIT is a department at Rochester Institute of University that supports women faculty in their research, teaching, and in providing resources. As a full-time student, I work as a student employee in the AdvanceRIT office, managing the social media pages, flyers and graphics, and help with basic tasks such as office management, student training, work within Office 365 on excel and Powerpoint, Qualtrics, and events management. These icons were created for the AdvanceRIT website for their newsletter.
The funny part of tourism is being called a tourist everytime you visit a new place: you’ll know the high end places that everyone hypes up. How many times do you have to visit a state or city to become familiar with it? How long should you live there to officially know all the hidden gems as a local?
My personal rule: as long as you’re making any trip an adventure and marking every step you take, you’re turning tourism into your traveling knowledge.
A new addition to the Be The Aesthetic art blog: Free Wallpaper Downloads.
From desktop monthly calendars to iPhone wallpapers, all of these downloads are available as a png and can be saved to your desktop or phone! All wallpapers are available to view and save by accessing the Google Drive Folder (no password or request needed, it’s open for anyone who clicks the link!). All designs are made by me.
For my tech-mediated communications class, we learned about mediated voyeurism from A Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy and Peering in Modern Culture by Clay Calvert. Calvert defines mediated voyeurism as “the consumption of revealing images of and information about others’ apparently real and unguarded lives, often yet not always for purposes of entertainment but frequently at the expense of privacy and disclosure, through the means of mass media and Internet (Calvert, 2000).”
We made many connections to how communication started, beginning with weaving as coding. In a way to understand modern times communication through the digital era, we did a class assignment/group exercise where we picked two 6-inch pieces of string, using specific colors to represent emotions we were currently feeling. The list of emotions connected to its color were based on psychologist Dr. Carroll Izzard’s universal emotions color chart.
As part of the assignment, below I analyze how choosing two colors to represent my emotions in-person compares to mediated voyeurism and the line of privacy versus raw emotions in display.
When entering the world of communications, what is the first thing everyone learns? The importance of creating, transcribing, receiving, and interpreting messages. It’s not just how we speak, it is how we present ourselves in different settings.
Content creation is focused on representing someone, or something such as a brand, through its image. It’s creating it’s figure by having the right products that align with what the brand is selling, and promoting that through an image. When I think of image, I think of tone, personality, and voice. It is said that tone is a subset of voice and voice is a brand personality. The platforms that brands are on and engaging with- especially in a digital era- is a crucial form of building interpersonal communication between organizations and their customers: it keeps their relationship alive.
As someone who enjoys advocacy in women studies and Hispanic culture, I put my skills and efforts into working with brands that embody those elements. From experience in creating magazine layouts and writing editorial articles, I always aim to be the voice for brands that shouts inclusivity and ethical roots while creating engaging content in different forms.
Experimenting with graphic design to make posts, videos, slideshows, animated gifs combined with learning specific social media features such as Facebook Groups, stories, highlights, and more are all part of communicating through social media and marketing.
Click on the image to view this Facebook post!
Understanding your audience is another key factor to know when properly advertising your brand. An organization cannot solemnly survive on featuring its products; it only profits when they can sell it to their customers, persuading them that that is the product they need and want. Through my experience of doing social media managing for clubs, internships, and ambassador positions, I have made sure to not just have a voice for the brand purpose, but to listen clearly to what my audience wants.
Social media managing is a mix of content creation and marketing. It’s an expansion of a brand, it’s the voice to share the organization’s mission and purpose. It goes above and beyond having an aesthetic feed, but creating engaging posts, building relationships with your followers, keeping up with trends, and communicating a message consistently.
For a Study Abroad opportunity, I got to travel to the United Arab Emirates with a group of students looking to do cultural research. For 1 week (10 days traveling), I got to experience the richness of Dubai, the distinctive culture, and observe the traditions and norms. For this trip, I focused my research on Emirati fashion has evolved-both casual and cultural wear-specifically to analyze how gender codes and roles are communicated through fashion.
WARNING: Contains vulgar language in reference to song, ‘That Bitch’ by Bea Miller
This report was originally written for a reflective paper for a Communication in Gender and Media course. All credits go to the author, Gabriella Licona with credit given to the respected references listed.
When you analyze the way a traditional woman is supposed to behave in public, what do you expect to see? Gender norms have been a controversial issue surrounding what should be normalized behavior, not among the general crowd, but specifically in the difference between men and women.
The research paper below was put together for a philosophy class in Love, Sex, and Gender. The Self-Love Project is an individual creative project that explores the understanding of self-identity interpretated through relationships and through sexual interactions with others and the self. The project analyzes behaviors in sex and relationships through gender roles.
Be The Aesthetic 